➤ TATCHELL, from p.56
stopping by a weekly demonstration
of Ugandan activists working
for justice in their homeland that
he and his Peter Tatchell Foundation
supports, and seeing him being
surrounded by love. He showed
me where he was detained at an
old Covent Garden police station in
a cell guards told him had held Oscar
Wilde after his arrest in 1895.
And we were once outside the Old
Vic Theatre when a well-dressed
businessman stopped him and
said with deep appreciation, “I just
want to shake your hand.”
As the fi lm shows, such mainstream
approval of his work was
hard to come by early on. “Someone
said you were the most hated
person in Britain,” McKellen says.
Boxer Mike Tyson has some choice
words for him when confronted
about his homophobia by Tatchell.
Demonstrating in solidarity with
Russian gay activists, Tatchell gets
bashed in the head hard by counter
demonstrators. These blows —
and more than 50 attacks on his
fl at — have taken their toll, but he
never backs down.
For all his courage and conviction,
Tatchell confesses to “quite
debilitating self-doubt” and dread
at getting arrested and beaten up
again on a return trip to Moscow
to call attention to Putin’s failure to
stop the state murders of gay people
in Chechnya. But he soldiers on:
“I’m the kind of person who never
feels satisfi ed. I’m always thinking,
‘What’s next?’” All this nuance adds
to the richness of the portrayal.
While most all of Tatchell’s actions
are gripping and instructive,
the fi lm is also graced with moving
codas with his mother and reassessments
half a century on by
some of the people he tangled with,
including Archbishop Carey.
“I love people,” says Tatchell, now
69. “I love freedom, equality, and
justice and that’s what drives me
forward. I don’t like to see people
suffering.”
“Hating Peter Tatchell” is required
viewing for activists, but
there is a personal story in there
that ought to compel even the apolitical
as we witness him grow into
a national treasure himself. He
works far too long and hard, but
there is no stopping him.
Peter Tatchell (middle) stands up for LGBTQ and Muslim solidarity at London Pride.
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