Peter Tatchell

Since then he has criticised Corbyn, tweeting in August 2018: "For all of us who support Jeremy Corbyn’s UK social justice policies, his repeated praise for, & collusion with, anti-semites & Islamist fascists is very disturbing. He has NEVER recanted or apologised." Tatchell urged his followers to read a piece on Corbyn's links to Raed Salah.

In 2018 Tatchell voiced his support for Mark Meechan's conviction under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 for posting a "grossly offensive" video on Youtube.

In 2017 Tatchell praised the Church of England's new 'Valuing all God's Children' scheme for schools, which seeks to stop homophobic and transphobic bullying.

In 2017, Tatchell wrote to the organisers of Pride in London to defend the Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain. The organisation, set up by Maryam Namazie, had previously held placards stating "Allah is Gay", "Fuck Islam", "Islamophobia is an Oxymoron" and "East London Mosque incites murder of LGBT". The East London Mosque, who had previously condemned homophobia and worked with Tatchell himself on seeking ways to combat it, disliked the placards but understood that they fell under the banner of free speech. However, he strenuously objected the suggestion that they incited murder as defamatory and brazenly incorrect. Tatchell stated "East London Mosque has refused all dialogue with LGBT community. It refuses to meet LGBT Muslims. I have asked them 11 times since 2015".

On 13 February 2016, Fran Cowling, the national LGBT representative for the NUS, refused to share a platform with Tatchell at Canterbury Christ Church University to discuss the topic of "re-radicalising queers". Cowling said that Tatchell supported speakers who are "openly transphobic and incite violence" against transgender people, and also that Tatchell had used "racist language". Tatchell responded that no evidence could be produced to support either claim, and that Cowling had never consulted the NUS membership before deciding to make pronouncements on their behalf, and said "This sorry, sad saga is symptomatic of the decline of free and open debate on some university campuses. There is a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere. Allegations are made without evidence to back them – or worse, they are made citing false, trumped-up evidence."

In November 2015, Tatchell condemned the conviction of British teenager Silhan Özçelik for trying to join the Kurdistan Workers Party.

A previous supporter of the Stop the War Coalition, Tatchell and many other public personalities expressed concern with the coalition's allegedly unduly favourable view of Bashar al-Assad's government in Syria, and has called for the Labour leader and former Stop the War Chair Jeremy Corbyn not to attend the Coalition's Christmas fundraiser 2015. In December 2016, Tatchell and others disrupted Corbyn's speech on human rights on the basis that the Labour leader had responded insufficiently to the bombing of Aleppo and urged him to condemn Russian military intervention in Syria.

On 14 February 2015, Tatchell was one of a number of signatories to a letter criticising the trend in the British National Union of Students to apply a No Platform policy to feminists who criticised the sex industry or challenged demands made by certain groups of trans people. In particular, the letter cited the denial of a platform to Kate Smurthwaite at Goldsmith's College and to Germaine Greer at the University of Cambridge.

In August 2015, Tatchell endorsed Jeremy Corbyn's campaign in the Labour Party leadership election. He tweeted: "Jeremy Corbyn is the best hope for a progressive shake up of UK politics @jeremycorbyn @Corbyn4Leader #SignUp4Corbyn".

In September 2014, Tatchell advocated arming the Kurdistan Workers Party to fight against ISIS, and argued that the US and EU had been wrong to designate it as a terrorist organisation.

My articles urging an age of consent of 14 are motivated solely by a desire to reduce the criminalisation of under-16s who have consenting relationships with other young people of similar ages. I do not support adults having sex with children. I do not advocate teenagers having sex before the age of 16. But if they do have sex before their 16th birthday, they should not be arrested, given a criminal record and put on the sex offenders register.

Tatchell is a strong opponent of the Russian LGBT propaganda law. In 2014 Tatchell protested Valery Gergiev's support for Vladimir Putin.

Tatchell protested the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi over the gay rights stance of Russia, comparing the event to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin.

