Pride in Practice

We know that many LGBT people worry about accessing services for fear of experiencing discrimination or even hostility on the grounds of their sexual orientation, gender identity or trans status.

The Pride in Practice programme works with GP practices, dental surgeries, pharmacies and optometrists in Greater Manchester to ensure that all lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people have access to inclusive healthcare that understands and meets the needs of our communities.

Andrew Gilliver, Pride in Practice Co-ordinator at the LGBT Foundation visited Out In The City asking us about accessing local primary care services and our experiences as older LGBT+ persons.

We discussed questions such as:

• How does your GP practice treat their LGBT patients?
• Why is it important that my dentist knows my sexual orientation / trans status?
• What can optometrists tell us about our wider health?
• How can we get the best service from our pharmacy services?

To facilitate this work, LGBT Foundation would like to hear from you. If you would like to share your experiences of primary care please contact pip@lgbt.foundation

Our ageing population: Living longer lives

The population of England and Wales has continued to age, with Census 2021 results confirming there are more people than ever before in older age groups. Over 11 million people – 18.6% of the total population – were aged 65 years or older, compared with 16.4% at the time of the previous census in 2011. This included over half a million (527,900) people who were at least 90 years of age.

This article goes beyond the numbers to explain why census data are particularly useful. What do we know about the lives of older people and the challenges they face? How do the data help to plan for an older population? And, what do older people themselves think about ageing and how we could all age better?

Why are data about ageing important?

Angele Storey is head of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Ageing Analysis team.

She said: “While living longer is something to be celebrated and our ageing population presents opportunities, it also has implications for the economy, services and society. Knowing the size and structure of the population is fundamental for decision makers and policy makers in the UK.”

The ONS works in partnership with organisations such as the Centre for Ageing Better, Age UK and the International Longevity Centre to ensure that evidence on the UK’s ageing population is relevant and helpful.

David Sinclair, chief executive of the International Longevity Centre UK, said: “For all of the big challenges which come with an ageing population, we are reliant on data to help us to tell the story. The census data give consistency, within reason, over 200 years and also allow us to look to the long term. The census gives really detailed local data, which is extraordinarily important. One of the other advantages for us, is that it is accessible and free.

Good quality data presented in really clever ways can identify and target interventions better, that can help address inequalities.

We have done some work that shows if you keep people healthier for longer, they work more, they volunteer more, they care more and they spend more money. You can use data to present solutions.”

How diverse are older people?

Older people are as diverse as the rest of the population, and it is important not to assume everyone has the same issues and needs simply because of their age.

That is the view of Dr Elizabeth Webb, head of research at Age UK, which provides national and local support and advice to older people, as well as the friendship helpline service Silver Line.

She said: “Older people don’t all fit neatly into convenient boxes and stereotypes. They are enormously varied in terms of their age, health, capabilities, independence, disability, their caring responsibilities, engagement with the labour market, incomes, and the extent to which they’re dependent on the state. There are also other diversities like ethnicity, sexual orientation and gender identity. Later life is diverse and complex.”

What are the challenges of ageing?

The Centre for Ageing Better was launched in 2015. Dr Aideen Young, Senior Evidence Manager at the Centre, highlights some of the challenges facing older people.

She said: “Older people are a highly diverse group in terms of health and wealth, and within that group there are people very much in need – who are living in poverty, in poor housing and in poor health. Their precarious situation has been exacerbated by the cost of living crisis. They are the people that we really need to pay attention to.

We have the oldest housing stock in Europe so there are many people living in non-decent and inappropriate homes. These homes are simply not suitable for people who are older or who have disabilities.”

The UK had been ageing very slowly when compared with places such as South Korea, Hong Kong or Singapore.

Dr Webb added: “If we had more accessible public transport and public toilets this wouldn’t just be good for older people, it would help people on lower incomes, people with disabilities, and parents and children too. A lot of our interests align.”

