What did the High Court say about Trans people and the use of loos?

Here is an accurate summary of the High Court judgement dated 13 February 2026 in the case brought by Good Law Project to challenge the lawfulness of the interim guidance (previously) issued by the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) regarding single-sex spaces, cutting through polarised rhetoric.

The judgment does not establish that trans people are banned from any spaces. Instead, it clarifies a nuanced legal framework:

Workplaces must provide “suitable and sufficient” single-sex facilities OR single-person lockable rooms.

Employers must provide facilities separated by biological sex or single-user lockable rooms. But they can (and often must) provide additional facilities beyond the minimum to avoid discriminating against trans staff.

Public services (shops, cafés, etc) have no legal requirement to provide single-sex facilities at all.

Service providers can choose mixed/unisex facilities, single-sex facilities (if proportionate to a legitimate aim), or both. They are not compelled to exclude trans people.

Single-sex facilities

Cease to be legally “single-sex” if used according to gender identity rather than biological sex.

This is a definitional point – not a ban. Providers can still allow trans-inclusive use; they just can’t label it “single-sex” while doing so.

Proportionality is everything: even where single-sex provision is permitted, it’s only lawful if “a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim” (Equality Act 2010, Sch 3).

Blanket exclusions of trans people may fail this test and constitute unlawful discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment (paras 66-67, 71).

No requirement to police biological sex: The judge explicitly rejected the idea that employers must “police” toilet use “person by person and day by day” as “divorced from reality” (para 40). Good faith policies are sufficient.

Trans-inclusive facilities may be lawful: The judge was notably less certain than the EHRC that allowing trans women in women’s facilities while excluding other men would automatically constitute sex discrimination against men.

It depends on circumstances and whether it amounts to “less favourable treatment” (paras 57-62). This undermines claims of a strict “either everyone or no one” rule.

Dignity obligations remain: Providers must ensure trans people aren’t left with no appropriate facilities. Expecting all trans people to use only facilities matching their biological sex may not be proportionate (para 66).

The guidance itself encouraged providing mixed-sex or single-user facilities alongside single-sex ones (points [3c] and [3d]).

The judge:

• warned against “unyielding ideologies” and noted the law is “more nuanced” than public debate suggests (para 25-27);
• criticised framing rights as “trumping” each other in a “zero-sum game” when the Equality Act actually balances multiple protected characteristics;
• called it “bizarre” to speak of legal “rights” to particular toilets – urging providers to be guided by “common sense and benevolence” rather than rigid rules (para 27).

The court found that the way the EHRC revised the guidance was “opaque and very unsatisfactory” – changes weren’t clearly flagged to readers (para 92).

But crucially: the court did NOT find the guidance legally inaccurate or unlawful in substance

The court rejected arguments that workplace regulations only govern physical provision of facilities without governing their use (the purpose is clearly to provide private space separated by biological sex for “reasons of propriety”).

Noted that concerns about gossip when using accessible facilities, while sincerely held, don’t necessarily amount to legal discrimination (para 73).

Bottom Line for Trans People

• You are not banned from using facilities matching your gender identity.
• Service providers can provide trans-inclusive facilities – they’re not legally prohibited from doing so.
• Employers must avoid unlawful discrimination on grounds of gender reassignment when making facility arrangements.

But facilities designated as “single-sex” (for Equality Act purposes) must align with biological sex – though providers can choose not to designate as such.

The legal test is always proportionality: blanket exclusions may be unlawful; thoughtful, context-sensitive arrangements are required.

The judgment ultimately affirms that equality law requires nuanced, fact-sensitive application – not rigid rules.

Maurice

He wrote a love story between two men with a happy ending in 1914 – then locked it in a drawer for 57 years. He died one year before the world finally read it.

E M Forster was already a celebrated author in 1913 when he began writing a novel he knew he could never publish. He had written A Room with a View and Howards End, books that made him famous, books that examined English society with wit and precision.

But this new novel was different. This one was about him.

Maurice tells the story of a young man who falls in love with his Cambridge classmate, Clive Durham. When Clive eventually rejects him, Maurice finds love with Alec Scudder, a working-class gamekeeper. And here’s what made it revolutionary: they run away together. They choose each other. They get a happy ending. In 1914, that ending was unthinkable.

This wasn’t ancient history. This was the era of Oscar Wilde’s imprisonment still fresh in memory, of men arrested and jailed for “gross indecency”, of lives destroyed simply for loving someone of the same sex.

Homosexuality was a crime punishable by up to two years of hard labour. The law wouldn’t change until 1967 – and even then, only partially. Men lost their careers, their families, their freedom. Some were chemically castrated. Some took their own lives rather than face exposure.

Oscar Wilde had died in exile in 1900, destroyed by the very society Forster moved through. The message was clear: if you were a man who loved men, your story could only end in tragedy, shame or silence. But Forster refused to write that ending.

When he finished Maurice in 1914, he showed it to a handful of trusted friends. Their responses were mixed. Some were moved. Others warned him never to publish it. One friend told him it was “too dangerous.”

Forster typed a note and attached it to the manuscript: “Publishable – but is it worth it?” Then he put it in a drawer and locked it away.

For the next 56 years, Maurice existed only in typescript, read by a small circle of Forster’s closest confidants. He revised it occasionally, updating details, refining scenes. But he never published it. He couldn’t. Not while his mother was alive.

