LGBT awareness

It won't be long now before the Daily Mail and like-minded newspapers have their annual tirades against LGBT history month.

What is the point, they will ask, of speculating about the sexuality of Florence Nightingale or Isaac Newton. The important thing for which they are remembered is the work they did, and not their sexual preferences. The evidence that they were homosexual is at best tendentious, and in any event, the newspapers will argue, we cannot use modern constructs like 'gay' to describe the sexuality of people living in earlier centuries.

There is at least a grain of truth to these arguments. For that reason I think that 'LGBT history month' would be more likely to gain acceptance if it is renamed to 'LGBT awareness month.'

But the overall message of this celebration is entirely justified - the message is that people throughout the ages and also today are not always solely or partly attracted to members of the opposite gender, nor do people necessarily adhere to common expectations of their assumed genders. And people have rights to express themselves as individuals - Diversity is a good thing for humanity.

The message is slow to catch on because old-fashioned people, and institutions like the BBC are slow to learn. They feel the need to explain themselves to the Daily Mail and get its approval for their policies.

Ultimately what makes LGBT history month so relevant today is that It won't be long now before the Daily Mail and like-minded newspapers have their annual tirades against LGBT history month.