Angele Storey said a census provides one of the best sources of data for planning. “It can also be combined with administrative-based data or survey data to build a greater understanding of complex populations and their needs,” she added.

Which areas have the oldest populations?

Across England and Wales, 2021 Census data showed that the local authorities with the highest proportions of older residents in their populations tended to be either or both rural and coastal areas. North Norfolk had the highest, where a third of residents (33.5%) were aged 65 years and over.

The local authorities with the lowest proportions of residents aged 65 years and over were the London boroughs of Tower Hamlets (5.6%), Newham (7.2%) and Hackney (7.9%).

Dr Young said: “However, it’s not enough just to know where the older people are because of course it also matters whether they are ageing well in those places. We are also looking forward to the coming census data, at both a national and local level, that tells us about other aspects of people’s lives, for example, their health and the number living alone. We also look forward to data on the numbers of older people from ethnic minority communities because we know there is enormous inequality in how they experience ageing. We need to know the numbers to be able to know where action is needed; we need the numbers to present to policymakers and that’s why the census data is so vital for us.”

Lizzie Gent, aged 64 years, lives in Manchester and is a part-time librarian and volunteer. She moved to half-time working in 1997 to look after her partner Marion who had multiple sclerosis. She died around eight years ago.

Lizzie said: “Like many people who lose a partner, I had to build another life after she died and become someone different.

That’s when I started volunteering and I also joined a choir. I am now chair of the choir committee. I cycle a lot and do a fitness routine at home some mornings. I hope I am going to carry on cycling into my 90s.

Most of my friends are my age and are fit and active. I am also surrounded by really positive older women in their 70s. Some live with things like arthritis or other aches and pains. My mum is aged 99 and lives in a care home. I am very aware of other friends who are struggling to pay for their elderly parents’ care.

To keep healthy and live longer I would advise people to keep active, maintain a good group of friends and do an activity that brings you into contact with people like singing or volunteering. Seek out new experiences and learn new skills. Try to enjoy life as much as possible and go out into the countryside.

People often have an image of older people as an amorphous bunch. It is important to acknowledge that older people have lived fascinating and interesting lives and have individual stories to tell.”

Dr Young encouraged people to think about the fact that they are going to get older themselves. She said: “Ageism is discrimination against your future self and that makes no sense.”

Touchy

Max, a young trans guy guides us through his discoveries around social touch with a funny and heart-warming animation.

Dandy Style, 250 Years of British Men’s Fashion

Most of the group dined at the China Buffet restaurant, but we all gathered at Manchester Art Gallery at 1.30pm in order to view the latest exhibition “Dandy Style”.

The exhibition explores approaches to men’s style and self-image. Fashion and art show what certain British men have chosen to wear and how painters and photographers have depicted them. On display was a vibrant mix of the historic and the contemporary, the provocative and the respectable, the personal and the public.

Beginning with the example of the Regency socialite Beau Brummell around 1800, the term dandy has come to define a range of contrasting, always rather mannered male styles; from tailored simplicity to flamboyant embellishment. This exhibition presents this elegance, carefulness and spectacle from the 18^th century to the present day.

During the 18^th century, fashionable British men dressed in highly decorated clothing. This remained the norm for those men able to afford it until around 1800. Embroidery represented the costliest of decorative techniques and still provides a rich source of creative inspiration for recent designers such as Versace and McQueen.

Although British menswear took a more sober turn in the 19^th century, even then, colour and decoration could be incorporated in subtle ways according to personal taste. Striped, checked and patterned trousers and waistcoats remained popular into the 1860s. Middle and upper class Victorian men also dressed flamboyantly in a domestic context wearing decorated or patterned gowns or smoking jackets to receive guests. Men dressed themselves as dandies, revelling in military-inspired ornamental braiding, subverting the seriousness of army uniform and wearing garments with deliberately aesthetic decoration such as floral embroidery.