Lily Forster lived until 1945, dying at age 90. Forster had lived with her for most of his life. She was domineering, possessive, and completely unaware – or wilfully ignorant – of her son’s sexuality. Forster couldn’t risk her discovering the truth, couldn’t bear the scandal it would bring to her.

After her death, Forster was more open with friends, but still not with the world. He was 66 years old when his mother died, too old to rebuild a life as an openly gay man, too entrenched in a society that would reject him.

He had other secrets, too. In 1930, Forster met Bob Buckingham, a 28-year-old policeman. Forster was 51. They fell deeply in love – or something like it. Their relationship was physical and emotional, documented in letters that reveal Forster’s longing and devotion.

Then, in 1932, Bob married a woman named May Hockey. The relationship didn’t end. Instead, it transformed into a complicated triangle. Forster remained close to both Bob and May for the rest of his life, often visiting them, sometimes causing tension. It was love, compromise, and quiet heartbreak all at once.

Forster lived in the shadows – loving Bob, writing privately, achieving public success while hiding his true self.

In 1954, something happened that reminded Forster just how dangerous those shadows were. Alan Turing, the brilliant mathematician who had helped crack the Enigma code and save countless lives during World War II, was arrested for “gross indecency” after his relationship with another man was discovered. He was convicted. Given a choice between prison or chemical castration, he chose the latter.

In 1954, Turing died of cyanide poisoning. The official verdict was suicide.

Forster knew Turing. He knew what the law could do. He knew that Maurice, with its defiant happy ending, was not just a love story – it was an act of rebellion. But still, he didn’t publish it.

He left instructions: the novel could be published after his death. Only then would it be safe. Only then could it exist without destroying him.

E M Forster died on 7 June 1970, at age 91. He had lived through two world wars, had written masterpieces that were taught in schools, had been celebrated and honoured. But he died without ever seeing Maurice in print.

In August 1971, one year after Forster’s death, Maurice was finally published. The timing was extraordinary. The Stonewall riots had occurred in 1969, igniting the modern LGBT+ rights movement. The world was changing, slowly but undeniably. And into that changing world came a novel written 57 years earlier – a novel that said, quietly but firmly: You deserve to be happy. You deserve love. You deserve an ending that doesn’t break you. The response was overwhelming.

Gay readers around the world found themselves in Maurice’s story. For many, it was the first time they’d seen their own experience reflected in literature – not as tragedy, not as cautionary tale, but as love worthy of celebration.

Letters poured in from people who had lived in hiding, who had believed their only options were loneliness or shame. Maurice told them something different. It told them they could choose each other. They could run away together. They could be happy.

In 1987, the novel was adapted into a film by Merchant Ivory, bringing Forster’s hidden masterpiece to an even wider audience.

But Forster never knew any of this. He died believing the world might reject his truth, might judge him, might destroy what little peace he had built. He locked away the most honest thing he ever wrote – a love story that said happiness was possible – and lived his life in the quiet spaces between what was said and what was felt.

E M Forster spent 57 years protecting Maurice. He protected it from the law, from scandal, from a society that would have punished him for writing it. And in doing so, he gave future generations something rare: a story that ends not with death or despair, but with two men choosing each other and walking into the greenwood together, free.

He lived in the shadows. But he left behind a light. And that light – 57 years delayed, one year too late for him to see – has been shining ever since.

Inside the censorship campaign against this 20th century lesbian novel

Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness was the target of a mass censorship campaign in the early 20th century.

First published in 1928, the semi-autobiographical novel follows a so-called “inverted” woman named Stephen, who enjoys the company of other women and dressing in men’s clothes. It is considered the first widely read novel about the lesbian experience written in English.

Shortly after it was published in the UK, James Douglas used his position as editor of the Sunday Express to call for the book to be banned to “prevent the contamination and corruption of English fiction.”

The Well of Loneliness was accused of violating the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. While the novel did not contain explicit content, its exploration of queer themes was said to “deprave and corrupt” the minds of those who read it.

During the obscenity trial, judges refused to hear expert testimonies about the artistic merits of the book from authors like Virigina Woolf and E M Forster, claiming they were irrelevant. The book was ruled to be “obscene libel” and was ordered to be destroyed.

But the book’s legal challenges unfolded quite differently in the US. After the novel was accused of violating the 1873 Comstock Act, the publishers’ lawyer Morris Ernst successfully argued that lesbianism was not inherently obscene or illegal, resulting in the case being dismissed.

Hall would not live to see her novel back on shelves in the UK once the Obscene Publications Act was amended in 1959, but its legacy lives on as a seminal work of lesbian literature that is still read and analysed today.

LGBT+ History Month Party in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday, 19 February – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Free

featuring Joe Cockx (from the Golden Age Big Band) performing Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams.

There will also be a raffle and buffet. 

RSVP for catering purposes.

Board Games Afternoon

After a lovely lunch at The Piccadilly Tavern, we took the tram to New Islington and then the short walk to Mayes Gardens. There we played Scrabble, Dominoes, Checkers and Pontoon.

It was an enjoyable afternoon in beautiful surroundings.

Who was Zdeněk Koubek?

Born on 8 December 1913, in the Czech city of Paskov, Zdeněk Koubek grew up knowing he was different. Most people perceived him as a girl, including his mother and father. Koubek’s mother forced him to start wearing a blue bow in his hair, which Koubek hated. 

He thought the bow made him look like an obedient poodle, and soon the nickname stuck: the boys at school, especially the mean ones, nicknamed him “the poodle.” In a small act of rebellion, Koubek wore trousers that he borrowed from his brothers.

