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 It all started in 1967 when, at the age of 15, Melbourne-born Peter Tatchell campaigned against the death penalty, followed by campaigns in support of Aboriginal rights and against the Vietnam war. Four years later he moved to London and became active in the fight for gay liberation and has remained one of its most steadfast and determined campaigners to this day, heading up the queer rights group Outrage!
Tatchell’s method of drawing attention to injustices is direct action – from sit-ins and disrupting lectures by the likes of Professor Hans Eysenck, who in 1972 advocated electric shock aversion therapy to ‘cure’ homosexuality; to making a citizen’s arrest of President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe (2001) to draw attention to his torture and murder of African people; and ambushing UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s motorcade in Piccadilly (2003) to protest Blair’s support of the war in Iraq – and a whole lot more in between.
“My view is that sometimes, if people in power won’t listen to reason and compassion, it is necessary to resort to more provocative, confrontational methods, like the suffragettes did in the early 1900s, to win votes for women,” Tatchell tells SX. “I see my style of direct action shock tactics as having a useful cathartic and catalytic effect. They can help break silence and invisibility and force open previously closed doors and closed minds.”
This type of action naturally doesn’t endear him or his colleagues to oppressive regimes and he’s been labelled an ‘extremist’ and ‘terrorist’. “It is a back-handed compliment for me to be denounced in such extreme, inflammatory language,” he says. “It shows that I am regarded as dangerous and subversive. I have hit a raw nerve. Good.”
But it’s not just those with a homophobic or anti-human-rights agenda who find him a threat. After Outrage! outed 10 ecclesiastical bishops in 1994, accusing them of hypocrisy for preaching anti-gay sentiments publicly while having gay affairs privately, Tatchell was denounced in the UK parliament, and even so-called moderate GLBT groups, such as Stonewall, lambast him for being too radical.
“The main problem is that Stonewall has an assimilationist, conformist agenda,” Tatchell argues. “Its goal is the limited aim of legal equality within the existing social system. OutRage!, in contrast, is critical of the status quo. We don’t want equality within a fundamentally unjust, flawed society. We want to transform society for the long-term benefit of everyone – gay, straight and bisexual. Our quest is for human liberation, not mere equal rights.”
 Tatchell’s passion for the cause has led to him receiving death threats, hate mail and fire-bombs as well as being physically assaulted. He was beaten up by Mugabe’s bodyguards and earlier this year by neo-Nazis in Moscow when he joined queer Russian activists in their attempt to hold a gay pride march through the streets. The latter attack has left him with some brain and eye damage, but his spirit remains unscathed.
“It’s diminished the vision in my right eye,” he says. “I have some problems with my memory, concentration, balance and articulation of words. But these problems are relatively minor and don’t stop me. I am just a bit slower and unsteadier than before. I count myself lucky. In many countries I would have been jailed, tortured or executed. By comparison to gay people and political dissidents in Burma, Iran, West Papua or Sudan, I take few risks and suffer few adverse consequences.”
Despite several arrests in various countries, Tatchell has only one conviction from around 3000 direct actions – for disrupting the Archbishop of Canterbury’s 1998 Easter Sermon in Canterbury Cathedral to protest his advocacy of discrimination against gay men and lesbians. But he acknowledges that while it doesn’t deter him “one iota”, new legislation passed in the name of the ‘war on terror’ has made it more difficult to carry out direct actions, especially against VIPs. In 2005 he was arrested under the Terrorism Act simply for holding up a placard on the street during the wedding of Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles that said ‘Charles can marry twice, gays can’t marry once’.
“Western societies are stifling liberty in the name of defending it,” Tatchell asserts. “The terrorists are no doubt gloating that they have succeeded in pressuring our leaders to curtail our precious, hard-won freedoms.”
So, after 40 years, often working 16-hour days, seven days a week during major campaigns without an office or proper staff, what keeps Tatchell from burning out?
“Idealism,” he replies. “I am a dreamer. I don’t accept the world as it is. I dream of what it could be – and then try to make it happen. The positive feedback from many of my campaigns inspires and enthuses me. A success in one campaign energises me for the next … But even I have my exhausted and ill moments. They don’t last. To paraphrase Ginger Rogers to Fred Astaire after he falls on the dance floor [in the movie Swing Time]: I just pick myself up, dust myself down and start all over again.”
For more info about Peter Tatchell’s campaigns and what you can do to help, visit www.petertatchell.net.
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