The 1960s saw another generational revolt against social norms and restrictions towards more imaginative dress. Colour and pattern were allowed far freer rein. Shirt frills and ruffles, bold rococo patterns, bright printing and braiding were reintegrated into men’s wardrobes.

Menswear has retained a certain, though not universal, extravagance in the late 20^th and early 21^st centuries, largely driven by street culture. It now has an established confidence in a vibrant, unapologetic and multi-cultural context

It was an interesting exhibition and more photos can be seen here.

National Trust members vote to continue celebrating Pride despite bigots’ best efforts

The National Trust is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland, and owns a wide array of land and historic buildings across the country.

Earlier this year, anti-LGBT+ National Trust members submitted a motion to be put to a vote at the AGM asking members to back banning “divisive” Pride events.

The effort was spearheaded by Stephen Green, a National Trust member and director of the far-right, anti-LGBT+, anti-abortion, anti-evolution and anti-feminism website Christian Voice.

But at the AGM on Saturday, 5 November, when 127,000 (out of six million National Trust members) voted on resolutions, 65 per cent voted against the anti-LGBT+ motion.

The AGM also saw a vote for seven vacant council positions, with Green and other candidates running for election, under the banner Restore Trust. Green has referred to being gay as a “deviant lifestyle”, supported the death penalty for LGBT+ people, and argued that it is impossible for a husband to rape his wife.

Luckily, he and six other Restore Trust candidates were all unsuccessful.

On the Pride motion, a National Trust spokesperson said: “The National Trust was founded for the benefit of everyone. We serve the whole of our wonderfully diverse society and we want to do that to the very best of our ability. This includes supporting our staff, volunteers and visitors to take part in cultural celebrations including Pride, which they have been doing for many years. We fully support our staff, volunteers and visitors being able to take part in celebrations of LGBT+ society and history, including Pride.”

Transgender Awareness Week

Transgender Awareness Week between 13 – 19 November is a week when transgender people and their allies take action to bring attention to the community by educating the public about who transgender people are, sharing stories and experiences, and advancing advocacy around the issues of prejudice, discrimination, and violence that affect the transgender community.

The event is closely followed by the Transgender Day of Remembrance on 20 November, which shows support for victims of transphobic violence.

There have been many pivotal historical moments that relate to transgender advocacy:

1952: Christine Jorgensen is featured in American national media – provided a large number of people with access to information about transgender issues for the first time as she was the first American publicly known to have undergone sex reassignment surgery.

1954: news of the first known British trans woman, Roberta Cowell, broke, gaining public interest around the world.

1964: American trans man Reed Erickson creates the Erickson Educational Foundation – the first foundation to donate millions to promote transgender and gay equality.

1972: Sweden legalises gender reassignment – the first country to legally allow citizens to change sex.

1975: the Gender Dysphoria Clinic at Queen Victoria Hospital, Melbourne was established by Dr Trudy Kennedy and Dr Herbert Bower.

1979: the Victorian Transsexual Coalition and the Victorian Transsexual Association is formed, Australia’s first transgender rights and advocacy organisations were established.

1979: A Change of Sex, the BBC documentary about male to female transgender person Julia Grant.

1986: Lou Sullivan founds FTM International – the first advocacy group for transgender men; the purpose was to challenge the popular idea that all trans men were lesbians before they transitioned into male.

1998: Rita Hester‘s murder – murdered on 28 November because of gender identity, a candlelight vigil was held on 4 December to honour Hester’s life; death lead to inspiration for the idea of the first International Transgender Day of Remembrance started by trans woman Gwendolyn Ann Smith.

1999: The murder of Private Barry Winchell for dating a trans-woman Calpernia Addams.

1999: The first observance of International Transgender Day of Remembrance to commemorate victims of anti-transgender hate crimes, observed on 20 November.

2002: Transgender Law Center founded – aimed to alter laws and opinions regarding transgender people so they could live a life without discrimination based on gender identity.

2002: Sylvia Rivera Law Project founded – provides legal and educational services and works towards altering policies.