In 1929, while balancing his job at a haberdashery, Koubek joined a local women’s sports league. He tried different track-and-field competitions, but he was always a sprinter at heart. He ran track for VS Brno, a club in the city of Brno. Within a few years, VS Praha, based in Prague, recruited him.

There, he began training for what would become his career capstone: the 1934 instalment of the Women’s World Games, then the largest global competition for athletes in the women’s category. 

When the time came, Koubek came from behind to win gold in the 800-metre dash. He was still at the finish line, gasping for breath, when he heard the first notes of the Czech national anthem. Someone raised the Czech flag. 

At some point, a teammate or a coach or an official told him that he’d broken a world record. His time was 2 minutes and 12.4 seconds, over four seconds ahead of the previous best. 

In December 1935, Koubek told the press that he had decided to start living as a man. 

The announcement catapulted Koubek into an international celebrity. News stories across the world splashed photos of him in his sleeveless track-and-field jerseys across the front page. 

The coverage was bombastic—but not all that negative. To London Life, a British magazine with a penchant for covering stories that challenged popular understandings of sex and sexuality, Koubek’s transition was a “marvellous story” that “definitively proved” that gender transition was possible in humans: “Within the last five years there have been at least six authenticated cases in this country of women becoming men, and men becoming women.” 

“All Shall Be Well” Film Screening – Thursday 26 February at 5.15pm – Free

John Casken Lecture Theatre at the Martin Harris Centre, University of Manchester, Bridgeford Street, Manchester M13 9PL

The Drama and Film and The Film Society at University of Manchester are delighted to welcome Hong Kong Film maker Ray Yeung for a screening of his film “All Shall Be Well” followed by a Q&A with Dr Vicky Lowe.

Ray Yeung is a filmmaker who is also the Executive Director of the Hong Kong Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. In 2020, he made the film “Suk Suk”, which is about two older gay men unexpectedly falling in love.

In 2024, Yeung followed that film with “All Shall Be Well”, which is about an older lesbian couple in their 60s. This latter film won the Teddy Award at the Berlinale Film Festival in 2024.

The film will be screened for free in the John Casken Lecture Theatre, Martin Harris Centre on Thursday 26 February, at 5.15pm.  There is no booking required, There are 120 seats in the lecture theatre and they will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

Friday, 27 February – 11.00am – 12.00pm – LGBTQIA+ History Month Tours – Free

Manchester Art Gallery, Mosley Street, Manchester M2 3JL

Meet at the Information Desk, Ground Floor Atrium

Join the Visitor Engagement Team for a themed tour of the collection celebrating identity, gender, sexuality and community. Free, no need to book.

Research

A PhD research student is currently recruiting participants for her research project. 

The PhD project seeks to explore the lived experiences of LGBTQ+ individuals in England and Wales following the implementation of the Same-Sex Marriage Act. The project itself will aim to understand how this legislation has influenced social and cultural perceptions of equality, identity and relationships within the LGBTQ+ community.

In order to participate in this research, participants need to be:

• Aged 18 years or older
• Identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community
• Reside in England or Wales
• Have a perspective on marriage, including those who are married or wish to marry and those do not wish to marry and/or are opposed to marriage.

Participation will involve discussing your lived experiences and perspectives in relation to LGBTQ+ equality and marriage. Insights provided by participants will contribute to a deeper understanding of how legislative changes have shaped the social and personal lives of LGBTQ+ people in the UK.

If you would like any further information or would like to express an interest in taking part, please contact via email at: jackowska.a@pgr.marjon.ac.uk

Incredible clip from the 1960s shows a lesbian bravely talk about her complex quest for love

In a clip from a 1960s TV show, a lesbian can be seen talking about how she goes about finding a partner. 

She goes on to say that the difficulty in finding a partner in the 1960s means that she has to “keep making friends with people”, adding that “if they are lesbian, there’s hope for me, but even then there isn’t hope unless they happen to take to me”.

Magee, who became a Labour MP in 1974, asks her if she can tell by looking at a woman whether she is a lesbian or not, to which the interviewee responds: “Not at all. It’s an absolute myth, because I have been looking hard enough.” 

The clip, from a 1965 episode of ITV’s current affairs programme This Week, shows the unnamed secretary from the North Midlands revealing the challenges she faces.

At the time, male homosexuality was still illegal in Britain, but lesbianism was not. The presenter, Bryan Magee, who died in 2019, says this makes it a “much easier subject for us to deal with”. The woman is open about her experiences, insisting that all she wants is “to love and be loved by another woman”.

Jackie Kay, another lesbian, who grew up in rural Scotland in the Sixties, said that in her teens, she really did believe she was “the only Black lesbian in the whole world”.

The Black Cat protests in Los Angeles

The Black Cat, a gay bar in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake neighbourhood, was raided by police on New Year’s Eve of 1966. As balloons dropped from the ceiling to mark the New Year of 1967, undercover cops ripped Christmas decorations from the walls, brandished guns, then beat and handcuffed 14 people. Two men arrested for kissing were later forced to register as sex offenders; one bartender suffered a ruptured spleen. Violent police raids on gay bars weren’t uncommon in the ’60s, but this time the gays didn’t let it slide.

“The police brutality was unbelievable and extended down to another gay bar,” Alexei Romanoff, the last known survivor of the raid, said in 2018. “Undercover police officers came in and started to beat the people who were there. Two men kissing longer than a few seconds was considered a crime, and so these people were charged with a lewd conduct. We were upset, as any community would be, so we started to organise.”

