Lead Me Into Temptation, Please: LGBT Summer Fair

In July 2024, Humanist Heritage staged a festival of creativity, embracing LGBT freedom of expression and responding to the rich history of LGBT communities escaping and transcending religious oppression. Celebrating 45 years of LGBT Humanists, the fair was inspired by the annual fairs this pioneering gay rights group hosted at Conway Hall in the 1980s and 1990s. In this article, Heritage Project Officer Cas Bradbeer offers a window into this inspiring day of stalls, performances, and workshops. Photography by Drii Francisco and Alavari Jeevathol.

In 2024, we reprised this evocative ‘Lead Me Into Temptation, Please!’ slogan and once again transformed Conway Hall into an LGBT Humanists celebration.

Eight incredible acts performed on Conway Hall’s stage, taking a wide variety of approaches to the fair’s theme. Our marvellous host, Carrot (‘everyone’s favourite drag vegetable’, as brilliantly stated in Time Out) opened the evening showcase with an enrapturing rendition of It’s A Sin by the Pet Shop Boys. They sung with great skill and comic timing, addressing the audience in an outfit they created especially for the fair, inspired by the drag performers dressed as nuns who LGBT Humanists members saw perform at an opening of a Spanish bar in 1986. Carrot then welcomed on stage the London Humanist Choir, who had prepared a repertoire of songs important to queer history, from Elton John’s I’m Still Standing to Queen’s Crazy Little Thing Called Love.

Next up was the incomparable David Hoyle, who engaged in hilarious rapport with members of the audience, before reminding us all of the freethinking intelligentsia that thrived in the historic humanist venue of Conway Hall, and suggesting humanity unite globally in resistance to governmental oppression. He finished this call to action with a striking rendition of Maybe This Time from Cabaret, evoking the musical’s themes of hope, anguish, and resistance to fascism.

CN Lester offered a highly emotive performance of their original songs, including Fellow Travellers. They presented a heartfelt testament to the history of LGBT Humanists, and trans heritage more broadly, in a spoken word piece prepared especially for the night, based on their research into London’s trans history and the LGBT Humanists archives. CN addressed trans exclusion by LGB people in power, drawing parallels between the experiences of a trans community group in the 1970s and the lack of solidarity shown by some LGB politicians today. To end, they recounted Mary Whitehouse’s blasphemy trial against Gay News, which stimulated the founding of LGBT Humanists in 1979.

Leading on from CN’s powerful engagement with the heritage of LGBT Humanists, the poet Theophina Gabriel presented an emotionally vulnerable text produced especially for this event. He was invited to choose an aspect of the LGBT Humanists archive to respond to, and he selected an article by LGBT Humanists member Tony Thorne, writing for the Winter 2004 edition of the group’s newsletter about a memorial organised by fellow LGBT Humanists member Hans Hoekzema. Tony recounted his experience of the remembrance ceremony, where a candle was lit at Amsterdam’s Homomonument to commemorate the life of Sierra Leonnean activist Fannyann Eddy. Fannyann founded the Sierra Leone Lesbian and Gay Association (SLLAGA), despite homosexuality being illegal in the country since British colonial rule. In September 2004, she was sexually assaulted and murdered by men who broke into the SLLAGA office. You can read Theophina’s poem below.

Drag artist and cultural historian, Holly James Johnston, continued the evening’s focus on LGBT history, performing as their character Orlando, inspired by the writings of bisexual humanist writer Virginia Woolf. They performed Noël Coward’s (We All Wear A) Green Carnation, from his 1929 operetta Bitter Sweet. This song references the gay writer, Oscar Wilde, who habitually wore a green carnation, popularising this floral adornment as a gay symbol. Orlando followed this flamboyant engagement with LGBT heritage by combining Irving Kauffmann’s 1926 song Masculine Women! Feminine Men! with Banarama’s popular tune, Venus. A similarly entertaining medley was delivered by the Khandi Shop – a drag troupe consisting of Mahatma Khandi, Asia Thorne and Dosa Cat, several of whom had a religious upbringing in the Philippines. Donning nuns’ habits, reminiscent of Carrot’s costume inspired by the 1986 Spanish holiday of LGBT Humanists, the Khandi Shop gave a tongue-in-cheek rendition of When You Believe by Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston, followed by Say a Little Prayer for You from Glee, and finishing with the Lounge Medley from Sister Act.

We had one more performer for the evening – the incredible Black Peppa, a Rupaul’s Drag Race UK star who spoke openly on the show about their struggles with homophobia in religious contexts throughout their upbringing. They had prepared a speech exploring painful experiences in the strict religious environment of their life in Sint Maarten, including a humiliating homophobic exorcism. Peppa also offered their nuanced understanding of how they carry with them the positive aspects of their religious teaching, such as values of respect and compassion, as well as the appreciation of music. Peppa performed In the Midst of It All by Yolanda Adams – a gospel song they sung every week in church growing up. This was the first time they’d performed it since leaving their religion and becoming a drag performer, making this a very powerful reclamation. To end, they had the crowd up in a standing ovation after their dynamic performance of Crazy in Love by Beyoncé, which was introduced by Peppa recounting how they used to be afraid of being caught by their religious parents while dancing to Beyoncé songs in their family home.