2003: National Center for Transgender Equality founded – founded to progress the equality of transgender people through advocacy, collaboration, and empowerment.

2009: The first observance of International Transgender Day of Visibility – this day was created by Michigan transgender activist Rachel Crandall to serve as a positive counterpart to Transgender Day of Remembrance,

2010: the Australian Defence Force policy was amended to allow transgender Australians to openly serve.

2010: Gender Health Center, Sacramento, California, United States of America opened its doors.

2012: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission declares transgender people protected against employment discrimination because of violations to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

These are just a few of the many important moments that have led to increased transgender advocacy and awareness.

Central Library Backstage Tour

Last week we visited Manchester Central Library where we met our guide, Siobhan from Archives+. She showed us around the interactive items on the ground floor before visiting the lower ground floor strong rooms – an area not normally accessible to the general public.

The archives include documents, books, maps, photographs, plans, newspapers and magazines. Siobhan explained to us how to access the archives and collections free of charge.

A section of the archives is dedicated to the history of the LGBT+ community as it is an important part of the social and cultural history of Manchester and the North West.

Manchester has the United Kingdom’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community outside London and is renowned for its Gay Village centred around Canal Street. It has been the home of festivals such as Pride, It’s Queer Up North and Get Bent as well as celebrations around LGBT History Month.

The LGBT Foundation is the UK’s biggest LGBT charity while The Proud Trust has supported young people for more than 30 years. Manchester was the birthplace of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in 1964 and we were hugely influential in the campaign against Clause 28 in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The LGBT Foundation’s archive is now held at Central Library. It includes the LGBT Foundation’s own project and event files on HIV, sexuality, LGBT culture and sexual health as well as press cuttings, photographs and lots more.

There is also a wide range of published sources including Attitude magazine (1994 to present), the Pink Paper (1991 to present) and many other lesbian and gay publications such as Gay Times, Gay News, Diva, Boyz and Outnorthwest. The LGBT Foundation published Outnorthwest, the North West’s only free LGBT bi-monthly lifestyle, health and listings magazine, from 2000 to 2014.

The library archives even includes a copy of Tales from Out in the City: an Anthology of Memories (2009) – a volume of memories and reminiscences from older members of the gay community in Manchester, published by Out In The City / Age Concern.

It’s Queer Up North archives

Dance and debate, clubs and comedy, literature and live art, films and fairies, plays and puppetry, thespians and theory – these were just some of the experiences on offer from our city’s very own international LGBT arts festival, It’s Queer Up North.

Thanks to a Heritage Lottery Fund grant, the archives have been catalogued, repackaged and made available at Central Library. The collection as a whole includes promotional materials, artists’ files, photographs, and film from 1992-2006. In addition, an oral history project has recorded the memories and experiences of those involved with the festival.

Lots of great photos can be seen here.

Community Group of the Year Award

Out In The City has been shortlisted for an award at Forever Manchester’s annual Birthday Party on Friday 10 February 2023 at the Kimpton Clocktower Hotel, Oxford Street, Manchester.

The Forever Manchester Birthday Party brings together over 400 passionate and dedicated Forever Manchester supporters to celebrate another great year of helping local people to do extraordinary things together.

This award is in the “Community Group of the Year” category and given in recognition of a community group or project that has made a meaningful and significant impact, strengthening communities, making a difference, and putting smiles on peoples faces.

The shortlist of Community Groups is:

Ashton Community Chess Club, Buile Hill Mansion Association, Community Buds, On Top of the World, Out In The City and Trafford Handball.

