2019:

History II

Peace, Reconciliation

and Activism

As we move into the summer and the Pride season starts to get into full swing, we're looking forward to next February, and its chosen curriculum theme of History.

This will be the second time we have visited this subject, and it seems appropriate as 2019 will be the centenary of the actual end of World War One - hence peace and reconciliation. Next year will also mark the 50th anniversary of the landmark Stonewall riots in New York, which inspired the modern gay right movement, so we felt it fitting to pay tribute to the birth of that activism.

February is also when we highlight the lives of LGB and T icons from history; people whose stories have been erased, straightened or simply omitted from most heteronormative text books. People whose lives reflect and exemplify the year's theme, and who deserve to be rediscovered by new generations of LGBT people. 

Our Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Faces of 2019 are:

Marielle Franco (1979 - 2018) was a Brazilian politician, feminist, and human rights activist.. She served as a city councillor of the Municipal Chamber of Rio de Janeiro for the Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) from January 2017 until her death. On March 14, 2018, while in a car after delivering a speech, Franco and her driver were shot multiple times and killed by two assailants in another vehicle. Franco had been an outspoken critic of police brutality and extrajudicial killings.

Magnus Hirschfeld (1868 – 1935) was a German Jewish physician and sexologist educated primarily in Germany; he based his practice in Berlin-Charlottenburg. An outspoken advocate for sexual minorities, Hirschfeld founded the Scientific-Humanitarian Committee. This group carried out "the first advocacy for homosexual and transgender rights".

James Kirkup (1918 - 2009) an English poet, translator and travel writer. He wrote over 30 books, including autobiographies, novels and plays. He came to public attention in 1977, after the newspaper Gay News published his poem The Love That Dares to Speak Its Name, in which a Roman centurion describes his lust for the crucified Jesus. The paper was successfully prosecuted for blasphemous libel by Mary Whitehouse, then Secretary of the National Viewers' and Listeners' Association.

Marsha P. Johnson (1945 – 1992) was an African-American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen. Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the vanguard of the Stonewall uprising in 1969. A founding member of the Gay Liberation Front, Johnson co-founded the gay and transvestite advocacy organization S.T.A.R. (Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries), alongside close friend Sylvia Rivera (our Trans Face of 2017). Known for decades as a welcoming presence in the streets of Greenwich Village, Johnson was known as the "mayor of Christopher Street". From 1987 through 1992, Johnson was an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

As we have also finalised our themes for every February until 2023, we are looking for your nominations for the Faces of those years. See the bottom of this bulletin.

2019 Badge

Unveiled

'I am studying Graphic Design. I am a person with lots of interests. Besides graphics, art, and painting I love nature and time spent outside in the fresh air.

Originally I'm from Poland but wanted to expand my knowledge and experience new things I came to study abroad at the University of Bedfordshire.

The Design of the badge I created to represent the history of the LGBT community for 2019 event. My idea is based on the pride parades. The first pride parade took place on June 28, 1970, in New York, this event was the anniversary of the Stonewall riots which are the initial part of LGBT history. To present my idea I decided to combine the LGBT colors with the concept of a parade. I wanted to give them a look of the peaceful yet powerful wave because I think this is what the community stands for nowadays.'

Congratulations to Karolina, who we hope has a successful design career ahead of her. 

As ever, the new badge will be available from July, priced £3.

4 New Patrons!

We are very pleased and proud to announce the names of four new patrons!

Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, also known as Lady Phyll, co-founder, trustee and executive (formerly managing) director of UK Black Pride. Opoku-Gyimah sits on the TUC race relations committee and is also a trustee of Stonewall. Phyll made headlines in 2016 for refusing an MBE in the New Year's Honours List.

Veteran campaigner Peter Tatchell, a longstanding friend to Schools OUT UK, and founder of the Peter Tatchell Foundation. In the 1990s he campaigned for LGBT rights through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded. In the 1970s and 1980s, Peterwas involved in campaigns against the National Front and the British National Party. Peter has gained multiple awards in recognition of his 50 years striving against oppression in all its forms. 

Aderonke Apata, a Nigerian activist who recently won a UK asylum claim after a 13-year battle. The Home Office denied refugee status to Aderonke and accused her of lying about being in lesbian relationship. She has described many dark hours during her battle with Home Office officials, such as being kept in solitary confinement for a week in Yarl’s Wood detention centre in October 2012.

Tom Robinson delivered this year's Allan Horsfall Memorial Lecture at Liverpool John Moores University. Best known for his 1976 anthem 'Glad To Be Gay', Tom has a long recording and broadcasting career, currently working for the BBC (slightly ironically as they barred his music in the late 1970s). Tom is a longtime supporter and former volunteer of London's Gay Switchboard help-line.

We look forward to working with them and spreading our message even further!

OUTing The Past 2019 

We're Off! 

And Going International!

We are delighted to launch the OTP Application process for Hub Partners 2019 to help celebrate next year’s Festival of Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Trans History 2019. We're doubly thrilled to be taking the Festival to Eire, Scandinavia and Germany; hence our change of name. We are now THE Festival of LGBT History!