“When you have an illegitimate law preventing people from doing certain things, that affects society, and you’ve got to stand up, you’ve got to say, ‘I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna take it anymore,’ like we did,” he continued.

Some political changes affected the situation. “There had been frequent gay bar raids in the Los Angeles area up through about 1964,” said Romanoff’s husband, historian David Farah. “There had been a truce called citywide, and there hadn’t been any gay bar raids for about two years (until that New Year’s Eve). What had happened in the election of ’66 was Ronald Reagan was elected governor of California. He became governor that night at midnight, and with the change of party, the police decided they could go back and start raiding gay bars.” Reagan, a Republican who would go on to court the religious right when he ran for president, succeeded Democrat Edmund G “Pat” Brown, father of future governor Jerry Brown.

On 11 February 1967, over 200 demonstrators peacefully gathered outside the Black Cat, forming a picket line with a planned rally featuring speeches and printed leaflets promoting their cause against police abuse. The march was sombre, serious, and orderly, with the protestors determined not to give the police any reason to escalate the situation or defame their efforts as a riot. “It was an angry demonstration,” Romanoff said. “But orderly.” Large numbers of police were dispatched to the scene, as city leaders feared a riot, but this only served to aid the protestors in staying calm, refusing to give the oppressive force any ammunition to continue the very practices they were protesting. 

Notably, none of the protestors picket signs mention homosexuality explicitly; this was largely due to local straight nightclub/café Pandora’s Box attempts to call off the demonstration.

In 1967, there was a series of protests at the Black Cat, with some drawing 500 to 600 people, Romanoff said. A group called Personal Rights in Defence and Education, or PRIDE, organised the demonstrations. No local news outlet would cover them. So two gay men, Richard Mitch and Bill Rau, decided to take over the PRIDE newsletter and develop it into a news magazine, The Los Angeles Advocate. The first issue came out in September 1967. The magazine soon expanded into covering news nationally, becoming The Advocate. It covered another uprising against police raids, the Stonewall riots, in 1969. Neither the Black Cat protests nor Stonewall immediately stopped police brutality against LGBT+ people or won equal rights – but a movement was coming together.

In 2008, the city of Los Angeles designated the Black Cat site as a Los Angeles Historical-Cultural Monument for its role in the early LGBT+ rights movement. A plaque at the building details its importance.

The original Black Cat eventually closed, and since then there have been bars under various names at the site, most of them catering to gay customers. But now it’s an upscale gastropub, with a general clientele, using the Black Cat name once again.

In 2019, Eric Garcetti, then mayor of Los Angeles, praised the city’s role in civil rights. “Los Angeles doesn’t follow, we lead,” he told The Advocate. “I think many people think civil rights history is written in other parts of the country – the South for racial equity, New York for LGBT equality. Los Angeles can lay claim to being at the forefront of desegregated schools, of pushing forward (for LGBT+ rights) long before Stonewall happened, with the Black Cat, and Cooper’s Donuts a decade before.”

The Black Cat protests have been commemorated in film. In 2017, a short film was released called Silver Lake Out Loud, featuring Romanoff. A 2018 documentary, A Long Road to Freedom: The Advocate Celebrates 50 Years, covers the Black Cat along with other milestones in the LGBT+ rights movement. And the PRIDE name lives on.

“The spirit is still here,” Romanoff said at a Black Cat anniversary rally in 2017. “And I’m depending on all of you to go on and carry this forward.”

LGBT+ History Month Reception – Speaker’s House, Westminster

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

by Raymond Langford Jones

I was flattered to be invited to represent Tony Openshaw and Out in the City at The Rt Hon Sir Lindsay Hoyle’s Reception last Wednesday evening. This is becoming an annual event.

After negotiating the convoluted Houses of Parliament security system, the group of representatives from a wide range of UK LGBT+ organisations,* including LGBT+ celebrities from the entertainment world, were guided to the sumptuous Speaker’s House. There must eventually have been around a hundred people present.

The reception was held in a suite of handsome, period-dressed rooms on the first floor, one with an impressive cordoned-off four poster – for the Speaker to rest between sittings? – where we were served drinks and delicious nibbles.

In another room, a small display of historical artefacts from the National Archives showed how members of our community have participated in Britain’s parliamentary system, and the extent to which social attitudes have changed over time. A glossy programme featured a short biography of William John Bankes MP and copy of his maiden speech in the House of Commons. Bankes was also an explorer (1786-1855) whose dangerous liaisons and addiction to handsome guardsmen eventually forced him into exile.    

In due course, everyone crowded into the largest room to be warmly welcomed by Sir Lindsay. He reminded us that we currently have ‘the gayest Parliament in the world’ and how it is over a quarter of a century since the Sexual Amendment Act finally gave homosexuals the same rights as everyone else. He reiterated his commitment to the LGBT+ movement and that he advocates sexual diversity in Parliament. He also drew attention to well-known out-and-proud names from showbiz in the room. (I could almost wave to Amanda Barrie but couldn’t find Daniel Brocklebank – so good on you, Corrie!)

Sir Lindsay then introduced The Barberfellas, ‘a queer vocal ensemble from London with a shared loved of barbershop music’. They entertained us with an eclectic mix of songs beginning with an outrageous gay lyric to the tune of My Favourite Things.