He points out that much of his prison and asylum casework involves supporting Muslim prisoners and asylum seekers—heterosexual, as well as LGBT. In 2006, he helped stop the abuse of Muslim prisoners at a Norwich jail and helped secure parole for other Muslim detainees. Half his asylum cases are, he reports, male and female Muslim refugees. Two of his highest-profile campaigns involved Muslim victims—Mohamed S, who was framed by men who first tried to kill him and then jailed him for eight years, and Sid Saeed, who brought a racism and homophobic harassment case against Deutsche Bank.

In January 2014, Tatchell was awarded an Honorary Doctorate of Laws by De Montfort University.

[The] GLF was a glorious, enthusiastic and often chaotic mix of anarchists, hippies, leftwingers, feminists, liberals and counter-culturalists. Despite our differences, we shared a radical idealism – a dream of what the world could and should be – free from not just homophobia but the whole sex-shame culture, which oppressed straights as much as LGBTs. We were sexual liberationists and social revolutionaries, out to turn the world upside down. [...] GLF's main aim was never equality within the status quo. [...] GLF's strategy for queer emancipation was to change society's values and norms, rather than adapt to them. We sought a cultural revolution to overturn centuries of male heterosexual domination and thereby free both queers and women. [...] Forty years on, GLF's gender agenda has been partly won. [...] Girlish boys and boyish girls don't get victimised as much as in times past. LGBT kids often now come out at the age of 12 or 14. While many are bullied, many others are not. The acceptance of sexual and gender diversity is increasing.

The positive nature of some child–adult sexual relationships is not confined to non-Western cultures. Several of my friends – gay and straight, male and female – had sex with adults from the ages of nine to 13. None feel they were abused. All say it was their conscious choice and gave them great joy. While it may be impossible to condone paedophilia, it is time society acknowledged the truth that not all sex involving children is unwanted, abusive and harmful.

Like Wales and Scotland, Cornwall considers itself a separate Celtic nation – so why shouldn't it have independence? [...] [Cornish] Nationalists argue that Cornwall is a subjugated nation, in much the same way that Scotland and Wales once were. Not only is the historic Cornish flag – a white cross on a black background – excluded from the Union Jack; until not so long ago Cornish people needed planning permission to fly it. Comparisons with Scotland and Wales are valid. After all, Cornwall has all the basic cultural attributes of a nation: its own distinct Celtic language, history, festivals, cuisine, music, dance and sports. Many Cornish people perceive themselves to be other than English. Despite the government's resistance, under [the] Commission for Racial Equality and Council of Europe guidelines, they qualify for recognition as a national minority. [...] Cornwall was once separate and self-governing. If the Cornish people want autonomy and it would improve their lives, why shouldn't they have self-rule once again? Malta, with only 400,000 people, is an independent state within the EU. Why not Cornwall?

Tatchell is a patron of Humanists UK, an Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and a committed secularist, saying, "As an atheist, secularist and humanist I believe that reason, science and ethics – not religious superstition – are the best way to understand the world and promote human rights and welfare."

In 2012, the National Secular Society awarded Tatchell Secularist of the Year, in recognition of his lifelong commitment to the defence of human rights against religious fundamentalism.

On 21 September 2012, he was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the UK's first National Diversity Awards. Alongside Misha B, Jody Cundy, Peter Norfolk and others he was a patron for 2013 National Diversity Awards.

Tatchell was arrested at the Moscow Pride parade in 2011 amid a spate of anti-gay violence by Neo-Nazis. Tatchell argues that the Russian police collude with Neo-Nazi elements, and that some in the Neo-Nazi group were undercover police officers.

In 2011, he became the Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation, a human rights organisation that seeks to promote and protect the human rights of individuals, communities and nations, in the UK and internationally, in accordance with established national and international human rights law.

For many years, he supported a green–red alliance. More recently, he helped launch the Green Left grouping within the Green Party. He urged links between trade unions and the Greens. On 27 April 2010, he urged Green Party supporters to vote for Liberal Democrats in constituencies where they had an incumbent MP or a strong chance of winning.

Channel 4 indicated in June 2010 that Tatchell would be the presenter of a documentary film examining "the current Pope's teachings throughout the world". The announcement sparked criticism from some prominent British Catholics including Conservative politician Ann Widdecombe, who accused Channel 4 of trying to "stir up controversy". Tatchell stated as part of the announcement that the documentary "will not be an anti-Catholic programme".

