Dr Kevin Fenton

Dr Kevin Fenton is a Public Health Physician and Infectious Disease Epidemiologist. He is the London Regional Director at Office for Health Improvement and Disparities, Regional Public Health Director at NHS London and the Statutory Health Advisor to the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. He is also the current President of the United Kingdom Faculty of Public Health

Dr Fenton has been a vocal advocate for the LGBTQ+ community and has worked extensively to address health disparities among the community.  He has also been involved in the development of HIV prevention policies and programs in London, including the Mayor of London’s Fast Track Cities Initiative, which aims to end new HIV infections, prevent HIV-related deaths, and eliminate discrimination and stigma associated with HIV. 

Dr Fenton’s work has been instrumental in promoting equity and equality in public health.

Oliver Sacks

Oliver Sacks was a British neurologist, naturalist, historian of science, and writer 1. He is best known for his books on neurological disorders, including “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”.

Sacks’ contributions to medicine are significant. He was a pioneer in the field of neurology and made important contributions to the understanding of neurological disorders.

His work with patients suffering from encephalitis lethargica led to the development of L-DOPA, a drug that has been used to treat Parkinson’s disease. Sacks was also an advocate for holistic medicine and believed that the mind and body were intimately connected.

Sacks’ work has had a profound impact on the field of medicine and continues to inspire new generations of physicians and researchers.

Sophie Jex Blake

Sophia Jex-Blake was an English physician, teacher, and feminist. She is known for leading the campaign to secure women access to a university education, when six other women and she, collectively known as the Edinburgh Seven, began studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh in 1869.

She was the first practicing female doctor in Scotland, and one of the first in the UK and Ireland. She was also involved in founding two medical schools for women, in London and Edinburgh, at a time when no other medical schools were training women.

Jex-Blake is widely believed to have been in a romantic relationship with Dr Margaret Todd, who later wrote an extensive biography of Jex-Blake’s life following her death in 1912.

Stormé DeLarverie

Stormé DeLarverie (December 24, 1920 – May 24, 2014) was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to Stormé and many eyewitnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall riots, spurring the crowd to action.

She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who performed and hosted at the Apollo Theatre and Radio City Music Hall. She was known as the "guardian of lesbians in the Village” as well as  "the Rosa Parks of the gay community”.

At the Stonewall rebellion, a scuffle broke out when Stormé was roughly escorted from the door of the bar to the waiting police wagon.  She fought with at least four of the police, swearing and shouting, for about ten minutes. She had been hit on the head by an officer with a baton for announcing that her handcuffs were too tight. She was bleeding from a head wound as she fought back.

Lady Phyll

Phyllis Akua Opoku-Gyimah (born November 1974), also known as Lady Phyll, is a British political activist, co-founder of UK Black Pride and executive director of Kaleidoscope Trust.

Opoku-Gyimah is a co-founder, trustee and executive director of UK Black Pride in 2005, which "promotes unity and co-operation among all Black people of African, Asian, Caribbean, Middle Eastern and Latin American descent, as well as their friends and families, who identify as Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual or Transgender".

Opoku-Gyimah was appointed trustee of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights charity, Stonewall in January 2015 but resigned three years later when the charity announced it would not partner with UK Black Pride. Opoku-Gyimah publicly refused an MBE in the 2016 New Year Honours in protest of British sodomy laws still in place n countries, stating “LGBTQIA+  people are still being persecuted, tortured and even killed" across the world by laws put in place by the British Empire”.

With Rikki Beadle-Blair and John R Gordon, she is the editor of Sista!, an anthology of writings by LGBT women of African/Caribbean descent with a connection to the United Kingdom, released by Team Angelica Publishing in 2018, which includes work by 31 writers, including Yrsa Daley-Ward and Babirye Bukilwa.

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde ( February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was an American writer, feminist, womanist, librarian, and civil rights activist.

She was a self-described "black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet," who "dedicated both her life and her creative talent to confronting and addressing injustices of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia." As a poet, she is best known for technical mastery and emotional expression, as well as her poems that express anger and outrage at civil and social injustices she observed throughout her life.

As a spoken word artist, her delivery has been called powerful, melodic, and intense by the Poetry Foundation.  Her poems and prose largely deal with issues related to civil rights, feminism, lesbianism, illness and disability, and the exploration of black female identity.

She was one of the first to talk about such issues through her poetry and spoken word and in doing so spoke up against the injustices that LGBTQ+ people, black people and women faced at the time, bringing awareness.