Next came three short speeches. First on the podium was David Mundell MP, who in 2016, publicly came out as the first openly gay Conservative cabinet minister. Then, bubbly Jane Hill, the BBC presenter and newscaster, revealed how her life had changed for the better since she’d fully accepted who she was in her thirties, and wished she’d had the courage to do so earlier. Finally, Olivia Blake explained how, in 2019 and still in her twenties, she had morphed from being a biologist into Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam.

What I took away from the generally upbeat, glad-to-be-gay tone of the speeches, was a cautionary note: we mustn’t take for granted the rights we have fought for so valiantly over the years, especially since enduring the appalling attitudes towards gay people inflicted on us at the time of AIDS and Section 28. We need to be aware of how strong voices are now emerging in favour of rescinding our liberties (specific names being carefully avoided), and must continue to make ourselves heard so that people everywhere may continue to have the right to be themselves.

An enjoyable and uplifting evening in gorgeous surroundings. Thank you, Sir Lindsay!

* Those attending included representatives from: Beyond Reflections, Biscuit, Club Kali, Kaleidoscope International Trust, Keshet UK, London Bisexual Games, London Cruisers Basketball Club, London Deaf Rainbow Club, Mosaic Trust, North Midlands LGBT+ Older People’s Group, Oasis Norfolk, Out North East, Outpatients, Say it, Schools Out UK, Terrence Higgins Trust, The Centre Place, The Outside Project, The Rainbow Project, Transparent Change – and, of course, Out in the City.

Tuesday, 10 February 2026 – Saturday, 14 February 2026 – “The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me”

Hope Mill Theatre, 113 Pollard Street, Manchester M4 7JA

The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me. Part love letter, part rallying cry, David Drake’s award-winning solo play is a fierce, funny and deeply moving journey through queer life and the legacy of ACT UP. It’s theatre as activism. Urgent, uplifting and made for LGBT History Month.

Fresh from his standout performance in Jock Night, Gabriel Clark takes the stage for a blistering, intimate performance that celebrates community, confronts stigma and reminds us how hard-won our rights really are.

In Manchester for just 8 performances. Get your tickets now because when they’re gone, they’re gone.

The wonderful Dr Monica Pearl will be “In Conversation” with Gabriel Clark on the opening night, Tuesday, 10 February.

Book tickets here – £21.50 – £29.50

The divisive BBC show considered lost for more than 60 years that’s now been given a new life

For the BBC, 1957 was a big year. It marked the first time the Queen’s Speech was televised, and it even featured a hoax April Fool’s Day documentary about spaghetti growing on trees in Switzerland that some people are still convinced is real today. That same year the corporation aired a lesser-known radio documentary which aimed to highlight both the homosexual lifestyle of the time and how those people were perceived by the wider community. It was hailed as both divisive and ground-breaking.

First produced in 1954 but left collecting dust until it was revived and heavily edited three years later to coincide with the release of the Wolfenden Report, which recommended that homosexual acts between two consenting adults should no longer be considered to be a criminal offence, The Homosexual Condition was considered to be lost media. Until a few years ago.

Dr Marcus Collins, a historian of contemporary Britain who currently teaches at Loughborough University, discovered a treasure trove of items relating to the radio production, like transcripts, documents, and other correspondence, whilst traipsing through the vast archives of the BBC. The documentary featured Lord Hailsham, who spoke about how he felt that gay men were ‘eager to spread the disease from which they suffer’, as well as thoughts from Mary Whitehouse, clergymen, psychiatrists and barristers. But it was equally also a trailblazer – marking one of the first times people could easily learn about homosexuality on the public airwaves.

“I was researching something completely different about The Beatles initially, which is what had led me to the BBC archives in the first place,” Dr Collins recalls. “I saw something labelled ‘sexual offences in 1953’, and I thought to myself, ‘well, what would the BBC have to say about that back then?’ It turned out they didn’t actually know what they could say.”

Dr Collins suggests the documentary, which only exists in transcript form now, may have been made without a view of it ever being aired. “It was a lot of viewpoints from people who basically said there was too much of this stuff going on and the solution was to crack down on it,” he explains.

“There was a tension between that and people thinking homosexuality should be decriminalised. The man who presented the show was actually a reformer. He had ended up being one of the founders of the first organisation calling for the decriminalisation in Britain so there were also a lot of good, liberal voices in it for the time.”

Alongside the transcript of the documentary, the archives also featured internal memos between staff as they debated amongst themselves over how, or if, they should air it at all. Dr Collins also found that it was the Director General of the BBC who eventually pulled the plug on the initial 1953 release.

The discovery in the archive led Dr Collins to start a new project of his own delving deep into LGBT+ history. With all the items linked to The Homosexual Condition only existing in paper form, he approached playwright Dr Stephen M Hornby, who had worked on a number of productions on gay history in Britain, to see if there was anything he could do with the documents he had found.

“I was intrigued by this notion of a lost programme that nobody had ever heard of,” Dr Hornby recalls of that first introduction to Dr Collins. “When I read the transcript, the two things that stood out to me most were how the criminalisation of homosexuality was actually getting in the way of these men seeking treatment, with these different experts offering a criminal solution rather than anything medical. There were suggestions that conversion therapy could be an amenable solution, and I thought that was quite fascinating as it’s something that is, amazingly, still a debate in society today.

“And you have to remember that, at the time, the BBC was pretty much the only option. They were the voice of the nation, so whilst they were constantly striving to be balanced and impartial, they also had these experts saying that sexuality could be cured, which is quite a big thing to suggest.”