On 15 September 2010, Tatchell, along with 54 other public figures, signed an open letter, published in The Guardian, stating their opposition to Pope Benedict XVI's state visit to the UK.

Tatchell has occasionally been moderately critical of multiculturalism. In 2010 he gave a speech to the Libertarian Alliance at the National Liberal Club arguing that British people are increasingly "fragmented according to their different and sometimes competing identities, values, and traditions. These differences are prioritised over shared experiences and interests. Our common needs and the universalities of human rights are downplayed in favour of religious and racial particularities."

In February 2010, Women Against Fundamentalism defended Tatchell against allegations of Islamophobia and endorsed his right to challenge all religious fundamentalism: "WAF supports the right of Peter Tatchell and numerous other gay activists to oppose the legitimisation of fundamentalists and other right wing forces on university campuses, by the Left and by the government in its Preventing Violent Extremism strategy and numerous other programmes and platforms".

In 2010 he won Total Politics Top 50 Political Influencers. A diary journalist reported rumours that he had been recommended for the award of a life peerage in the British New Year Honours. He was said to have turned it down.

On 16 December 2009, he withdrew as a candidate claiming brain damage from an assault while protesting in Brussels in 2001, while protesting in Moscow in 2007 and in a bus accident in July 2009.

On 16 May 2009, the day of the final of the Eurovision Song Contest in Moscow, Russian gay rights activists staged a protest in Moscow in defiance of the city's mayor, Yuri Luzkhov, who had long banned gay demonstrations and denounced them as "satanic". Tatchell was among 32 campaigners arrested when they shouted slogans and unfurled banners.

For over 20 years, Tatchell has written and campaigned about environmental problems including global warming and resource depletion, pointing out that they often have a disproportionately negative impact on developing countries. In the late 1980s, he was co-organiser of the Green and Socialist Conferences, which sought to ally reds and greens. He championed energy conservation and renewable energy; in particular tidal, wave and concentrated solar power. On 24 May 2009, he appeared on the BBC Daily Politics programme to oppose the Elephant and Castle regeneration scheme, which he said would bring few benefits to local working-class people. However, most of his campaigning continues to be in the areas of human rights and "queer emancipation".

As of 2009, he has been an Ambassador for the penal reform group, Make Justice Work.

In 2009, he racked up multiple awards. He was named Campaigner of the Year in The Observer Ethical Awards, London Citizen of Sanctuary Award, Shaheed Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti Award (for reporting the Balochistan national liberation struggle), Evening Standard 1000 Most Influential Londoners (winning again in 2011), Liberal Voice of the Year and a Blue Plaque in recognition of his more than 40 years of human rights campaigning.

On 10 March 2008, in the Irish Independent, he repeated his call for a lower age of consent to end the criminalisation of young people engaged in consenting sex and to remove the legal obstacles to upfront sex education, condom provision and safer sex advice. In 1998 and 2008, he supported relaxation of the then strict laws against pornography, arguing that pornography can have some social benefits, and he has criticised what he calls the body-shame phobia against nudism, suggesting that nudity may be natural and healthy for society.

In April 2008, Tatchell attempted to disrupt the procession of the Olympic torch though London. As a protest against China's human rights record he stood in front of the bus carrying the torch along Oxford Street while carrying a placard calling on Beijing to "Free Tibet, Free Hu Jia" (the name of a recently jailed human rights activist). Tatchell was taken away by police but was not charged. In an interview Tatchell called on the world to boycott the opening ceremony of the Olympics, or to take other visible action.

In August 2008 Tatchell wrote about speculative theories concerning possible atmospheric oxygen depletion compared to prehistoric levels, and called for further investigation to test such claims and, if proven, their long-term consequences.

Tatchell campaigned on the issue of the constitutional status of Cornwall. In November 2008, The Guardian carried an article by him entitled Self-rule for Cornwall, in which he said:

In May 2007 Tatchell returned to Moscow to support Moscow Pride and to voice his opposition to a ban on the march, staying at the flat of an American diplomat. On 27 May 2007, Tatchell and other gay rights activists were attacked. He was punched in the face and nearly knocked unconscious, while other demonstrators were beaten, kicked and assaulted. A German MP, Volker Beck, and a European Parliament deputy from Italy, Marco Cappato, were also punched before being arrested and questioned by police. Tatchell later said "I'm not deterred one iota from coming back to protest in Moscow." On his release, Tatchell made a report on the incident to the American Embassy.

