Description:LGBT people have faced serious prejudice and persecution in the past, and the cover of this issue of 'Gladrag' (the newsletter of the Birmingham Gay Liberation Front) reminds us both of the large numbers who were incarcarated and murdered in Nazi concentration camps, and of the part played by LGBT people in opposing fascism and campaigning for human rights.
The extracts from an oral history interview below discuss how things have improved since the 1940s whilst also recognising that LGBT people still face prejudice and persectution and that the bullying of young LBGT people in particular is still a very serious problem for our society.
“Well I think it’s easy to say that gay men growing up today have got it much easier than we had and we can feel terribly sorry for ourselves and we can say how dreadful, we wish it was like that when we were kids. I guess if we look back, the generation before, I can say, well thank goodness I wasn’t around in the 1940s and ‘50s as a gay man because it must have been terrifying”.
“...the kids also know about it and they very quickly pick up on it and so the risk of bullying is probably more than it would have been before or possibly more and how ever liberated our society is, if a parent is told that their child is gay, they may not be as liberal as they would like to think they would be…Or I don’t think we should underestimate the fact that young gay men still have to come out or have to make a choice about whether to come out or not...once you’ve made it is actually very positive and it actually enhances my life, I think, to be gay I actually believe has made me think about issues that straight men can just ignore and get on with their lives and I think that’s been very valuable”.
[MS 2255/2/102]
These extracts come from a longer interview undertaken as part of the Millennibrum Project in 2000. Transcripts and listening copies of the full interviews are available in Local Studies and History on floor six of Birmingham Central Library.