Civil Rights

The British Government has pardoned thousands of gay and bisexual men found guilty of sexual offenses that are no longer crimes. The Alan Turing Law recognises that these men approximately 49,000 of them had done nothing wrong.  In the last couple of decades civil rights for the LGBT community in the UK and across much of the Developed World has utterly changed but these rights were often hard fought for, they are not acknowledged globally and stereotypes and prejudices still remain.

To celebrate LGBT History month we have gathered here a collection of new and old podcasts that track some of the battles for equality that the LGBT community have had to fight and examines one of the most serious threats that the community faced in changing perceptions – AIDs.

These podcasts include a history of the LGBT community in the UK and two about the history of that movement in the USA. Finally there is a series on the AIDs crisis in America.

While the Turing Law is a huge step it is also a reminder that for centuries Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual and transgender people were treated as second class and as criminals. It reminds us of how societies can act unfairly based on ungrounded prejudices. This law, this month and these podcasts all serve to highlight that equality is fragile and something to be fought for and then guarded as well as celebrated.