‘The lessons of history can be put to good use.’ Photo: by Zeynep Sümer on Unsplash
Sex symbols: Rosie Adamson-Clark on LGBT history month
‘We now know it is better to celebrate difference than eradicate it.’
As humans we learn from looking back at our mistakes – as well as at the things that worked well in a bygone era, but may now need to change.Progress is important to all of us. Real change encompasses our behaviours, our attitudes, and our laws. Change also helps form our developing educational needs, our housing requirements, our attitudes to social justice and human rights, and, crucially, our health needs.
In 1948 when Nye Bevan founded a nationwide health service it was created for the good of all, free for all, to be treated for any medical need. In his now-famous words, ‘Illness is neither an indulgence for which people have to pay, nor an offence for which they should be penalised, but a misfortune, the cost of which should be shared by the community.’
Except not all people have had equal access to non-judgemental health care, or good understanding of their needs. For some, negative experiences of medical services were the norm. Their experience was not of easement and pain reduction, but of trauma and terror. If you were an LGBT person until fairly recently in our nation’s history, your lived experience was fraught with anxiety about people finding out you were not heterosexual. You would probably be cast out, mistreated, or punished for your difference.
During those dark times you would have been unlikely to seek help when you needed it. Sometimes, if you did tell your loved ones, or others you trusted with your identity, orientation, or preferred gender, you would probably have been subjected to a less free life – a life with intrusion and terror as a common experience.
Even psychiatry was involved in trying to ‘straighten people out’ – to cure individuals of this dreadful flaw in their characters. Alan Turing, for example, one of our greatest minds, was subject to considerable intrusion and terror. The poor man took his own life. As a gay woman I too have experienced harsh and prejudiced treatment at the hands of people around me, and also from professionals in the NHS.
This is changing. The lessons of history can be put to good use. We now know it is better to celebrate difference than eradicate it. But it does still go on. This is why we must be visible, and celebrate how far we have come.
Quakers have for many years celebrated same-sex couples. This month, LGBT history month, Meeting houses up and down the country will celebrate LGBT peoples’ lives. LGBT achievements will be recognised. Us LGBT folks, a group of unique, wonderful people, will be ‘rainbow flagged up’. We need to be loud and proud! The rainbow celebrates the richness of diversity, as well as the hard work of our remarkable NHS staff.
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