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Fairgoers made, learnt, and played through our four incredible workshops, three drop-in activities, and film screening. They created zines, badges, t-shirts, poetry, and speculative history writing, as well as playing hoopla, discovering the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, and exploring Conway Hall’s archival holdings of LGBT Humanists ephemera.

River Manning helped attendees to screen print t-shirts with the ‘Lead Me Into Temptation, Please!’ slogan. We commissioned them to design the t-shirt inspired by those of LGBT Humanists from the 1994. 30 years later, we have brought this iconic branding back into circulation. In another room, Alexander Williams delivered a beautiful poetry workshop on humanist themes. He welcomed participants to write their own poems inspired by the history of LGBT Humanists, but first he graced us with readings of his poetry, which gave fascinating insights into his experience of homosocial masculinity in Jordan, as well as poignant reflections on labelling children by their parents’ religion.

Upstairs in Conway Hall’s library, an array of LGBT Humanists newsletters from the 1990s and 2000s were available for fairgoers to pick up and read. Meanwhile downstairs in the Hall, they could make their own badges using printouts of scanned pages from these newsletters, as well as other reprinted photographs and ephemera from the LGBT Humanists archive at Bishopsgate Institute. The Hall also hosted a game of hoopla, where attendees could win small prizes by throwing a hoop over cut-outs of key figures from LGBT Humanists over the years, such as their former Vice President Barbara Smoker.

Towards the end of the afternoon, we had a zine-making workshop led by Beth Watson, using various materials including printed scans of LGBT Humanists archival materials. This session explored LGBT teenage nostalgia, creating a space for participants to bond while sharing memories and getting crafty together. While this was occurring in the Hall, a nearby room hosted Tomara Garrod’s intimate queer history workshop. They introduced us to the practice of speculative history writing and the history of a medieval trans sex worker called Eleanor Rykener who had clients in the clergy. They led participants through creative writing exercises, imagining what Rykener’s life might have been beyond the brief court record that is the only documentary evidence of this historical figure. One participant said ‘the figure themself was fascinating but the workshop was amazing – talking to other queer people about queer history and writing about history’.

As the workshops drew to a close and we reset the Hall for the evening performances, we all gathered to watch a special screening of the documentary Saintmaking, depicting the ‘canonisation’ of humanist artist and gay rights activist Derek Jarman in 1991 by the London Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. This screening felt very appropriate for several reasons. Derek Jarman spoke at an LGBT Humanists event at Conway Hall in 1986, the same year that the LGBT Humanists had a group holiday to Spain where they attended the opening of a bar hosted by two drag artists dressed as nuns. Moreover, members of the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence joined LGBT Humanists in their 2009 protest outside a conference promoting conversion therapy, as well as attending their 2010 event at Conway Hall commemorating the International Day Against Homophobia. By screening the Saintmaking documentary, we were reminded of the longstanding synergy between LGBT Humanists and the Sisters, including the film’s emphasis on their campaign against Section 28, which was also an important policy focus for LGBT Humanists. Fittingly, our subsequent evening performances featured David Hoyle, the first documented English ‘saint’ to be ‘canonised’ by the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence since Derek Jarman.

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In the queer ambience of Prinx Silver’s DJ set, seven stalls were set up in the Hall during the day. Fairgoers could purchase River Manning’s versions of the historic ‘Lead Me Into Temptation, Please!’ slogan on t-shirts, badges and stickers. River also sold a variety of their own work, alongside another t-shirt design inspired by cartoons from the LGBT Humanists newsletters in the 1980s. Opposite their stall was Housmans Bookshop, founded by Laurence Housman, a gay artist, writer, activist and Vice President of the Ethical Union (now Humanists UK). Their copies of BUTT magazine proved particularly popular. Our marvellous stallholders also included Urie Jo’s LGBT gift wrapping, as well as paintings by the recent Madame F award winning artist Johnny Humes. One of Humes’s works references the eighteenth century figure, Mother Clap, who is an important part of LGBT humanist heritage. Next to Johnny was a stall hosted by Maddy Plimmer and Sean Burn, who sold underwear with symbols of chastity, as well as vest tops produced especially for the fair. LGBT humanist heritage was again referenced through Rowan Frewin’s stall, featuring their print of Virginia Woolf. All in all, the day truly was an effervescence of creative engagements with the history of gender, sexual, and religious nonconformity.

During the fair, we also featured Picturing Nonconformity: LGBT Humanist Heritage, created for the 45th anniversary of LGBT Humanists in 2024. Explore the exhibition.