‘I’ve had hundreds of death threats, hundreds of violent assaults’

Interview with Zoe Williams from The Guardian:

I speak to Peter Tatchell by zoom from Sydney, where he has recently arrived after his day in Qatar, protesting against that nation’s human rights abuses. He hasn’t slept in three days but is perfectly lucid and the weariness only tells in his minute corrections: “No, let me rephrase that”; “Sorry, let me think.” He is 70 years old, wrung out, back in Australia where he was born and raised, talking to me while fielding frequent phone calls. Has he no plans just to hang out for a bit, see some cousins? He’s a bit bemused by the question: “That’d be a very fine thing. But after Qatar I’ve got two other campaigns coming up – quiet time would be a stretch. I, with many others, have contributed to so many positive changes. It’s a great motivator.”

The protest in Qatar, which happened on 25 October, comprised only Tatchell and a colleague, Simon Harris, from Tatchell’s eponymous foundation. It featured a single placard, which they had smuggled into the country between the pages of a copy of the Daily Telegraph. “The only existing broadsheet newspaper today,” he says, pleased at the irony of the paper coming in handy, despite itself. The wording on the placard was: “Qatar arrests, jails & subjects LGBTs to ‘conversion’ #QatarAntiGay.” “I never dictated the terms,” he says. “I took the message directly from my contacts in Qatar.”

Tatchell held up his placard outside the National Museum of Qatar in Doha at 11.30am. “A Muslim woman walked past,” he says, “a horrified look on her face. She said: ‘You’d better put that away, you’ll end up in prison.’” He corrects himself. “Maybe those weren’t her exact words; she basically warned me that it’s not permitted.” He didn’t put it away, and 35 minutes later, state security officials arrived in big white Land Cruisers, the police soon joining them, nine men in all. Harris managed to upload some video of the protest – on Instagram, Tatchell looks dignified, solitary and incongruous, stood on sandy pebbles in front of the statement architecture of the museum – before the police took his camera and deleted the rest. The pair’s details were taken, their documents scrutinised. Tatchell says they were told, “what you’re doing is illegal, it’s not permitted in Qatar, the conversation was a mixture of broken English and broken French. It was very clear that we were not free to leave. We were there for 49 minutes before they eventually said: ‘OK, we advise you to go to the airport and get your flight.’ I interpreted that as a warning.”

There was some beef on social media later, as Tatchell’s YouTube channel had described the men as being “seized by the Qatari security services”; one academic at Qatar’s research university complained that Tatchell had misled people, lied even, since they were not arrested. It was just the fog of protest, the office losing contact briefly with Tatchell and Harris. Maybe Tatchell himself puts things a little strongly at times, but it’s hard to overstate how much sheer cortisol is coursing through the man during actions like these. “I knew that it was possible I’d spend some time in a police cell and possibly be prosecuted, even jailed. The view was that was unlikely and more likely that I’d be deported straight to Sydney. But I was very anxious, and we were always worrying that we’d made some inadvertent misstep and put the security services on to us. On Sunday night [before they left London], I hardly slept, rehearsing in my mind all the different scenarios. On the Monday night – it was an overnight flight – I was so anxious I couldn’t sleep a wink. In Doha on the day of the protest, my stomach was churning over, I had a very strong headache and despite the heat, I felt cold and a bit shivery. I had a constant urge to urinate and defecate.” The idea that he does this stuff blithely, for self-promotion, is for the birds, I think.

Yet, as last year’s Netflix documentary, Hating Peter Tatchell, puts it pithily, he is the focal point of an awful lot of hatred: “I’ve got a lot of bile and hatred against me over the decades because I ruffle feathers. I have made powerful people and their apologists very angry. It’s led to tens of thousands of hate mails, hundreds of death threats, hundreds of violent assaults.”

But if you engage seriously with what Tatchell is saying, I feel that he’s only doing what we all should be doing: the World Cup is about to take place in a country where LGBT+ people, women and migrant workers are oppressed and victimised. In waving this through on the promise that Qatar would somehow change, between the decision in 2010 and now, Fifa has legitimised the nation’s impunity and traduced the idea of universal human rights as a minimum entry requirement into the international club. The foreign secretary James Cleverly – this was presumably inadvertent, like so many of his remarks – distilled what this actually means, when he asked football fans to be “respectful of the host nation”, concluding: “I think with a little bit of flex and compromise at both ends, it can be a safe and secure World Cup.” Be a bit less gay just for a couple of weeks, and it’ll all be fine.

