7: Peter Tatchell

This month’s Q+A is an unmissable, in-depth interview with legendary LGBT+ rights activist Peter Tatchell. One of the first out gay men to stand for election in Britain, Tatchell has been campaigning for human rights vociferously and courageously for nearly half a century. 

Peter began his gay activism by joining the Gay Liberation Front in England in 1969, 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 he 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 chats to Q+A’s Brian Finnegan about his life and times, and overcoming fear to put himself in harm’s way for other people’s human rights.