With Stephen’s background, the decision was made to create a new play inspired by the transcripts and the people who may have been tuning in back when it aired. Called The BBC’s First Homosexual, it tells the fictional story of a young man exploring his sexuality in the 1950s as the impact of the documentary takes its toll on his life.

Both Hornby and Collins hope the play, which has been given approval by the BBC, will not only show how times have changed in the almost 70 years since the documentary was first released but also how many similarities still exist today. “What more do we have to do to get this bloody awful practice banned in this country?” Hornby asks. “I hope it will spark an energising conversation about ways forward. I want it to be a call-to-arms and encourage some positive change.”

The play tours the UK in February to coincide with LGBT+ History Month 2026 as part of a partnership with SchoolsOUT.

Members of Out In The City saw the play at the New Adelphi Theatre in Salford on 4 February, before it heads out to Birmingham, Brighton, London, Liverpool and Loughborough.

Starring Mitchell Wilson, Max Lohan and Andrew Pollard, each performance will be followed by a Q&A discussion with a featured special guest to discuss the issues tackled in the play.

In Salford, following a short comfort break, Revd Augustine Tanner-Ihm, a charismatic African-American educator, theologian, pastor, activist, leader, mentor, trustee, presenter and speaker spoke about his personal experience of conversion practices.

There were then worldwide premiere performances of three short new plays responding to “The BBC’s First Homosexual”. The discussion and plays were excellent and unmissable.

John Henry Mackay (born 6 February 1864 – died 16 May 1933)

John Henry Mackay was born in Scotland to a Scottish father and a German mother. He left there following the death of his father (when John was only about 18 months old) and settled in Germany with his mother and her family.

His early written works dealt mainly with anarchist philosophy and romantic poetry.

The Books of the Nameless Love

In 1905 he started to write a series of works (of poetry and prose) under the pseudonym of ‘Sagitta’ (Latin for ‘Arrow’), which explored the theme of same-sex male love. These collected works were known by the title of ‘Die Bucher der Namenlosen Liebe’ (literally ‘The Books of the Nameless Love’, the title being a reference to Lord Alfred Douglas’s poem about ‘the love that dare not speak its name’).

Early works in the series were originally banned as obscene by the German government in 1909. Nonetheless Mackay persevered, and by 1913, the full initial collection of 6 works in the series was published, ostensibly in Paris (according to the title page) but scholars now suggest that Mackay had the book published secretly in Germany, Paris simply being a ruse to throw off further government censorship of his work.

Philosophically he was opposed to the research of many of his contemporaries, including that of Magnus Hirschfeld, who were developing a scientifically-based understanding of queerness. Forever the anarchist, Mackay rejected their attempts, as he saw it, to ‘create categories and labels’.

The seventh and final work in the ‘Namenlose Liebe’ series came in 1926 with the publication of his novel ‘Der Puppenjunge’ (The Hustler), Mackay’s tale of a German rent boy in Berlin.

Connection to the work of Richard Strauss

Mackay’s works on anarchist thought and on male love continue to be read, as does his romantic poetry. Next month Out in the City members will be attending a performance of Richard Strauss’s ‘Four Last Songs’ at the Bridgwater Hall; though not represented in that vocal series, the texts for earlier songs by Strauss were taken directly from Mackay’s work (eg Strauss’s Opus 27 song cycle completed in 1894) and by their performance continue to bring his poetry to public attention.

© Arthur Martland – LGBT History Month 2026

Who Was ‘Lisa Ben,’ the Woman Behind the US’s First Lesbian Magazine?

Edythe Eyde published nine issues of “Vice Versa” between June 1947 and February 1948. She later adopted a pen name that doubled as an anagram for “lesbian”.

Edythe started writing under the name “Lisa Ben” after an editor rejected her first choice, “Ima Spinster”.

In the summer of 1947, Edythe Eyde, a secretarial assistant at RKO Pictures in Los Angeles, started covertly publishing a tiny journal she called Vice Versa, subtitled “America’s Gayest Magazine”.

Now recognised as the first lesbian magazine in the United States, Vice Versa appeared at a time when sodomy laws banning “unnatural sexual acts” criminalised same-sex activity across much of the country. To protect her safety and livelihood, Eyde – who later adopted the pen name Lisa Ben, which doubled as an anagram for “lesbian” – published her magazine anonymously.

“In those days, our kind of life was considered a vice,” she said in a 1992 interview. “It was the opposite of the lives that were being lived – supposedly – and understood and approved of by society. And Vice Versa means the opposite.”

The project was very risky, says Lillian Faderman, an emeritus scholar at California State University, Fresno, who is often called the “mother of lesbian history”.

“Sexuality was always a secret from people who were not gay, and the reason it was a secret is because you would get in trouble if straight people knew you were a homosexual,” Faderman adds. A lesbian herself, she recalls knowing women caught when police raided gay bars and gay people who feared arrest in the mid-20th century.

“There was nowhere you could turn for safe harbour,” says Faderman, whose books include The Gay Revolution: The Story of the Struggle and Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th-Century America.

Eyde, a 26-year-old lesbian who had recently moved from Northern California to LA to escape her oppressive family, spent her downtime at work typing up issues of Vice Versa. Using carbon paper to create duplicates of typed pages, she produced a total of just 12 copies per issue.

The free, rather plain publication featured no bylines, no photos, no ads and no masthead. It had a blue cover and consisted of typed pages stapled together. Eyde passed it around to friends, who then passed the copies on to other friends. She also mailed copies to a small number of people and gave out issues at gay bars. Overall, Vice Versa probably had no more than 100 readers.