“The primary motivation of my work has always been a love of other people and a love of freedom, justice and equality of all human beings on this planet. I wouldn’t like to suffer. If I was suffering, I’d want other people to help.”

He hasn’t come out unscathed from this life. “It’s very tough,” he says at one point. “I have periods of real emotional meltdown and depression, feeling that despite the efforts of myself and many, many other people, we haven’t been able to prevent some terrible abuses.” But “lots of the issues that I and others championed decades ago are now mainstream,” he adds. Besides, “when you’re living under a tyrannical regime, you need international solidarity. The roll of issues that need to be addressed is endless.”

Records of gay military sackings deleted by Ministry of Defence

Military police records of service personnel who were dismissed from the Armed Forces for being gay have been destroyed.

Veterans who requested documents about investigations and interrogations into them by the military police have been told the files were deleted in 2010.

The Ministry of Defence advised it had a legal duty to ensure the details were erased from service records.

But one veterans’ group said: “To many, this may feel like a cover-up.”

The MoD only revealed the data had been destroyed after two veterans had been unable to obtain records of military investigations into their sexuality.

Campaign group Fighting with Pride said, without the information, it could be difficult for its members to reclaim lost pensions or compensation from the government.

Until 2000, people who were gay were barred from serving in the military. An independent review is currently looking at how the Armed Forces dealt with members of the LGBT+ community.

Full of shame

Jean MacDonald was a lance corporal in the Women’s Royal Army Corps. But in 1981 she was dismissed from the service for being gay.

“All of a sudden you’ve lost your whole career, you’ve lost your friends, you’ve lost your accommodation, you know, your whole way of life – it’s just full of shame,” she said.

After years of poor mental health she was diagnosed with complex PTSD. And in May this year, she requested her complete service records from the MoD.

Earlier this month, she received an email saying all record of the investigation into her by the Royal Military Police was destroyed in 2010. The email said it followed an order from the “Defence Police Chiefs’ Council”.

It added: “All investigations into offences relating solely to sexuality … were to be removed from our systems and deleted from the records of the affected service personnel.”

A search of the service police database produced only one document, which detailed the reasons for her dismissal. It read: “Conducting oneself disgracefully – unnatural act.”

Ms MacDonald said it left her feeling “invisible”. “We’re a bit of hidden history”.

Another veteran also discovered his Military Police Service record had been destroyed.

Tremaine Cornish, 66, was a private in the Royal Army Catering Corps, and also passed the All Arms Commando course. He joined at the age of 15 and was dismissed in 1977, having been accused of being homosexual.

It makes me furious

He said the Army “took away my life, my prospects, my sense of worth”.

When he applied for his complete service records this year, he was also told papers relating to the police investigation were “safely and appropriately disposed of”.

He was told it was done “in accordance with policing and data protection principles”.

However, Mr Cornish said it reinforced “the institutional homophobia we were attacked with”. “It makes me furious – furious about the state, furious about the institution, about the forces that we had signed up to.”

In January this year, the government announced it was setting up an independent review to look into the impact of the military ban on members of the LGBT+ community.

Lord Etherton, who is leading the review, has begun gathering evidence and is likely to look at possible means of compensation.

A MoD spokesman said the “historical policy prohibiting homosexuality in the Armed Forces was abhorrent”.

The spokesman added: “We deeply regret LGBT+ members serving in defence suffered injustice as a consequence. Our priority now is to understand the full impact of the historic ban and find appropriate ways to address the wrongs of the past. 

“The policy followed at the time was to remove references to these former offences and investigations from service records. There was a legal duty to ensure these records were erased from individuals service records.”

Fighting with Pride estimates that between 5,000 and 15,000 men and women may have been affected by the policy between 1967 and 2000.

