Kit Mouat (1920–1986)

The obituary reproduced below was printed in a 1986 issue of The Gay Humanist, the newsletter of the Gay Humanist Group (now LGBT Humanists). Mouat, whose real name was Joan MacKay, used a pseudonym to protect her diplomat husband. She wrote widely, including about humanism, and was the first secretary of the Agnostics Adoption Society. Mouat was also the originator and organiser of the Humanist Letter Network during the 1960s: an international ‘pen-friendship organisation for atheists and agnostics’.

We are saddened to report the death of the author, poet and journalist Kit Mouat, who had been a prominent figure in the Humanist movement for many years. She died in September, aged 64.

Kit was the first woman editor of the Freethinker and first Honorary Secretary of the Agnostics Adoption Bureau (now Independent Adoption Society). A contributor to many journals as a freelance journalist and poet, she is the author of What Humanism is About, several books of poetry, and Fighting for our Lives: an Introduction to Living with Cancer which is published by Heretic Books.

Kit was always a staunch supporter of lesbian and gay rights. In her book on Humanism published in 1963 (four years before the homosexual law reform) she wrote: ‘reform is long overdue… every day we delay in bringing about that reform, more homosexuals will be blackmailed, beaten up and robbed, and some will commit suicide rather than face the society that will show them no mercy.’

With Kit’s permission, GHG published an abridged version of her Introduction to Secular Husanism, which contrasts the Humanist outlook with that of Christianity available from GHG Mail Order at 70p including postage).

Her poem Tim (1959-1984) was reprinted in the last issue of The Gay Humanist. Another from the same collection, I’m Staying, is printed below.

_{Main image: William McIlroy, Jim Herrick, and Kit Mouat, three editors, cutting a cake at the Freethinker‘s centenary celebrations, 1981. Photograph by Barry Duke}