MARTHA ROGERS

What LGBTQ+ History Month Means To Me

As a queer millennial, there are many defining moments in LGBTQ+ history that I don’t have a lived experience of.

I don’t remember the beginning of the gay rights movement, which is often credited to the Stonewall Uprising.

I didn’t experience the trauma of losing friends through the AIDS crisis. I wasn’t here to attend the first official UK Pride parade in the early 70s.

As a community, we have a colourful and painful past. LGBTQ+ History Month is important to me because while there are many moments in our history that I haven’t lived through, they have defined where we are today.

In my lifetime, we’ve gone from homosexuality being banned from being taught in schools and diagnosed as a mental illness, to being given equal marriage and adoption rights and being celebrated at Pride parades across the world. 

LGBTQ+ pioneers have allowed me to live a much more privileged life than they were able to, and the fight still isn’t over.

As we campaign to ban conversion therapy in the UK, to put an end to hate crime which has soared over the past year, and fight for the rights of the most marginalised people in our community, we should acknowledge that the foundations were laid by those before us.  

There have been so many important events in the timeline of LGBTQ+ history that were turning points for greater equality and freedom.

I celebrate LGBTQ+ History Month because I truly believe that learning from these past events will help us to create a more inclusive and accepting world for the future generations of our community.