Craig Jones, from the organisation, is now calling for an urgent meeting with the defence secretary. “You can imagine what that looks like to people who will have a great deal of difficulty trusting the MoD and the government.”

Mr Jones said the MoD needs to provide clarity about what it has done and why.

Gay Rwandan man who found safety in the UK warns LGBT+ asylum seekers will be seen as criminals

Martin Luther King had a dream to end segregation; Nelson Mandela had a dream to end apartheid in South Africa; Emmeline Pankhurst had a dream to gain equality for women in a sexist society. The Home Secretary, Suella Braverman shared with the public her ultimate dream: to witness a flight sending refugees and asylum seekers to Rwanda.

In June the 11th-hour European Court of Human Rights intervention prevented the first planned removal of asylum seekers, by a previous Home Secretary, from the UK to Rwanda.

What is the situation for LGBT+ asylum seekers in Rwanda?

Growing up gay in Rwanda was like “living in prison” for Innocent.

As a child, he was singled out by children and adults alike because he was seen as “feminine”. Teachers who should have tried to put a stop to homophobic bullying instead encouraged it, saying Rwandan culture didn’t accept queer people.

Innocent fled Rwanda and arrived in the UK as a refugee. He’s built a new life for himself as an openly gay man. For the first time, he feels free.

That’s why he was so shaken when he heard that the UK government is planning to deport asylum seekers it deems “illegal” to Rwanda. The plan, launched by previous Home Secretary Priti Patel, has been denounced as unnecessary, inhumane, racist, and a recipe guaranteed to result in the deaths of LGBT+ asylum seekers.

It has been met with legal challenges – including those that grounded the first scheduled deportation flight – but a change in leadership hasn’t stopped ministers from pushing ahead. Patel’s successor Suella Braverman has been slammed for saying it’s her “dream” and “obsession” to get the plan up and running.

It’s a bitter pill to swallow for Rwandans like Innocent – his experience of growing up in the country proved to him how dangerous it can be for LGBT+ people. 

You feel like no one cares about your life – even God doesn’t like you, even God doesn’t love you.

Innocent knew he was gay by the time he was 13. 

“Emotionally it was really challenging because all I wanted was just to change it,” he explains. 

As a teenager, Innocent went to a priest to seek guidance about his sexuality. He hoped he would get support, but the response he received was “devastating”. 

“At church they were preaching that God is love. I was naive and I was thinking, if God is love and this is a man of God, he’s going to be able to accept it – to at least see me as a human being.”

But the priest had the “opposite reaction” – he told Innocent that his feelings were sinful and that he must change if he wanted to avoid burning in hell.

“You feel like no one cares about your life – even God doesn’t like you, even God doesn’t love you. I felt powerless.” 

At that time, Innocent was still reeling from the trauma of living through the Rwandan genocide. Over just 100 days in 1994, around 500,000 to 662,000 people – mostly from the Tutsi minority ethnic group – were murdered – Innocent’s parents were among them.

Because he was an orphan, Innocent was eligible to go to the UK as a refugee at the age of 16. He knew moving away would give him the chance to live openly as a gay man – something he would never be able to do in Rwanda.

“When I arrived in Europe, it was like getting out of hell,” he says.

Innocent has built a life for himself in the UK – he is now an out and proud gay man. He still keeps his sexuality from some of his relatives back home because he knows that attitudes have not changed.

That’s why he was “horrified” when he discovered the UK government was planning on deporting some asylum seekers to Rwanda. 

“I was just wondering how that could happen,” he says.

“There’s a lot of evidence that sexual orientation and gender identity is still taboo and the government doesn’t want to do anything about that. 

“People are still being bullied, being put in prison, being tortured almost, and rejected by the community wherever they go. That is how it is now for LGBT people who live there.”

If he had a chance to sit down with the Prime Minister and the Home Secretary, his message to them would be simple. “The policy has to change,” Innocent says.