The magazine’s articles ranged from book and film reviews to poetry to reader commentary. Eyde sometimes adopted a protofeminist tone, praising “time-saving innovations such as frozen foods and electrical appliances as making it easier for women to live independently of men,” wrote cultural historian Rodger Streitmatter in a 1998 journal article.

Besides the occasional help of an anonymous straight male friend, Eyde was responsible for putting out all nine issues of Vice Versa single-handedly.

“What Eyde did was unique: No other publication attempted to write about lesbians,” says Faderman. “She did it all herself, except for a few articles.”

Julie R Enszer, a poet and gender studies scholar at the University of Mississippi, emphasises Eyde’s great initiative. Society was much less open-minded than it is today, but after World War II ended in 1945, the feeling that a new, modern era was dawning swept across the nation.

“At a time incredibly different from the current moment we’re in, she just felt so powerfully about being a lesbian and wanting to connect with other women,” says. “That’s really how I think about Vice Versa: a way to write things down, share with people, and make connections with other women and build a community.”

She adds, “What Eyde did with that publication, really – it took a while, but it inspired a lot of what happened in the women’s liberation movement.”

In Vice Versa’s inaugural issue, published in June 1947, Eyde wrote an introduction to readers on a page titled “In Explanation.” She argued that newsstands held many publications but nothing like hers, because society would deem it too vulgar.

“Hence the appearance of Vice Versa, a magazine dedicated, in all seriousness, to those of us who will never quite be able to adapt ourselves to the iron-bound rules of convention,” Eyde wrote. “This is your magazine.”

Eyde stopped mailing copies of Vice Versa after someone warned her that doing so violated the Comstock Act, an 1873 law that forbade sending “obscene, lewd or lascivious” materials through the postal service.

“She very naively said, ‘Why? There’s nothing about sex in here,’” Faderman explains. “But it’s about homosexuality, and that’s against the law, and you could get arrested for it.”

Eyde published the last issue of the magazine in February 1948, after aviator and business tycoon Howard Hughes bought out RKO and she lost her job. No longer a private secretary in a private office, she worked in a typing pool with many other people, making it difficult for her to produce a clandestine publication.

It wasn’t until 1956 that the Ladder, the next-oldest American publication specifically for lesbians, debuted. The Daughters of Bilitis, a pioneering lesbian organisation based in San Francisco, published the underground magazine, which used pseudonyms and ran until 1972. One of the Ladder’s contributors was Eyde, who started writing under the pen name Lisa Ben after an editor rejected her first choice, Ima Spinster.

In the years following Vice Versa, Eyde continued working as a secretary and started singing in lesbian bars and clubs. Her identity as the person behind both Lisa Ben and Vice Versa surfaced sometime after the 1950s, according to Faderman, but Eyde later distanced herself from the lesbian community. “She sort of put it behind her,” Faderman says.

In 2002, J D Doyle, then-host of the “Queer Music Heritage” radio show, reached out to Eyde to request an interview. He published her response, which contained a polite but firm refusal, on his website of the same name.

“I am sorry to disappoint you, but I have gone into seclusion and no longer desire any publicity,” Eyde wrote.

The previous year, someone had discovered the Eyde-Lisa Ben connection and circulated a photo of her at a gay festival to many newsletters, she explained. The incident rattled her.

“As many of us approach our declining years, it is not unusual to regret unwise behaviour in days gone past,” Eyde added. “No, I have not ‘gone over to the other side,’ but I no longer actively participate in the gay lifestyle. To do so at this stage of my life would be inappropriate.”

Eyde died in 2015 at age 94 and was buried in California’s Forest Lawn Memorial Park alongside such notables as Humphrey Bogart and Carrie Fisher.

Eyde showed great fortitude during an era when society was so hostile to gay people.

Enszer stated: “She had extraordinary courage and bravery. But I also think there are people that just have a deep understanding of and commitment to who they are, and they just do not feel the same type of societal pressure to be silent.”

Faderman, who was a child during the Vice Versa era, wishes she had a publication like Eyde’s when she “started going to gay bars in 1956.” She adds, “It would have been so important to me, just to know someone could be brave enough to write about lesbians and not say that we were doomed to drown in a well of loneliness … or be converted to heterosexuality.”

50+ HangOuts – LGBT+ icons who have inspired us

10 February 2026 – 6.00pm – 8.00pm – Free online event
Join this free online event with LGBT Hero, celebrating LGBT+ History Month by looking at LGBT+ icons who have inspired us.

In this session, the discussion will be looking at who you choose as your LGBT+ icon. This may be someone that inspires you or someone that you feel connected to on a personal level.

Together we will make new discoveries and build a greater visibility of LGBT+ people past, present and potential future.

This session is part of LGBT Hero’s 50+ HangOuts, a twice-monthly friendly and welcoming online social and support group for all older LGBT+ people aged 50 and over. You can read more about the group and sign up for the session below.

Details:
Date: Tuesday 10 February 2026
Time: 6.00pm – 8.00pm
Venue: Online event

Book now

LGBT History Month

Science and innovation impacts our daily lives, from the technology we use to developments in healthcare, as well as helping us to address global challenges such as climate change and access to clean energy.

Diverse teams are essential for the development of solutions which benefit everyone, yet we might often struggle to name LGBT+ scientists and innovators. The 2026 theme for LGBT+ History Month aims to highlight the contributions of LGBT+ people historically and today, and to raise awareness of the people behind them. 

