Outrage
Outrage
About OutRage!
OutRage! is a broad-based group of queers committed to radical, non-violent direct action and civil disobedience to:
- ASSERT the dignity and human rights of queers.
- FIGHT homophobia, discrimination and violence directed against us;
- AFFIRM our right to sexual freedom, choice and self-determination.
OutRage! gets no grants and has no rich benefactors. We depend entirely on donations from people like you. None of us get paid. We are all volunteers. OutRage! doesn’t even have an office. This means that all our money goes on fighting homophobia. With a bit more money, we could do much more. Please send your millions (or just a few pounds), making cheques payable to OutRage! to: OutRage! P.O. Box 17816, London SW14 8WT;
History and Political Agenda
Established in May 1990, OutRage! is the world’s longest surviving queer rights direct action group. Our witty, imaginative, daring, and irreverent style of nonviolent civil disobedience has elevated activism into an art form: protest as performance. Some of our most famous stunts include the Queer Valentine’s Carnival, Kiss-in, Queer
Wedding, Exorcism of Homophobia, and Queer Remembrance Day. Outrage’s radical direct action has included ambushing the Prime Minister’s motorcade two days after Parliament voted to maintain the discriminatory age of consent for gay sex in 1994 and invading the Vatican Embassy and Westminster (R.C.) Cathedral in 1992 to protest at the Pope’s support for antigay laws.
More notoriously, in 1994 OutRage! named ten Church of England bishops and asked them to “Tell the Truth “About their sexuality. This generated more public discussion of gay issues than any campaign ever conducted in Britain and resulted in the Church issuing one of its strongest ever condemnations of homophobic discrimination.
Activism gets results! Unapologetic and provocative, Outrage’s remit is to challenge antigay discrimination, confront the perpetrators of homophobia face to face, promote the public visibility and media debate of queer issues, and articulate a radical agenda for sexual freedom, (which will ultimately benefit everyone).
Rejecting the assimilationist and conformist politics of the mainstream lesbian and gay rights movement, OutRage! has pioneered a critical, sceptical attitude towards the values, laws, and institutions of straight society. Equality is important but is not enough, since equal rights alone inevitably means equality on straight terms.
That’s why, for example, instead of aping heterosexual marriage, OutRage! campaigns for an Unmarried Partners Act, to give legal rights to all unwed couples, gay and straight. We affirm the sexual rights of all young people, and we have distributed condoms and leaflets about homosexuality and safer sex to school students, to combat censorship in the classroom.
While other groups campaign for new laws to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation only, OutRage! is working for an Equal Rights Act that protects all citizens (including lesbians and gay men) against all forms of discrimination, harassment, and incitement to hatred. Our agenda seeks to reformulate lesbian and gay human rights in ways that liberate people of all sexualities
Combatting police persecution of the queer community
“Back in 1990, it felt like the police were at war with the LGBTQ community,” Tatchell says. He calls the typical response to queer-bashing attacks and murders such as Boothe’s “tardy and half-hearted”.
At the same time, Tatchell says that “on average over 2000 men were being arrested every year for consenting [sexual] behaviour, mostly as a result of police raids on gay saunas, public toilets and cruising areas in parks and canal towpaths.”
Tatchell recalls police interpreting the law in such a “draconian” way that same-sex couples were even being arrested for public displays of affection, like kissing and holding hands.
To highlight that this policy wasn’t just discriminatory, but also a massive waste of police time, OutRage! organised a “kiss-in” at Piccadilly Circus, London where activists would challenge officers to arrest them. An hour before it was due to begin, police
chiefs announced that same-sex couples would no longer be arrested for public displays of affection.
According to Tatchell, this turned the already high-profile protest into “a celebration rather than an act of defiance”.
“Looking back now, what amazes me is how the presence of OutRage! in central London could literally stop traffic, “ recalls fellow activist Sarah Hews. “I remember press cameras clicking madly and tour buses stopping with amazed tourists standing up, desperate to get a photo. Would the sight of lesbians and gays snogging in central London even raise an eyebrow now?”
Spearheading the marriage equality campaign
The battle to secure same-sex marriage in the UK took several decades and has only just been fully won. Though same-sex couples in England, Scotland and Wales have
been able to marry since 2014, the first same-sex weddings in Northern Ireland didn’t take place until February of this year.
Back in 1992, OutRage! catapulted the issue into the mainstream consciousness with a brilliant and typically witty publicity stunt. Hews and her partner Lynn Sutcliffe presented themselves to be married at Westminster Registry Office, each dressed in a white wedding dress, one borrowed from a drag queen, and the photos went global.
“I remember saying: ‘We will be back. This will happen in our lifetime,’” Hews recalls. “I didn’t really believe that at the time, but 25 years later we walked into another London registry office with our 10-year-old daughter, exchanged rings and were married. I feel proud and grateful to have been even a small part of making that possible.”
Campaigning for the repeal of homophobic legislation which affected school kids
In 1988, the Conservative government enacted Section 28, a legislation which prohibited schools and local authorities from promoting homosexuality. “In effect, it meant that teachers couldn’t give any support to distressed LGBTQ pupils or even challenge prejudice,” Tatchell says.
OutRage! tackled Section 28 head-on by producing a leaflet called “It’s OK to be Gay”, which it distributed at school gates. “This provoked a huge backlash – we were denounced by religious and political leaders,” says Tatchell.
Still, in the weeks that followed, teachers from across the country contacted OutRage! to ask if they could use the leaflet in lessons.
“When the fuss died down, a lot of people came around and accepted that we had simply been giving honest, factual information that would help reduce anxiety, depression and self-harm among LGBTQ young people,” Tatchell says.