“You can’t do it. You can’t just send people to a place where they will face discrimination. They will be seen as criminals. 

What I would say is just do more research, understand how the LGBT community live in that country. Most of the people there – even some of my friends who are still there – they don’t exist. They live a lie, they get married, they have to lie to the police, they have to lie to their wives. You live a lie your entire life.”

He doesn’t think it’s right for asylum seekers to be sent away as part of the government’s wider effort to deter immigration. 

“Even if it worked, do we really want to compromise human rights just to prevent people from coming to the UK? For me, that doesn’t sound like the UK values that I know.” 

Rwanda refugee plan carries ‘disproportionately higher risk for LGBT+ people’

A spokesperson for Rainbow Migration, an LGBT+ asylum advocacy group, noted that the UK government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda has been held up by legal challenges – but it is still planning flights for this year.

“We see that the risk is disproportionately higher for LGBTQI+ people, as Rwanda is a country from which people like Innocent flee and claim asylum because they are persecuted for their sexual orientation or gender identity,” the spokesperson said.

While homosexuality is no longer criminalised in Rwanda, same-sex sexual relations is still seen as a taboo issue – public attitudes towards LGBT+ people are not kind.

Even the UK government’s own website acknowledges that homosexuality is “frowned on” by many in Rwanda and that LGBT+ people may experience “discrimination and abuse, including from local authorities”

In June, a gay man from Uganda told Africa News that he was “beaten terribly” in Rwanda for being gay, while a trans woman told the publication: “I cannot go anywhere or apply for a job. Not because I am not capable of that, but because of who I am.”

A spokesperson for Rainbow Migration said there is “not much of a screening process that takes place” within the Home Office when a person’s asylum claim is being considered.

“This creates a high risk that they could be sent to Rwanda if the plan is eventually allowed to proceed.”

Britain’s Strongest Lesbian Couple

Sam Taylor and Sue Taylor-Franklin hope their presence in weightlifting will change people’s perceptions of women doing strength sports.

But they’re subjected to online abuse for simply being strong. While succeeding in weightlifting they are often subjected to nasty comments from people online, with some people “misgendering” them.

“I think there is a stigma that goes with being a strong woman. We look different, you know, we’re muscular and that’s our choice,” says Sue, who holds a world silver dollar record for deadlifting 300kgs from an 18 inch height.

“You don’t have to take it to the extreme, but we have because we’re not small people anyway.”

Their impressive strength has seen Sam and Sue featured in the BBC’s Our Lives series, where viewers get insight into their world of weightlifting.

Following the airing of Our Lives, the couple said they received some “nasty comments comparing them to men”.

“Even the most feminine people in the sport will get comments … they say horrendous things,” says Sam, who holds the title of the third Strongest Woman in the world for her age category.

“Sadly we’re used to it, but that isn’t right. We’re continually trying to break down those barriers to say you can look how you want and someone else’s opinion of how you look or present yourself is not their business.”

The couple agreed comments tend to come from “keyboard warriors” and thankfully they have never received any abuse in real life.

The couple, who live in Aberdare, South Wales, with their 12-year-old son Ollie, met in 2006 through mutual friends. They initially bonded over their devotion to the gym and in September 2019 tied the knot at Cardiff City Hall.

But the couple haven’t always been into weightlifting, with Sue, now 54, confessing she didn’t lift a weight until she was 50, in April 2018. 

“We hope that people under the LGBTQ+ umbrella look at us and think if they can go lift weights so can I.”

Sometimes, while competing, the couple go head to head, which has seen them become the first married couple to do so in a world competition. 

They train together three to four times a week and are now preparing to win new titles. Next year they will take on a double Guinness World Record attempt and they’ll also compete again in the World’s Strongest Woman competition in Florida. They already hold the Guinness World Record for pulling a 48-tonne AirBus A320.

“We wanted to promote positivity and try to inspire others to show you can really hit rock bottom but then get on. Also to show it’s OK to be yourself.”