Annual General Meeting

Out In The City’s Annual General Meeting was held on 28 March 2024. There were 52 people present (including four guests from Age UK) and we received 15 apologies.

Tony Openshaw presented the Annual Report 2023 highlighting the number of meetings and trips out, but also the media work and website statistics. We also won “Community Group of the Year” in the Forever Manchester Awards. He also presented the Annual Accounts. Both the Annual Report and Accounts were approved.

The following members were elected to the Committee: Tony Openshaw (Chair), Derek Sheasby (Treasurer), Peter Thirsk (Secretary) and Lizzie Gent, Lynn Oddy and Sarah Edwards (Members).

The legal status of the organisation needs to be considered, but we are waiting for professional advice.

Five Bizarre Things Bigots Said Equal Marriage Would Lead To

Ten years ago, on 29 March 2014, the first same-sex weddings took place in England and Wales after the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act came into force, finally giving LGBT+ couples equal right to marriage.

In the run-up to the law being passed, homophobes told the nation countless times about the possible risks and consequences of allowing LGBT+ folks to tie the knot. We were warned that natural disasters would plague the land, people would start to marry animals and that the devil would appear from a gay man’s anus (no, really, that was a thing that was actually said).

To mark 10 years of same-sex marriage, which has seen thousands of LGBT+ couples get married in officially recognised unions, we look back at some of the most bizarre and bonkers claims made by homophobes.

Marrying your own sibling has not, of course, suddenly become legal

When discussing the legislation in May 2013, former Conservative Party chairman Lord Norman Tebbit suggested if equal marriage was made law, then it would give precedent to him marrying his own son or brother.

He said: “It’s like one of my colleagues said: we’ve got to make these same-sex marriages available to all. It would lift my worries about inheritance tax because maybe I’d be allowed to marry my son. Why not?

Why shouldn’t a mother marry her daughter? Why shouldn’t two elderly sisters living together marry each other? I quite fancy my brother!”

In the same rant, he also questioned how same-sex marriage would impact succession in the royal family.

Lord Tebbit said: “When we have a queen who is a lesbian and she marries another lady and then decides she would like to have a child and someone donates sperm and she gives birth to a child, is that child heir to the throne?”

As of 2024, the Sexual Offences Act 2003 still stands, which states it is illegal for a person to knowingly have sex with a “parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, uncle, aunt, nephew or niece”.

Biblical storms have not washed away England and Wales

In an open letter to then Prime Minister David Cameron in 2014, UKIP councillor David Silvester said he previously warned the Prime Minister that if gay people were allowed to marry then the country would face biblical natural disasters.

In his letter, published in the Henley Standard, following flooding over Christmas and New Year, he wrote: ”The scriptures make it abundantly clear that a Christian nation that abandons its faith and acts contrary to the Gospel (and in naked breach of a coronation oath) will be beset by natural disasters such as storms, disease, pestilence and war.

I wrote to David Cameron in April 2012 to warn him that disasters would accompany the passage of his same-sex marriage Bill. But he went ahead despite a 600,000-signature petition by concerned Christians and more than half of his own parliamentary party saying that he should not do so.”

Silvester, who was subsequently suspended by UKIP, accused Cameron of shedding “crocodile tears on behalf of destitute flooded homeowners” even though it was “his fault” it happened, because he “arrogantly acted against the Gospel”.

Bestiality has not become the next civil rights frontier

One of the most common reasons homophobes used to push back against same-sex marriage is that it would allegedly lead to people marrying animals.

This deeply homophobic and vile argument was thrown about countless times in the run up to equal marriage coming into force in 2014.

For example, former Fox News host Todd Starnes claimed legalising equal marriage would lead to the legalisation of bestiality.

He said: ”You know it’s interesting because the passage of the Bible that people – that people talk about in regards to, you know, the act of homosexuality, it goes further to talk about that. That men should not lie with beasts. And the women should not do that either. All this kind of stuff.”

Similarly, a UKIP supporter in Newark told The Guardian that gay marriage was like marrying a pig.

The man said at the time: “Civil partnership is absolutely fine, but gay marriage is appalling nonsense. The next thing they will be saying is we should be marrying pigs.”

The devil has not come out of an anus (not yet, anyway)

In 2013, US gay porn star turned ‘ex-gay’ Christian fundamentalist Joseph Sciambra claimed anal sex causes gay men to give birth to the devil.

“I’m going to talk about the devil and why he loves anal sex. Anal sex releases into the world rare demonic entities and that even in the body could be conceived as the devil and that would be given birth to anally,” he said in a video.

Child marriage and abuse is not legal

Similar to likening gay marriage to bestiality and incest, swathes of bigots said allowing two consenting adults to marry each other would obviously open the floodgates to child marriage and the abuse of children.

US conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh said he believed there was a movement to accept the sexual abuse of children as ‘normal’ and likened it to the fight for same-sex marriage.

The conservative political commentator said: “There is an effort underway to normalise paedophilia. Yep. And it has two aspects to it. One is that sex with children doesn’t hurt them. Kids like it, and so do adults, and there’s nothing wrong with it”.

