Founded as the Gay Humanist Group in 1979, 2024 saw LGBT Humanists mark 45 years of pioneering campaigns and support services for LGBT people. Celebrating this history, Humanist Heritage organised events and produced resources to honour the humanist activism that has helped to make our society more kind, tolerant, and rational.
We took our lead from the rich LGBT Humanists archives at the Bishopsgate Institute and Conway Hall, full of newsletters, press releases, and photographs. Here, we found records of protests, ceremonies, social gatherings, political discussions, and creative expressions. These became the central inspiration for the exhibitions and articles we produced in 2024. We also discovered the group’s longstanding interest in looking back at LGBT humanism before 1979, such as their 1980s lecture series on gay historical figures in the humanist tradition. Continuing this work, the Humanist Heritage website expanded to document humanist figures who supported gay rights long before LGBT Humanists was founded. We also initiated an oral history arm of the project, interviewing LGBT Humanists members alive today, preserving their voices for future generations.
This was all made possible by The National Lottery Heritage Fund project Humanist Heritage: Doers, Dreamers, Place Makers, as well as the incredible work of our volunteers—who researched the heritage of LGBT Humanists, digitised archival materials, supported our events, and conducted oral history interviews.
Read on as Heritage Project Officer Cas Bradbeer shares a directory of the project’s outputs.
Produced for the 45th Anniversary Dinner of LGBT Humanists, this resource introduces the founding of LGBT Humanists and a history of the group’s current campaign focus – banning conversion therapy. Here, you can also find out about the pre-1979 legacy of religious LGBT oppression and humanist LGBT campaigning, ranging from Moll Cutpurse to the British Society for the Study of Sex Psychology.
We started the year with an online exhibition launched during LGBT History Month. Into the Archives, Out of the Closet took a peek inside the astonishing array of newsletters and photographs archived at the Bishopsgate Institute. Check it out for a wondrous selection of imagery and documents, ranging from a photo of drag nuns at the group’s 1986 Spanish holiday to a brochure featuring the mass gay wedding organised by LGBT Humanists that was televised on BBC 2.
In July, we curated a landmark exhibition at Conway Hall, Picturing Nonconformity: LGBT Humanist Heritage. With a team of volunteers, we produced a display documenting LGBT Humanists, highlighting aspects of their work, such as campaigns against blasphemy laws and Section 28. Alongside existing archival imagery, our new oral history archive brought this history to life. We also commissioned artists to produce new creations inspired by LGBT humanist heritage, ranging from t-shirt versions of LGBT Humanists newsletter cartoons to illustrations of figures from further back in history that could inspire LGBT Humanists today.
Click on the image above to explore the virtual tour of Picturing Nonconformity: LGBT Humanist Heritage!
Best viewed in full screen
Throughout the year, we published articles exploring key aspects of the group’s heritage, from the ceremonies they organised to their campaign against conversion therapy. Two of our brilliant research volunteers also wrote reflections on the stories they encountered in the archive.
Follow the links below to learn more.
Power Partners: great loves of humanist history (LGBT entries are Vernon Lee and Clementina ‘Kit’ Anstruther-Thomson, Roy Saich and George Broadhead, as well as Lytton Strachey, Carrington, and Ralph Partridge).
A major part of our work this year was our oral history initiative, documenting and sharing interviews with sixteen LGBT Humanists members. Our team of volunteers travelled across the country to hear from a wide range of people involved in the group. Testimonies ranged from early members discussing gay weddings organised by the group, to recent LGBT Humanists Coordinators reflecting on the ongoing campaign to ban conversion therapy.
Check out our Oral histories page for summaries and highlights from these interviews with the likes of Humanists UK Patrons Peter Tatchell and Adèle Anderson. Each interviewee has two short clips on the website, but the full recordings can be provided upon request.