In February 2007, the Mayor of Moscow, Yury Luzhkov, visited London mayor Ken Livingstone for an annual meeting that also involved the Mayors of Berlin and Paris, with the mayor of Beijing present as well. Nikolay Alexeyev, one of the organizers of the Moscow gay pride parade, joined Tatchell in protesting the visit. A notice of the protest quoted Talgat Tadzhuddin saying that the Moscow pride marchers should be flogged.

Following the vote by the Knesset, the Israeli legislature, in 2007 in favour of bills to ban lesbian and gay pride parades in Jerusalem, the Lesbian and Gay Coalition Against Racism criticised Tatchell, saying:

In 2007, he wrote a Guardian opinion piece, arguing that "The best way to tackle prejudice is by presenting facts and using reasoned arguments, to break down ignorance and ill-will." In 2016, Tatchell made threats to free speech in Britain the topic of his British Humanist Association annual conference lecture. Speaking with reference to a number of censorship controversies in the 2010s, he said that "the recent trend against freedom of speech means that we must fight the battles of the Enlightenment all over again."

Tatchell was assaulted in the street, had his flat attacked, and had a death threat and a live bullet put through his letterbox in the night. Although the Bermondsey seat had long been a Labour stronghold, the Liberal candidate, Simon Hughes, won the election. During the campaign, allegations were made that some Liberal canvassers stirred up xenophobia and homophobia on the doorsteps, playing up the fact that Tatchell was born in Australia and making an issue of his homosexuality. Members of the Liberal Gay Action Group campaigned wearing lapel badges with the words, "I've been kissed by Peter Tatchell" following the suggestion that he was attempting to hide his sexuality. One of Hughes' campaign leaflets claimed the election was "a straight choice" between Liberal and Labour,. Hughes has since apologised for what may have been seen as an inadvertent slur and later came out as bisexual in 2006.

Since 2006, he expressed concern for the Baloch people facing military operations in their homeland, Balochistan in Pakistan. From 2007 to 2009, he campaigned in defence of two UK-based Baloch Muslim human rights activists, Hyrbyair Marri and Faiz Baluch, accused of terrorism charges and tried in London. Both men were acquitted in 2009. He alleged British and U.S. collusion with the suppression of the Balochs, including arms sales to Pakistan, which he says were used to bomb and attack Baloch towns and villages.

In May 2006 Tatchell attended the first Moscow Pride Festival. He appears in the documentary Moscow Pride '06 featuring this event.

In 2006, he opposed the appointment of Ruth Kelly as Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government as Kelly had not supported equal treatment of lesbians and gay men in any parliamentary votes. Tatchell said "her appointment suggests the government does not take lesbian and gay rights seriously", adding "Tony Blair would never appoint someone to a race-equality post who had a lukewarm record of opposing racism".

In 2006, during the Jyllands-Posten Muhammad cartoons controversy, Tatchell spoke at a 25 March 2006 rally called the Freedom of Expression Rally.

In 2006, Tatchell wrote an opinion column in The Guardian arguing that Muslims deliberately conflate offence with violence, in an effort to suppress Muslim reformers in Britain. He argued that Islamist groups like Hizb ut-Tahrir in Britain see "any criticism of Islam is an insult and that all such insults are unacceptable" in order to suppress the "free exchange of ideas". The Muslim gay rights organisation IMAAN criticised Tatchell, saying, "OutRage! doesn’t understand our cultural and religious sensitivities. Often, the way they word and phrase their press releases can and does antagonise Muslims. Much as we’ve invited them to meetings so we can talk about the best way to tackle Muslim LGBT issues, they insist on doing things their way."

In 2006, New Statesman readers voted him sixth on their list of "Heroes of our time".

In 2005, Iran executed two teenage boys, Mahmoud Asgari and Ayaz Marhoni, aged 16 and 18. The Iranian government, and Iranian state media, reported that the pair were executed for raping a 13-year-old boy at knifepoint. Tatchell argued that Iran has a history of arresting political activists on false charges and extracting false confessions from death penalty convicts, and declared that he believed the original crime was consensual sex between the two, which is illegal in Iran. Tatchell reiterated his long-standing view that Iran is an "Islamo-fascist state". He argued that information from Iranian exile groups with contacts inside Iran was that the teenagers were a secret gay party before they were arrested.