OTP Festival of LGBT History is a unique project seeking to provide important historical insights of our collective past that have at best been marginalised. That is a public educational project that is central to challenging ignorance and thereby helping to create a more informed, more content and inclusive society.

For details about about the application process (including the application form) or more generally the Festival Project please don’t hesitate to contact Jeff or Sue. We look forward to hearing from you. Potential Hubs have until 1st June to complete their application.

Best wishes and again many thanks for your kind interest.

The timetable leading up to next year's Festival can be found on the OTP website - here
 

Co-organiser Ken Valente reflects on this year's Liverpool event:

The vibrant city of Liverpool played host once again to OUTing the Past 2018. This year’s two-day conference was organised around the theme of activism and attracted delegates from eight countries. The programme featured paper presentations, panel discussions, workshops and, in a promising new development, a film screening. Liverpool John Moores University provided a welcoming and intimate space for the conference, which allowed activists and scholars to engage in important conversations both within and between elements of the conference programme.
 
History and activism provided a compelling theme for the 2018 conference. Delegates represented several UK-based organisations, including the Lesbian Immigration Support Group, Finding a Voice UK, African Rainbow Families, and Cara-Friend. Others were affiliated with organisations based primarily outside of the UK such as Queer Code (France), Equality Movement (Georgia), and the International Lesbian & Gay Culture Network (Sweden). Once again we were fortunate to have museums and archives well-represented by delegates associated with Liverpool Museums, Skeivt Arkiv (Norway), and the Sodertalje Gallery (Sweden). Adding to the contributions and perspectives provided by these delegates, human right campaigner Peter Tatchell and Shadow Minister for International Development Dan Carden (MP for Liverpool Walton) lent their time and support to the conference by chairing and attending various sessions.
 
OUTing the Past 2018 featured three plenary panel discussion that were intentionally programmed as a way of bringing together all delegates and specifically addressing activism associated with different parts of the world. Two of these focused on Africa and South Asia, including diasporic communities within the UK. The third highlighted current efforts and concerns in Central & Eastern Europe. The success of these sessions was particularly encouraging and the conference looks forward to programming such sessions in the future as a way of fulfilling its commitment to showcasing and partnering with LGBT+ organisations, whether local, regional, or global.
 
Paper presentation sessions alternated with the plenary events. These offered historical insights into LGBT+ activism in the UK and around the world. Academics, postgraduate students, and public scholars engaged an array of evidence in the work they presented, including  literature, the popular press, medical research, oral histories, and documents held by LGBT+ archives as well as others ‘passed from hand to hand.’ The scope of topics explored was equally rich, with presentations addressing regional and transnational efforts committed to (homo)sexual reform, community-based activism, the reclamation of lost or hidden histories, developing collective archives as a means of fostering well-being, and performance as a way of examining the past. It’s a rare conference that can accommodate, showcase, and critically examine such a range of historically relevant perspectives and presenters. We remain committed to this aspect of the conference and look forward to welcoming new voices and insights as planning for OUTing the Past 2019 gets underway.
 
Please consider joining us to share your stories, your work, or your contribution to LGBT+ history!

Co-organiser Jeff Evans looks forward to OTP 2019:

The fifth OUTing the Past Festival of LGBT History 2019 is up and running and to become a fully-fledged international project! The success of the OUTing the Past Festival has in large part being made possible by the project delivery model that privileges and respects our Festival Hub Partners to select and design a celebration best suited to their circumstances and the interests of their respective target audiences. This encourages both high profile prestigious institutions such as National Museums to participate together with smaller voluntary run community organisations.

OTP 2019 will again seek to improve this model whereby we inclusively advertise for organisations to seek to host a Festival Hub and then invite historians to present their fascinating insights into our LGBT+ past together first-hand testimonies of that past and ongoing struggle. The organisational schedule for OTP 2019 is posted on our website www.outingthepast.org.uk together with regular updates kindly posted by Andy the Festival Comms Team.

This year OTP is to become an internarial project, celebrating and showcase LGBT+ History not only in the UK but also Ireland, Scandinavia and the USA. Indeed, we could expand beyond those counties but the danger with any non-core funded organisation fuelled only by voluntary endeavour – exhaustion is a danger we have to guard against. The path towards human equality is sadly littered with too many dedicated individual and groups burnt by the journey.    

We hope to be celebrating the OTP Festival Conference in Belfast at the end of March 2019. An event that provides a unique meeting place: the crossroads between LGBT Activism and Scholarship, a remarkable two-way leaning opportunity. Northern Ireland is no accidental choice of venue, the ongoing arrest of Equal Marriage Legislation and the denial of women’s access to abortion service on the NHS is an affront to us all that needs highlighting and changing ASAP.  Hosting the OTP Festival Conference in Belfast and thereby further highlighting this appalling situation is a contribution to those campaigns.

The close of applications for hosting a OTP Festival Hub is the 31^st May 2018

The Call for Festival LGBT⁺ History Presentations opens at the end of June’18 and closes October’18. If you have a piece of LGBT⁺ History you’d like to share or personal testimony of that past please consider sharing at the OTP Festival 2019. 