With the support of research volunteers, as well as digitising obituaries from the LGBT Humanists newsletters, we added fifteen new profiles to our website. These blogs document the lives of historical figures who either called themselves LGBT and humanist, or lived their lives in ways could inspire LGBT humanists today. From people involved in that activism of LGBT Humanists as an organisation, to the broader heritage of nonconformist thinking about sexuality and gender expression, these profiles remind us that humanist values of free expression and compassion are an important aspect of LGBT history.
Follow the links below and be introduced to these pioneering people.
Activist, Mother Clap (died c.1726)
Writer, A.E. Housman (1859-1936)
Writer, W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)
Economist, John Maynard Keynes (1883-1946)
Sexologist, Alfred Kinsey (1894-1956)
Writer, Kit Mouat (1920–1986)
Writer, Edwin Morgan (1920-2010)
Writer, James Baldwin (1924-1987)
Activist, Antony Grey (1927-2010)
Activist, George Broadhead (1933–2021)
Writer, Jim Herrick (1944–2023)
Writer, Terry Sanderson (1946–2022)
Councillor, Rodger Alder (1947–1997)
Figure skater, John Curry (1949–1994)
Activist, Derek Lennard (1952–2023)
We had a marvellous year of events celebrating 45 years of LGBT Humanists. We reached a pinnacle of activity in July, surrounding our exhibition at Conway Hall. On our Picturing Nonconformity: LGBT Humanist Heritage page, you can find out all about our exhibition opening night—full of poetry and performance. While the exhibition was open, we staged a festival of creativity inspired by the annual fairs LGBT Humanists hosted at Conway Hall in the 1980s and 1990s. We invited dozens of artists to respond to the history of LGBT Humanists. On our Lead Me Into Temptation, Please: LGBT Summer Fair page, you can discover their workshops, stalls, and performances, including a full transcript of a poem produced especially for the fair.
The year kicked off with an event at Conway Hall, using digitised archival materials to take attendees on a virtual tour through the rich history of LGBT Humanists across almost half a century. To commemorate the International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, and Transphobia (which was established in the UK by former LGBT Humanists Chair Derek Lennard), we welcomed musician and activist Ted Brown to Conway Hall. He shared his pioneering work in combating phobia in religious contexts, ranging from homophobic pastoral support in care homes to transphobia in the media. In June, Laura Moseley led a zine workshop for our Humanist Heritage staff and volunteers, where we made collages based on archival materials and excerpts from our recently collected oral history interviews. These collages were developed into a zine that was available for visitors in the exhibition. You can view it below.
We hosted a fabulous day of events at Queer Britain in September, starting with a queer ecology walk led by Connor Butler. Attendees were invited to use facts about gender and sexuality in nature to challenge religious perceptions of what is considered ‘natural’ or ‘unnatural’. This was inspired by examples found in the archive of LGBT Humanists events and newsletters where members explored scientific studies that demonstrated homosexuality among animals. After the walk, we returned to Queer Britain to explore materials from the LGBT Humanists archive, as well as a virtual tour of our Picturing Nonconformity exhibition. We were then joined by researcher Tomara Garrod, who introduced us to creative approaches to writing LGBT histories. They shared their discoveries about a medieval figure called Eleanor Rykener and invited us to write our own speculative versions of this fascinating historical figure.
The Humanist Heritage team travelled across the country and joined online events to spread knowledge about the history of LGBT Humanists. In June, we shared archival imagery on our stand at the Humanists UK Convention in Cardiff. June also saw our Show Me Your Pride banner making workshop with Alice Gabb, where a group including several LGBT Humanists members co-created a banner based on symbols and slogans from the LGBT Humanists archive. We then marched this banner through the streets of London during Pride and displayed it in Conway Hall’s window display for the rest of 2024. In October, we headed over to Birmingham to hold a workshop with celebrants exploring the history of LGBT humanist ceremonies. Then, in November, we delivered an online talk as part of the Humanists UK Education Day, supporting School Speakers to discuss the history of LGBT Humanists in schools nationwide. Connecting with hundreds, if not thousands, of people and exploring our heritage with them, our project left an important and lasting legacy.
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