A Handsome Bromance: Four Gay Stories

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In the past six years, LGBTQ+ youth charity Just Like Us has collaborated with various primary schools, secondary schools and colleges from all corners of the UK to help improve the lives of queer youth. Thousands of institutions take part in their annual, UK-wide celebration of LGBTQ+ equality, titled School Diversity Week, which sees their ambassadors speak about the importance of allyship and their own experiences with sexuality and/or gender identity. Dominic Arnall, CEO, told GAY TIMES that young queer people are “twice as likely to be bullied, experience depression, have anxiety and contemplated suicide”. Independent research from Just Like Us found that half of secondary school pupils are getting little to zero positive messaging about being LGBTQ+, “despite LGBTQ+ inclusive education being linked to pupils feeling safer in school and being less likely to experience suicidal thoughts.” With a recent study from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealing that the amount of people who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual doubled in the UK from 2014 to 2020, services such as Just Like Us are crucial for LGBTQ+ young people. Khakan Qureshi For now, the asylum seekers that have been given leave to remain are enjoying the freedoms to be themselves that the UK.

As we started walking home, my friend put his thumb out and before we know, it a couple of Aussies pull over and want to know our life story. They really saved us because sh*t was getting real right about now.Maybe you can be the one to elicit the darker truth. Think about it. His mother was dying. He was lonely. He was scared. You don't have to become his therapist to suggest that he be frank with you about the emotional needs that are driving his behavior. Maybe his marriage is unsatisfying. Maybe he feels people don't respect him. Maybe he's trying too hard. Arriving in London in the last few months of the 1980s, I discovered that there were more than a few hundred of us and that books still had a potent force. Shared among gay friends, we could celebrate our growing confidence and visibility with new work from Alan Hollinghurst and Jeanette Winterson, develop a camp sensibility by quoting to each other lines from EF Benson and Ronald Firbank, imagine that London could become the queer Arcadia depicted in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City.

If you don’t have a gay partner, you’re forced to do an awful lot more to prove you’re gay,’ he says. ‘You need optics. You need support from charities for gay people to have a chance.’ No one has celebrated queerness in its many difference forms on British television quite like Russell T Davies. The screenwriter and television executive has placed LGBTQ+ representation at the forefront of his work throughout his career, bringing queer characters and narratives to a mainstream audience. His most notable works include: Queer as Folk, a 1999 drama that chronicled the lives of three gay men in Manchester’s gay village; Cucumber, a GLAAD-nominated mini-series focusing on middle-aged gay men; and It’s A Sin, a five-part series depicting the lives of gay men who lived during the HIV/AIDS crisis in the UK. The latter, which received universal critical acclaim, made history as the most binge-watched show on All4 and was also responsible for creating an upsurge in HIV testing. For his trailblazing work surrounding LGBTQ+ visibility on television, Russell was recognised with the 2020 GAY TIMES Honour for Outstanding Impact. Lady Phyll I soon learned they were a notorious motorcycle gang in Australia, the Rebels. Your first instinct is probably that this story is now going to go terribly wrong, but I assure you it does not; while they get a bad rep, everyone I’ve met in a motorcycle gang has been absolutely lovely. We hit the road and after a while decided to stop to take a leak. As I was about to head to the bushes, one of the motorcyclists gave me baby wipes… that had Winnie the Pooh on the outside of the box.Though this demographic makes up less than one per cent of the population, trans people have found themselves at the heart of discussion from a number of figures in the media, political and academic spheres. Sadly, some media reports tend to wrongly portray this marginalised group as perverse, suspicious and a threat to the very fabric of society, rather than focusing on the real-life challenges affecting trans people. LGBTQ+ activist and author, Charlie Craggs rose to prominence with her campaign, Nail Transphobia. Travelling around the UK with her pop up nail salon and squad of trans nail techs, the campaign offers the public free manicures for the chance to sit down and have a chat with a trans person in a bid to break misconceptions and make allies. The 2013 campaign was a huge success and cemented Charlie as one of today’s most influential trans voices. She has since gone on to write award-nominated book, To My Trans Sisters, a collection of letters by successful trans women and campaign for the inclusion of a trans flag emoji in Unicode, a cause subsequently actioned in 2020. More recently Charlie also became only the second ever trans companion in the history of Doctor Who, landing one of the leading roles in the spin-off podcast Doctor Who: Redacted. Today, Charlie uses her platform to highlight the struggles facing the young trans community and put them on the national agenda, with a recent example of this being her BBC Three documentary Transitioning Teens. Travis Alabanza Like many other gay soldiers, Private Cave had put his life on the line in the defence of democracy. Yet the democratic nation he had helped to defend refused to respect his human rights as a gay man. Our first charity is Kyiv Pride. With the war still raging in Ukraine, the safety of the LGBTQ+ community is under threat now more than ever. In recent months Kyiv Pride has opened a shelter which provides emergency accommodation to LGBTQ+ people left homeless or penniless by the fighting, especially for those with families who do not accept them. They have also supplied food, money and support to people who have no one else to turn to. But they still need to do more to keep their LGBTQ+ community safe. I was around football 24/7 because that was the only thing that took my mind away from everything else."