Justin Fashanu

Justinus Soni "Justin" Fashanu (19 February 1961 – 2 May 1998) was an English footballer who played for a variety of clubs between 1978 and 1997. He was known by his early clubs to be gay, and came out publicly later in his career, becoming the first professional footballer to be openly gay but had little success as a player afterwards.

After moving to the United States, in 1998 he was questioned by police when wrongly accused of sexual assault by another man. He was charged, and an arrest warrant for him was issued in Howard County, Maryland, on 3 April 1998, but he had already left his flat.  According to his suicide note, fearing he would not get a fair trial because of his homosexuality, he fled to England, where he killed himself in London in May 1998. In 2020, Fashanu was inducted into the National Football Museum Hall of Fame.

After his suicide, conversations about LGBTQ+ rights in the criminal justice system started and the Justin campaign started to help end homophobia in football and support LGBTQ+ players. Fashanu was listed at number 99 in the Top 500 Lesbian and Gay Heroes in The Pink Paper.

Ted Brown

Ted brown was born on 1^st February 1950, New York. On 1 July 1972 Ted Brown walked through central London, stopped at Trafalgar Square for a kiss – and made history.

He was at the event he had helped to organise, the UK’s first official Gay Pride, in which more than 2,000 people marched through the capital before holding a mass kiss-in. Ted Brown was one of the first GLF (Gay Liberation Front) activists and protested for the equal age of consent. He spoke up on police brutality as a part of the GLF and the Black Panther movement. His work with the GLF, his efforts to improve the treatment and representation of LGBT people in the media, and his battle against abusive policing make him a key figure in both British civil rights history and LGBT history.

Allan Horsfall

Allan Horsfall (20 October 1927 – 27 August 2012) was a British gay rights campaigner and founder of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.

The Campaign for Homosexual Equality in 1969 was one of the very first organisations that helped campaign for LGBTQ+ rights in the UK. CHE at its height in the mid 1970s boasted over 130 local groups all over England and Wales, and a membership in excess of 5,000 lesbians and gay men. It was the most successful attempt ever in this country to create a mass membership democratic LGBT organisation. And if its legislative gains were small, it changed the lives of thousands of individuals through its groups, encouraging self-respect and self-confidence through ‘coming out’.

It also made grass roots gains in changing the attitudes of police, social workers, doctors and teachers to whom it gave talks and distributed information. Indirectly it contributed to the foundation of several other important institutions – LGBT Switchboard, the counselling organisation Friend, the first national gay paper Gay News, Gay Sweatshop Theatre Group and the International Lesbian and Gay Association (ILGA).

Gilbert Baker

Gilbert Baker (June 2, 1951 – March 31, 2017) was an American artist, gay rights activist, and designer of the rainbow flag (1978), a worldwide symbol of LGBTQ pride.

His flag became widely associated with LGBT rights causes, a symbol of gay pride that has become ubiquitous in the decades since its debut. California state senator Scott Wiener said Baker "helped define the modern LGBT movement". He created banners for gay-rights and anti-war protest marches. He also joined the gay drag activist group Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

Baker first created the Rainbow Flag with a collective in 1978 and refused to trademark it, seeing it as a symbol that was for the LGBT community. It is because of Gilbert Baker that we have the rainbow flag.

ABilly Jones-Hennin

ABilly Jones-Hennin was born in St. John’s, Antigua in 1942. In 1978, Jones-Hennin helped launch the National Coalition of Black Gays (later renamed the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays).

This organization was the first national advocacy organization for Black gay and lesbians. Jones-Hennin also helped mobilize the first March on Washington for Lesbians and Gays in 1979 and helped assemble the first National Third World LGBT Conference at Howard University.

Jones-Hennin has worked as the minority affairs director of the National AIDS Network, a founding member and co-chair of the National Coalition of Black Lesbians and Gays, and board member of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (now the National LGBTQ Task Force). He was a founding member of the Gay Married Men’s Association and the National Association of Black & White Men Together.

During the administration of President Jimmy Carter, Jones-Hennin participated in the first delegation of gay people of colour to ever meet with representatives of the President of the United States of America.

Cliff Arnesen

Cliff Arnesen was born in Jersey City, New Jersey on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1948. He joined the military when he was 17. Cliff’s time in the military shaped the rest of his life and forged him into the advocate he is today. It also left mental and emotional scars.

