One of the first out gay men to stand for election in Britain, our latest guest on the GCN Queer and Alternative Podcast, Peter Tatchell has been campaigning vociferously and courageously for human rights for nearly half a century so far.

Peter began his gay activism by joining the Gay Liberation Front in England in 1971, and was one of the organisers of the first Pride march in London in 1972. In the 1990s he co-founded the gay rights direct action group, Outrage!, which was involved in the infamous ‘outing’ campaigns of the mid-90s. He attempted a citizen’s arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001.

He’s campaigned on many different fronts, and often put himself in danger. In June Peter was detained in Russia after staging a one-man protest against Russia’s treatment of LGBT+ people, and most recently he’s been campaigning for compensation for gay men who were pardoned after being convicted under Britain’s laws against homosexuality. From human rights in Syria to Gaza, Iran to Russia, and across the globe, there is little that escapes Peter Tatchell’s attention, and action.

Here Peter talks to Q+A’s Brian Finnegan about his life and times, coming out to his religious fundamentalist parents, the beginning of the gay rights movement in London, and overcoming fear to put himself in harm’s way for other people’s human rights over 50 years of direct activism.

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