Gay News Fights On!

Category

Museums & Galleries Item

Item no

52040

Title

Gay News Fights On!

Description

Badge with white background. Centre has black and white picture of Mary Whitehouse's face and surrounding her image is text in pink, "Gay News Fights On!"

Photo credit: Geoff Gardner

Date

1977

Accession number

HH6460.08.2005

The badge refers to the blasphemy case brought against publishers of Gay News and its editor Denis Lemon by Mary Whitehouse on behalf of the National Viewers and Listeners Association. This centred around the publication by Gay News of the poem ‘The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name’ by James Kirkup, which imagines a Roman centurion having sexual feelings for Christ. The trial in 1977 saw the defendants represented by John Mortimer, famed as both a libel law expert and as a writer, creator of the fictional barrister Horace Rumpole. Gay News eventually lost the case and was fined £1,000.

Collected for the Remember When LBGT project.

The Remember When project was an oral and community history project which documented the lives and achievements of Edinburgh’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, past and present and was a joint initiative between the City of Edinburgh and the Living Memory Association.

The project recorded the stories of a wide range of Edinburgh’s LGBT communities and showed how they have continually made a distinctive and valuable contribution to life in Edinburgh.

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Clothing and dress > Accessories > Glasses

People > Adults > Women

Places > United Kingdom

Politics > Issues > LGBTQ+ equality