Similarly, Free Church of Scotland minister James Gracie – a denomination that seeks to reflect “clear Biblical teaching” – said on a BBC Radio Scotland discussion show that “if the homosexuals, and these people, want to be treated equally, then what about paedophiles? What about polygamy?”

Funnily enough, none of these things ever happened.

This Trans Woman was Named ‘Woman of the Year’ in 1953

Christine Jorgensen was a truly trailblazing American trans woman. A former soldier, she was the first person to become widely known in the US for having gender-affirming surgery.

Her story is a fascinating one, and shows how – almost overnight – she became a pop culture icon. She was also treated more sensitively than you might expect for a trans person who was born in 1926, and in 1953 was named a ‘Woman of the Year’ by the Scandinavian Societies of Greater New York.

Christine was born and grew up in the Bronx, New York. She described herself as a “frail, blond, introverted little boy who ran from fistfights and rough-and-tumble games.”

After graduating, Christine was drafted into the US Army for World War II. Following her time in the army, she gained permission to move to Denmark, where she had gender-affirming care, which began in 1951.

“Everyone is both sexes in varying degrees. I am more of a woman than a man … Of course I can never have children but this does not mean that I cannot have natural sexual intercourse – I am very much in the position right now of a woman who has a hysterectomy” – Christine Jorgensen

In December 1952, when she returned to America, the New York Daily News splashed Jorgensen across their front page under the headline “Ex GI becomes blonde beauty,” making her instantly famous.

The article read: “… Son of a Bronx carpenter served in the Army for two years and was given honourable discharge in 1946.

After six operations, Jorgenson’s sex has been changed and today she is a striking woman, working as a photographer in Denmark.

Parents were informed of the big change in a letter Christine Jorgensen (that’s her new name) sent to them recently.”

Sex reassignment surgery

Christine began her transition by taking oestrogen in the form of ethinylestradiol while researching the surgery with the help of eminent Dr Joseph Angelo.

While visiting relatives in Copenhagen, Christine also met Dr Christian Hamburger – a Danish endocrinologist and specialist in rehabilitative hormone therapy.

She underwent hormone replacement therapy under Dr Hamburger’s direction, and chose the name Christine in honour of him.

Hamburger encouraged Jorgensen to take on a female identity and begin dressing as a woman in public.

As the hormones started to take effect, Hamburger noted the changes.

“The first sign was an increase in size of the mammary glands and then hair began to grow where the patient had a bald patch on the temple. Finally the whole body changed from a male to a female shape.”

After more than a year of hormone therapy, Jorgensen had the first in a series of operations that would attempt to change her genital organs from male to female.

Jorgensen was also assessed by a psychologist, Dr Georg Sturup, who accepted that she wanted to proceed with sex reassignment surgery.

“As you can see by the enclosed photos, taken just before the operation, I have changed a great deal. But it is the other changes that are so much more important. Remember the shy, miserable person who left America? Well, that person is no more and, as you can see, I’m in marvellous spirits” – Christine Jorgensen

As a result, Sturup successfully petitioned the Danish government to change the law to allow castration for the purposes of the operation.

“I was a bit nervous because there were too many people at that period who insisted I was crazy,” Jorgensen said in an interview. “But Dr Hamburger didn’t feel there was anything particularly strange about it.”

In 1951, Christine had an orchiectomy (a surgical procedure in which one or both testicles are removed), and in 1952, she had a penectomy (penis removal through surgery). Describing it, she said: “My second operation, as the previous one, was not such a major work of surgery as it may imply.”

After the procedure, Christine wrote to her parents in New York: “Nature made a mistake which I have had corrected, and now I am your daughter.”

Finally, in the US, she had a vaginoplasty, performed under the direction of Dr Angelo.

The first transgender celebrity

Following the New York Daily News story, Christine became a celebrity. She wrote about her own journey in a 1953 issue of The American Weekly, titled The Story of My Life.

When she returned to the US, she returned a star – and was greeted by a horde of journalists and admirers at Idlewild Airport (now JFK).

Christine used her publicity as a platform to advocate for transgender people, while Hollywood welcomed her. She was even crowned Women of the Year by the Scandinavian Society in New York.

“I guess they all want to take a peek,” she said.

She went on to make a living as an entertainer, actress and nightclub singer, and in one act performed ‘I Enjoy Being a Girl’ while wearing a Wonder Woman costume.

Christine Jorgensen’s personal life

Following her vaginoplasty, Jorgensen became engaged to a man named John Traub, but it was called off. In 1959, she got engaged to American medical doctor, Howard J Knox.

However, the pair were unable to get a marriage license because Christine was listed as male on her birth certificate.

In 1967, she moved to California and wrote her autobiography Christine Jorgensen: A Personal Autobiography. Three years later it was filmed as The Christine Jorgensen Story.

During the 1970s and 80s, she toured university campuses and other venues, speaking about her experiences as a transgender spokesperson and public figure.

Christine died in 1989, at the age of 62, of bladder and lung cancer. In the year of her death, she said:

“I am very proud now, looking back, that I was on that street corner 36 years ago when a movement started. It was the sexual revolution that was going to start with or without me. We may not have started it, but we gave it a good swift kick in the pants”.