Rather than being sent to Vietnam, he was dishonourably discharged for homosexuality; but first, the military forced him to masturbate with another solider to prove that he was not faking his condition. Cliff, meantime, began a lifetime of insisting that he was bisexual, not homosexual.

In 1988, he became president of the New England Gay & Lesbian Veterans in 1988. In 1989, he testified before the 8th Congressional Speaker’s Conference on the Concerns of Vietnam Veterans, representing bisexual veterans. He was the first and only openly bisexual veteran in U.S. history to testify before members of Congress.

In 1990, Arnesen was a co-founder of the National Gay, Lesbian & Bisexual Veterans of America (GLBVA), now known as American Veterans for Equal Rights (AVER). The inclusion of “bisexual” in the name of the original group was vitally important to Cliff. It acknowledged the collective struggle of the LGBTQ community, signalled inclusiveness, and strengthened his love and appreciation for his fellow gay and lesbian veterans. Cliff and the GLBVA campaigned against ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ clause in the military until it was revoked and the LGBTQ+ community could be open in the military.

Josephine Baker

Josephine Baker (born Freda Josephine McDonald, naturalised French Joséphine Baker; 3 June 1906 – 12 April 1975) was an American-born French entertainer, French Resistance agent and civil rights activist.

By 1952, Baker had been the toast of Paris for decades. The bisexual singer, actress, and dancer became so revered there that one only needed to say “Josephine” or “La Baker” and everyone knew who she was. She used her status to protest against segregation and campaign for LGBTQ+ rights as well as being openly bisexual and having a relationship with Frida Khalo and Colete.

She was the first same-sex kiss on stage in America and talked openly about what it means to be bisexual, putting the B in LGBTQ+.

Colette

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette (28 January 1873 – 3 August 1954), known mononymously as Colette, was a French author and woman of letters.

Colette was introduced both to writing and to Paris’s libertine underground when she married her first husband at the age of 20. He persuaded her, perhaps forcibly, into writing her first novels, the semi-autobiographical Claudine series which included salacious descriptions of same-sex attraction. The novels were published under her husband’s name, which was a fine opportunity for a female author at the time, but when Colette divorced him she no longer had access to any of her books’ profits.

To get by, she became a music hall performer. She had a number of affairs with women during her marriage (then encouraged by her husband) and continued to form relationships with both men and women, most notably that of fellow actress Mathilde de Morny (Who later came out as a transgender man). Together they scandalized audiences by sharing a kiss on stage, and police had to be called to quell the ensuing riot. Colette was one of the very first to write about same-sex couple relationships.

Marsha. P. Johnson

Marsha P. Johnson (August 24, 1945 – July 6, 1992), was an American gay liberation activist and self-identified drag queen and transgender woman.

Known as an outspoken advocate for gay rights, Johnson was one of the prominent figures in the Stonewall uprising of 1969 as Marsha. P. Johnson threw the first brick at the police officers during the riots. Johnson was a founding member of the Gay Liberation Front and co-founded the radical activist group Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (S.T.A.R.), alongside close friend Sylvia Rivera. 

From 1987 through 1992, Johnson was an AIDS activist with ACT UP.

Sylvia Rivera

Sylvia Rivera (July 2, 1951 – February 19, 2002) was an American gay liberation and transgender rights activist who was also a noted community worker in New York.

Rivera, who identified as a drag queen, participated in demonstrations with the Gay Liberation Front. With close friend Marsha P. Johnson, Rivera co-founded the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries (STAR), a group dedicated to helping homeless young drag queens, gay youth, and trans women.

Rivera's activism began in 1970 after she participated in actions with the Gay Liberation Front's Drag Queen Caucus and later joined the Gay Activists Alliance at 18 years old, where she fought for not only the rights of gay people but also for the inclusion of drag queens and transgender women like herself in the movement.

Rivera sometimes exaggerated her importance, purporting to have been active during the civil rights movement, the movement against the Vietnam war, second-wave feminist movements, as well as Puerto Rican and African American youth activism, particularly with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers. Sylvia Rivera was only 17 when the riots started.

Laurence Dillion

Laurence Michael Dillon (born Laura Maud Dillon; 1 May 1915 – 15 May 1962) was a British physician and the first trans man to undergo transgender reassignment surgery in the UK.

Dillon had long been more comfortable in men's clothing and was more self-assured living as a male. [citation needed]

In 1939, he sought treatment from Dr George Foss, who had been experimenting with testosterone to treat excessive menstrual bleeding; at the time, the hormone's masculinizing effects were poorly understood. Foss provided Dillon with testosterone pills but insisted Dillon consult a psychiatrist first, who gossiped about Dillon's desire to become a man, and soon the story was all over town. Dillon fled to Bristol and took a job at a garage.