Henderson was one of dozens of elite players at top European clubs who moved to Saudi Pro League side Al-Ettifaq as part of a huge state investment into the domestic game. He's helped me through so much," said Daniels. "When I came out he messaged me and I asked him questions about how people reacted to him coming out. Sam’s asylum claim was denied by a judge, as he hadn’t had a partner for 10 years (Picture: Supplied) Gareth Thomas hails from Brigend, Wales and is regarded as one of the best Welsh rugby players of all time. After many successful years on the pitch as once the most capped Welsh rugby union player and Wales’ third highest try scorer, Gareth publicly came out as gay in 2009, making him the first openly gay professional rugby union player. Celebrated for this feat, he has since used his platform to discuss his identity and said how he hopes his coming out will inspire a younger generation of rugby players to do the same. A decade after coming out, Gareth also revealed he is HIV positive. To break the stigma around his diagnosis, the former rugby player made a documentary about his status and took part in an Ironman triathlon to highlight how HIV hadn’t and wouldn’t weaken him. Today, Gareth works closely with Terrence Higgins Trust and Prince Harry, Duke of Sussex to publicly discuss his experiences with HIV and being gay in the sporting world. Paris Lees Cave recalls that neither the top brass nor fellow soldiers showed any concern about gay enlistees.

1998

While working in large institutions offers a larger platform and the potential for a bigger impact, Josephine admits that there’s still plenty of challenges – not just from the broader public, but the venues themselves. In 1998, Waheed Alli became the first openly gay peer in Parliament. Aged 34, he also became the youngest too. He has since used his political influence to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. He led the charge on the repeal of Section 28; he successfully campaigned for the Equal Age of Consent from 18 to 16 for gay men; he challenged clauses in the Civil Partnership Act that allowed religious institution to prohibit same-sex ceremonies on their premises. For 24 years he’s been one of the greatest LGBTQ+ champions in the House of Lords. Outside of politics he’s a successful businessman, as well as a patron of numerous LGBTQ+ charities. He continues to use his influence where he can to positively progress LGBTQ+ rights. Imaan

I have such love for my country embedded in my DNA,’ Jason, now 54, explains. ‘But also I felt as if I’d outgrown my life there. The humanist in me believes everyone should live freely, and I wanted to go somewhere where I could do that.’ What we try and do is make each case very personal. We always tell someone to wear what they want to be comfortable in because the interview is going to be stressful. If you’re comfortable in bright colours and rainbows, then wear them.’ Private Dudley Cave nearly lost his life to help safeguard a democracy that continued to treat him and his fellow homosexuals as second class citizens. Sadly, he died shortly before the military ban was lifted. Comic Relief admitted the recent fallout came about due to “a stance being taken on a public issue without any prior consultation with the board or Eric as chair”. Calls for ceasefire have also caused major political fractions in the Labour Party after several shadow cabinet members resigned last week over their position. In that regard, the Home Office have their cake and eat it,’ he explains. ‘If you don’t “look” gay, interviewers may say: “Well, you don’t present as a gay man so what’s the risk? We don’t accept you are gay as claimed.”

The one who just couldn’t wait…

It was 22 years after 1945 that the first glimmer of freedom was granted to gay people with the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1967. Some writing on gender can often be inaccessible and academic, so it was a pleasure to read a collection of essays that were highly personal, thoughtful and immensely insightful. From “gender euphoria” to “radical softness”, working through each contribution felt like having an illuminating conversation with the most informed and thoughtful person you know. The Last of Us, a big-budget HBO adaptation of the post-apocalyptic video game, is hailed for an episode centred on two gay characters, Frank and Bill, as they deal with a terminal illness suffered by Frank and the unfolding wider breakdown of society that forms the plot of the main series. The instalment was widely described as one of the best episodes of television ever broadcast and commentators welcomed its representation of gay relationships. BBC Radio 4’s The Archers, the world’s longest-running soap, introduces its first openly gay character, Sean Myerson, played by Gareth Armstrong. 1998