Alongside celebrating LGBT+ people, it is important to highlight the harm that LGBT+ people have historically faced as a result of the ways in which science has been explored and misapplied in the past, such as through the medicalisation and pathologisation of LGBT+ identities, and how we still need to address this today. 

Iris Prize LGBTQ+ Film Festival – HOME, 2 Tony Wilson Place, Manchester M15 4FN

Wednesday, 11 February – Saturday, 14 February

Wednesday, 11 February – 6.30pm – Iris 2025: Best Bits + Q&A

Award winners, audience favourites and unforgettable stories

Thursday, 12 February – 6.00pm – Blue Boy Trial + Q&A

The ground-breaking true story of the moment that changed LGBTQ+ visibility in Japan

Saturday, 14 February – 3.30pm – When Love Broke the Law + Q&A

Celebrate desire, protest and the power of love this Valentine’s Day

Queer Contact Festival – Contact Theatre, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6JA

Thursday, 12 February – Saturday, 21 February

The annual Queer Contact Festival is back with a bang with two weeks of varied and exciting programming from a diverse range of queer creatives. With theatre, cabaret, art, film, line-dancing and more, all available at a range of accessible prices, we think there’s something for everyone this year.

Main Character Energy (Thursday 12 – Friday 13 February)
A beautiful and supremely talented black actress is putting on an autobiographical one woman show to finally take up the space she’s been so routinely denied. It’s your privilege, your honour and your pre-eminent pleasure to give her all the attention she deserves. Tickets available from £10.

You’re Not Getting Any Younger (Saturday 14 February)
This Valentine’s Day, Chanukah Lewinsky thinks you should get out the house more because you’re running out of options. A cabaret night for single people and their allies, non-ethical non-monogamy (just have the affair!), and anxious bisexual window shopping. Tickets available from £5.

Social Experiment – Queer Contact Edition (Thursday 19 February)
Social Experiment is a gathering at Contact for anyone interested in Live Art and contemporary performance to meet, chat, and try ideas out. A free and informal, semi-regular evening event with the upcoming Queer Contact edition featuring work from Queer Artists. Free to attend.

Comedy at Queer Contact (Friday 20 February)
As part of this year’s Queer Contact, join us for a hilarious evening of stand-up comedy, featuring a line-up of all queer comics curated and hosted by Ben Hodge. Tickets available from £5.

Less Like Ourselves, More Like Each Other (Saturday 21 February)
Artist and filmmaker Graham Clayton-Chance presents Less Like Ourselves, More Like Each Other, a body of work rooted in queer country and western dancing in San Francisco spanning his multi-award-winning film Last Dance at the Sundance Stompede and immersive installation developed for Queer Contact. Tickets available from £3, some parts free to attend.

Manchester Queer Art Market (Saturday 21 February)
Manchester’s premiere monthly market for Queer artists and makers takes over the Contact Castle for the very first time! Free to attend from 1.00pm – 5.30pm.

A Northern Tr*nny Hootenanny (Saturday 21 February)
Join Trans Artist Hunter King in his gender journey of self-discovery in his uplifting queer parody musical, maid in the Wild, Wild, North West, A Northern Tr*nny Hootenanny. Tickets available from £10.

See the full schedule and buy tickets 

LGBT+ History Month Party in Cross Street Chapel

Thursday, 19 February – 2.00pm – 4.00pm – Free

featuring Joe Cockx (from the Golden Age Big Band) performing Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams.

There will also be a raffle and buffet. 

RSVP for catering purposes here.

Local Heroes

Forever Manchester are bringing back their ‘Local Heroes’ series:

View this post on Instagram

The Manchester Village Pride

Pride is coming back to Manchester this summer, and this time it is being rebuilt from the Village up.

A new not for profit Community Interest Company called Manchester Village Pride CIC has been set up to deliver the event, following the collapse of Manchester Pride Events Ltd last year. The aim is simple. Bring Pride home. Make it safe, inclusive and rooted in the community that created it.

The four day celebration will take place over the August Bank Holiday, from Friday 28 to Monday 31 August. Core parts of Pride will return, including the parade, the Village party and the vigil.

Manchester Village Pride has the backing of key partners including Manchester City Council, Marketing Manchester, CityCo and Equity, alongside LGBTQ+ organisations, charities and community groups.

Alongside the main programme in the Village, there will also be a Pride Fringe, made up of LGBTQ+ arts, culture and nightlife events across the city.

Local Village venues have already backed the plan with £120,000 in loans to provide the working capital needed to get things moving. It is a clear show of commitment from LGBTQ+ businesses to protect Pride and keep it community led.

The CIC is run by an unpaid board working on a voluntary basis. Any profit made will be reinvested back into the community, supporting LGBTQ+ charities, grassroots organisations and services.

The Council will also host engagement sessions with LGBTQ+ organisations to help shape the event, and a Community Advisory Board will be created through an open application process to ensure community voices are reflected in the planning.

Carl Austin-Behan, a founding board member and spokesperson for Manchester Village Pride CIC, said the focus for 2026 is about rebuilding trust, reconnecting with Pride’s origins and reinforcing the Village as the heart of the celebration. From 2027 onwards, there are plans to develop a wider citywide programme around Pride.

“Manchester Village Pride is built around a simple belief,” said Carl. “Pride has a home – and that home is the Village – but Pride belongs to everyone”. 

Birthdays