The hormones soon made it possible for him to pass as male, and eventually the garage manager insisted that other employees refer to Dillon as "he" in order to avoid confusing customers. Dillon was promoted to recovery-vehicle driver and doubled as a fire watcher during the Blitz.

At least thirteen surgeries were performed on Dillon between 1946 and 1949.

Riki Wilchins

Riki Anne Wilchins (born 1952) is a feminist activist whose work has focused on issues of gender as it impacts many Americans.

Their work on combating discrimination and violence caused by gender stereotypes. Wilchins coined the term genderqueer in the mid-1990’s and is one of the first people to identify as Non-Binary and use They/Them pronouns.

In 1995, Wilchins founded the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition, GenderPAC, a tax-exempt organization focused on gender rights issues. GenderPAC originally focused on the transgender community, but gradually broadened its focus to include anyone who suffered discrimination or violence because of their gender identity or gender expression.  GenderPAC described its mission as the creation of "classrooms, communities, and workplaces [that] are safe for everyone to learn, grow, and succeed — whether or not they meet expectations for masculinity and femininity.

Georgina Somerset

Georgina Carol Somerset (23 March 1923 – 30 November 2013) was a British dentist, author, and former Royal Navy officer.

She was the first openly intersex person in the United Kingdom and the first intersex woman to be married in the Church of England.

Somerset wrote two books: Over The Sex Border published in 1963 and her memoir A Girl Called Georgina published in 1992, talking about her life as intersex and what she went through as well s campaigning for intersex recognition.

In 1960, after sworn testimony from her doctors, she was given a new birth certificate with her chosen name of Georgina Carol Turtle and her sex as female.

Lisa Orlando

Lisa Orlando was a radical feminist, mostly prominent in the second-wave of Feminism. Lisa Orlando also campaigned for Lesbian and bisexual Women rights. However, she is most famous for her works on Asexuality.

In 1972, Orlando opened up about her sexuality, coming out as Asexual and in doing so she wrote the Asexual Manifesto to describe what it meant to be Asexual and what Asexual meant. This was the first real mention of Asexuality as a sexuality.

Orlando then campaigned for Asexuality to be included in the LGBTQ+ community, and because of her the A in LGBTQIA+ stands for Asexuality.

Daniel Quasar

Daniel Quasar is a non-binary artist and graphic designer, known for the design of the Progress Pride flag, a variation of the rainbow pride flag that incorporates additional colours to explicitly represent trans people and LGBTQ+ communities of colour.

In 2018, Quasar re-designed the existing rainbow flag to incorporate the transgender flag, as well as black and brown stripes to represent LGBTQ+ communities of colour "as well as those living with AIDS, those no longer living, and the stigma surrounding them".

The additional colours were added in a chevron shape along the hoist to represent forward movement. They began a crowdfunding campaign to fund the first production of the flags.

In 2020, the British Medical Association began to adopt the flag.  In 2021, Deliveroo adopted the progress pride flag for Pride Month. The flag is flown in many international cities above official buildings, including New York City, London, Boston, and Sydney.

Brenda Howard

Brenda Howard (December 24, 1946 – June 28, 2005) was an American bisexual rights activist, sex-positive feminist, and polyamorist.

She was an important figure in the modern LGBT rights movement. A militant activist who helped plan and participated in LGBT rights actions for over three decades, Howard was an active member of the Gay Liberation Front and for several years chair of the Gay Activists Alliance's Speakers Bureau in the post-Stonewall era.

A fixture in New York City's LGBT Community, Howard was active in the Coalition for Lesbian and Gay Rights which helped guide New York City's Gay rights law through the City Council in 1986 as well as ACT UP and Queer Nation. In 1987 Howard helped found the New York Area Bisexual Network to help co-ordinate services to the region's growing Bisexual community. She was also an active member of the early bisexual political activist group BiPAC/Bialogue, a Regional Organizer for BiNet USA, a co-facilitator of the Bisexual S/M Discussion Group and a founder of the nation's first Alcoholics Anonymous chapter for bisexuals.

On a national level, Howard's activism included work on both the 1987 March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (The first Pride)  and the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation where she was female co-chair of the leather contingent and Stonewall 25 in 1994. In addition to being openly bisexual, Howard was openly polyamorous.