NEU LGBT

Conference 2018


Leeds

They said it couldn’t be done. But 274 delegates came to queer Leeds in the biggest equalities conference ever held by a Teachers’ Union in the UK: The National Education Union. Yes; that’s 274 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans + educators at one single event. How good is that?

Beginning with dinner, a networking event and Indeedy Bingo on the evening on Friday the 21^st of April (Indeedy Bingo should be familiar to regulars at The RVT I believe but to the non-initiated it’s a delightfully cheesy combination of disco and bingo with wacky prizes) people who were strangers to each other at the start of the evening were firm friends or at least good acquaintances before we settled down to the serious stuff on Saturday morning.

And the serious stuff started with a speech from General Co-Secretary Kevin Courtney who sent greetings from his counterpart Mary Bousted. He congratulated Mixchael Dance and Chay Brown for featuring in an article in the Guardian and announced the publication of new Union guidance documents on Trans teachers and students that was released that day. He lambasted Section 28 and the then Conservative administration that brought it in, saying that he joined the Lesbian and Gay Society at his university to protest against it. Kevin added that most of the difficulties we face today stem from the 1988 Education Reform Act brought in by the Thatcher administration.

Annette Pryce, NEU LGBT+ reserved seat holder on the Executive, spoke out against bullying within and without the Union and added that the most dangerous phrase in the English language is “We’ve always done it this way.”

From a varied selection of workshops on Saturday and Sunday I chose to go to OUT in Education and The Three Faiths Forum. OUT in Education is an initiative set up by students at Nottingham University who go out to schools and train the teachers in how to celebrate diversity and make their schools more inclusive. They used tried and tested formulae and there was some reinventing of the wheel (haven’t we been here before) but it’s good to see people doing the groundwork wherever it happens.

The Three Faiths Forum (3FF) was set up to provide training and support to LGBT+ groups that would be sensitive to and inclusive of the needs of people from different faiths and beliefs. Having had the theme of Religion, Belief and Philosophy for LGBT History Month in 2016 I thought it was important to attend this workshop and it was an emotional experience for some.

Talking of LGBT History Month; it was plugged not by yours truly but by Kerry Goldsmith, who explained how she used it to make the academy in which she worked LGBT friendly. Kerry refused to take ‘no’ for an answer when dealing with senior management and turned her academy in the east into a safe space for LGBT+ teachers and pupils using the Month and The Classroom. A second plug came from Debs Gwynne from the North West, who in moving a motion in support of the Union supplying Equalities training for teachers, spoke of the importance of LGBT History Month and The Classroom in providing that training.

Other highlights included Chay Brown talking about transitioning at work (as a Year 4 primary teacher) in what was a supportive school. Fox and Owl spoke about how they set up their own independent film company to provide support and guidance to Trans + young people after the misrepresentation of themselves by Channel 4’s My Transsexual Summer (sic) back in the day.

The LGBT+ Awards on Saturday evening went to Annette Pryce, Chay Brown, David Braniff-Herbert, Debs Gwynne and the NW for their teacher training and The Trans Teachers’ Network; all deserved winners and well-done to them.
 
Tony Fenwick MBE
CEO Schools OUT UK/LGBT History Month

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Pride Calendar

When and where is your local Pride event? Going on holiday during the Pride season? Click on the link for information on Pride gatherings around the world this summer:

Pride 2018

 You can support LGBT History Month by
 

organising events, quizzes, exhibitions, recording histories, contributing to events; asking to be put in our OUTing the Past gazette, promoting our events; keeping an eye on our website, resources and calendar; attending events; buying our badges and books and other materials in our shop and anything else you can think of!
 

 

For each year we would like you, our supporters, to nominate the L,G,B and T Faces who will represent queer contributions to the various chosen art forms and topics. Our only specification is that your nominee is now dead. We are particularly keen to expand the list of BAME LGBT contributors to the UK. If possible, please also let us know the source of your evidence - hearsay and rumour are not enough.

So if you have a name who you believe has been forgotten, straightened or even deliberately misrepresented by history in one or more of the above subjects, let us know:

Contact Andrew Dobbin, Promotions Officer for Schools OUT UK here

or send a message to info@schools-out.org.uk
 

 

For each year we would like you, our supporters, to nominate the L,G,B and T Faces who will represent queer contributions to the various chosen art forms and topics. Our only specification is that your nominee is now dead. We are particularly keen to expand the list of BAME LGBT contributors to the UK. If possible, please also let us know the source of your evidence - hearsay and rumour are not enough.

So if you have a name who you believe has been forgotten, straightened or even deliberately misrepresented by history in one or more of the above subjects, let us know:

Contact Andrew Dobbin, Promotions Officer for Schools OUT UK here

or send a message to info@schools-out.org.uk
 

LGBT History Month is the most famous project by Schools OUT UK.
Both have their own dedicated Facebook page, updated daily by Promotions Officer Andrew Dobbin and former committee member Nic Chinardet. 

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