Outrage’s actions helped to galvanise public discomfort with Section 28. Following prolonged campaigning from numerous LGBTQ groups including Stonewall and Gay Times, it was finally repealed in Scotland in 2000 and in the rest of the UK three years later.
Speaking about Outrage’s 21 years of campaigning on a wide range of LGBTQ equality issues, Lynn Sutcliffe says: “Do today’s queer youth ever realise how hard we fought for rights they take for granted, and does that sentence make me sound totally ancient?
“But fundamentally, I wish them a similar strength of conviction [to ours] – it’s an invaluable weapon for life.”
Direct Action Works!
Just one of our many successful campaigns has involved direct action against police harassment of gay and bisexual men. Years of polite negotiations with the police had done little to lessen victimisation. Because dialogue wasn’t working, from 1990 onwards OutRage! felt that direct action was the only realistic alternative.
We began invading police stations, busting police entrapment operations, publicly identifying undercover agent provocateurs, warning cottagers and cruisers with leaflets and stickers, and deafening New Scotland Yard with foghorns and whistles. Suddenly the police sat up and listened.
Working alongside a wide variety of other queer organisations, we demanded that the police create an official lesbian and gay community liaison forum where our constructive proposals could be discussed.
We succeeded in radically changing police priorities, from persecution to protection (against userbases). The result of our actions? Between 1990 and 1994 the number of men convicted for consenting gay behaviour fell by two-thirds. So we saved thousands
of a gay men and bisexual men from being hauled up before the courts for victimless “crimes”.
Other OutRage! Activities
OutRage! takes up the cases of individuals suffering discrimination. A Cambridge postal worker complained to us that he was receiving harassment at work. He was given no help by his union or manager: so we occupied his local sorting office and the national headquarters of the postal service.
By doing this, we managed to discipline the harasser and secure a major revision of the Post Office code regarding workplace harassment, thereby benefiting all employees.
OutRage! provides information, advice and referrals to the many callers who cannot get through to Lesbian and Gay Switchboard when it is engaged, e.g. advice on finding a gay
friendly solicitor, lodging claims for unfair dismissal, and getting help for alcoholism and depression.
OutRage! promotes awareness and education about lesbian and gay issues, by providing speakers to schools and colleges all over the country. We write press articles and letters and give radio and television interviews (national and international) to complement our campaigning. Our interviews with the foreign media in countries where there is no organised gay rights movement is an indirect way of supporting isolated queers in those countries.
OutRage! investigates and researches antigay discrimination, providing vital information for journalists and radio/television programmes highlighting inequality and the need for law reform. Investigations of ours include revealing the activities of antigay Christian fundamentalist cults which try to “cure” queers; exposing the previous lack of condoms suitable for anal sex in gay bar vending machines (now they are freely available over the counter); and publicising the fact that many well-known British companies did not
include homosexuals in their equal opportunities policies, (which has now produced some hasty amendments).
Formed 30 years ago this month, OutRage! mounted a sustained campaign to improve the rights and freedoms of the queer community. Here’s how they did it.
When an incredibly driven group of LGBTQ activists formed OutRage! in May 1990, systemic homophobia still infected everyday life in the UK.
Same-sex couples didn’t have the right to marry or adopt, it wasn’t illegal to discriminate against LGBTQ people in the workplace, and the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 prohibited gay men from having sex until they turned 21. The Section 28 act, enacted two years prior, prohibited local authorities from “intentionally promoting homosexuality” in schools.
For the next 21 years, OutRage! mounted a sustained campaign of “radical, non-violent direct action and civil disobedience” to improve the rights, freedoms and protections afforded to the LGBTQ community.
A grassroots group run on minimal funds with no designated leader, OutRage! was consistently effective but sometimes controversial. In the mid-’90s, it faced criticism in the mainstream media for outing gay members of the clergy in a bid to highlight homophobia and hypocrisy within the church.
Still, 30 years after its first meeting, held at the then-London Lesbian and Gay Centre in response to the horrific murder of gay actor Michael Boothe, it’s no exaggeration to say that OutRage! transformed the lives of LGBTQ people in the UK.
“I can’t recall any other all-volunteer direct-action group anywhere in the world that did so many wide-ranging protests over such a long span of time,” says Peter Tatchell, one of its founding members.
Here, Tatchell and other OutRage! members recall some of the group’s most significant contributions to queer rights in the UK.
Campaigning to equalise the age of consent for gay men
Back in 1990, the age of consent for gay men was 21 – five years older than for everyone else. Tatchell says that when OutRage! began its campaign to equalise the age of consent, it caused a “huge backlash” and the group was “accused of corrupting youth and spreading homosexual propaganda”.
OutRage! responded by staging teenage kiss-ins and trying to humanise the issue. “We put forward young gay men under 21 to tell their own stories and describe how the discriminatory age of consent made them feel like criminals,” Tatchell remembers. “Hearing their authentic stories about the fear and anxiety of getting arrested was really effective in demonstrating the negative impact of this homophobic law to the public.”
In 1994, when MPs voted to only lower the age of consent to 18, OutRage! categorically refused to accept a partial victory.
“We sat down on the road, paralysing traffic around Piccadilly Circus and bringing central London to a standstill,” recalls activist Fernando Guasch. “The bodies stretched the whole length of Haymarket – the police had to literally wrench us away from one another.”
The persistence of OutRage! and other LGBTQ equality groups would pay off six years later when the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act of 2000 reduced the age of consent for gay men to 16 – the same as for everyone else.
