Without young people there is no future

By Bev Craig

At London Pride on Saturday I expect we will see people younger than ever marching in or supporting the march, showing that they are young, they are LGBT and they are proud. Society is changing; many people are coming out younger.

When I came out over 10 years ago at the age of 14, I couldn’t have imagined the legal transformation that LGBT rights could have achieved in 10 years. This couldn’t have happened without a supportive government, but more importantly without the dedicated activists. The queer activists that fought for de-criminalisation in the 60’s, attended the first London Pride in 1972 and of course fighting the conservatives and their homophobic policies in the 1980’s and 1990’s, they built the society that allowed a government to be supportive and champion LGBT rights.

With the successes it sometimes makes it easy to loose sight of the hard work that still faces the movement. Pride is a party. I concede we all need a little fun and to celebrate successes but the de-politicisation of pride lulls people into a false sense of security. It’s a positive thing that so many younger people can live their lives without facing hatred in their everyday lives, but this all too often a middle class white experience.

So why should young people care? Too often young people have said to me that we’ve got equality; it’s time to be quiet and get on with things.

Well legislatively we are almost there. Legally LGB people have civil partnerships, a great first step. When you exacerbate the notion of ‘separate/ different but equal’ with separate institutions, you are creating a level of difference which reinforces the prejudices in everyday society.

Gay and bisexual men cannot give blood. A woman who goes out and has all sorts of unprotected sex every night of the week with different men can give blood. A gay man in a committed monogamous relationship who has protected sex cannot.

There is still the debate around faith. The Equality Bill proposes an ‘opt-out’ clause on promoting equality for faith schools. Religious leaders of all faiths still stand up and condemn LGBT people; at New Year the Pope said LGBT people where as big a threat as climate change?!

I’ll not talk too much about the horrendous bullying in our education system, as I believe there are other articles on this. But as people come out younger it is an issue the education must get proactive about addressing homophobia.

Hate crime. Headlines this year: Michael Causer, 18 years old from Liverpool beaten to death. Gerald Evans, 59 stabbed to death in his home in leafy Bromley in Kent. Both were homophobic crimes. Shockingly over 1 in 5 have experienced physical violence and statistics are increasing, hopefully this means that more people are comfortable reporting crimes but conviction rates are still low. There are still inadequacies in prosecuting homophobic hate crime, and this is just one step to take.

Protection and provision for trans people simply has not gone far enough. The trans community is more diverse than just transsexual which is currently protected in law. Unemployment and mental health issues disproportionately affect trans people and as trans people are coming out and transitioning earlier the health and education systems need to reflect this.

When over 80 countries still criminalise homosexuality and there is such legal disparity across the world the fact that we live in a globalised world means it cannot be ignored. Asylum seekers leave persecution in their home country to come the UK and face not being believed, told to pretend they aren’t gay and possibly put in a detention centre.

Public figures still proclaim virulent homophobia. The Northern Irish MP Iris Robinson said last year: “There can be no viler act, apart from homosexuality and sodomy, than sexually abusing innocent children”. The BNP openly proclaim gay men to be ‘buggers and criminals’ and talk of equality is often dismissed in the public sector as ‘pc gone mad’, just look at the furor surrounding LGBT history month.

Writing this, I’m young and I’m angry. We can’t rest on our laurels when there is so much still to be done. We cannot forget all this could change if national politics shift to the right. David Cameron might have said he’s changed but the backbenches and grassroots haven’t. Just look at their opposition to the Equality Bill and how they’ve consistently voted against LGBT rights.

We are on our way to building a more equal future, but unless young people pick up the mantle this progression could stop. A different kind of activist is needed, not necessarily one that abseils into a BBC news studio in the 1980’s or dedicates their whole life like Peter. We need new and cleverer ways to move forward. We need to learn from the successes of the past and work with experienced activists to forge a movement of old and young that leads us fighting into the future.