Tatchell has described the entire Sharia, which is the moral code that Muslims try to live by, as "a clerical form of fascism" and was the keynote speaker at a 2005 protest at the Canadian High Commission, demanding that Ontario's arbitration law, which permitted religious arbitration in civil cases for Jews and Christians, not be extended to Muslims.

Livingstone issued a 2005 dossier praising Qaradawi as a moderate, based on positive press coverage he had received previously. Livingstone pronounced that Tatchell has "a long history of Islamophobia", and asserted that he is in a "de facto alliance with the American neo-cons and Israeli intelligence services." Tatchell strenuously denied the accusations, pointing out that he has never said any of the things that Livingstone accused him of saying. Livingstone continued to describe Qaradawi as "one of the leading progressive voices in the Muslim world" in 2010, after having been denied entry to the UK for his extremist views.

In December 2005, Respect Party activist Adam Yosef came under criticism for an article in Desi Xpress opposing registered civil partnerships. He asserted that Tatchell needed "a good slap in the face" and his "queer campaign army" should "pack their bent bags and head back to Australia". Desi Xpress staff expressed regret to Tatchell and gave him a right of reply, while Yosef apologised and retracted his article, claiming the "slap in the face" remark was a "figure of speech" and the remark about Australia was not racist. Yosef later backed Tatchell's 2009 election campaign.

In April 2004, he joined the Green Party of England and Wales and in 2007 was selected as prospective parliamentary candidate in the constituency of Oxford East, but in December 2009 announced he was standing down due to brain damage he says was caused by a bus accident as well as damage inflicted by Mugabe's bodyguards when Tatchell tried to arrest him in 2001, and by neo-Nazis in Moscow while campaigning for gay rights. Since 2011 he has been the Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation.

In 2004, he proposed the renaming of Australian capital cities with their Aborigine place names.

In February 2000 Tatchell resigned from Labour, citing the treatment of Ken Livingstone during the nomination of a candidate for Mayor of London, and of similar cases in the Scottish and Welsh elections, as evidence that the party "no longer has any mechanism for democratic involvement and transformation". He fought unsuccessfully for a seat on the London Assembly as an Independent candidate within the Green Left grouping, in support of Livingstone. On 7 April 2004 he announced that he had joined the Green Party of England and Wales but did not envisage standing for election. However, in 2007, he became the party's parliamentary candidate for Oxford East.

For nearly four decades, Tatchell has campaigned for Gaza and the West Bank to be the basis of an independent Palestinian state. In May 2004, he and a dozen other OutRage! members, including gay Arabs, joined a London demonstration organised by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. Their placards read "Israel: stop persecuting Palestine! Palestine: stop persecuting queers!" (the latter a reference to the arrest, jailing and torture of homosexuals by the Palestinian authorities).

In July 2004, then-Mayor of London Ken Livingstone invited Yusuf al-Qaradawi to attend a talk called "A woman's right to choose" about the wearing of the hijab. Livingstone had read positive coverage of Qaradawi in The Guardian and The Sun.

In October 2004, 2,500 Muslim academics from 23 countries condemned Qaradawi, and accused him of giving "Islam a bad name and foster[ing] hatred among civilizations" and "providing a religious cover for terrorism".

Tatchell opposed the war in Iraq, and its subsequent occupation. For nearly three decades he had previously supported the Iraqi Left Opposition, helping them remove the government of Saddam Hussein because of the gross violations of human rights that Hussein had committed against democrats, left-wingers, trade unionists, Shia Muslims and the Kurdish people, and because under Saddam's dictatorship there were no opportunities for peaceful, democratic change. He advocated military and financial aid to opponents of the Saddam government, suggesting that anti-Saddam organisations be given "tanks, helicopter gun-ships, fighter planes, heavy artillery and anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles". While opposing western intervention, he advocated regime change from within in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and Syria." Tatchell has written that on 12 March 2003 he ambushed Tony Blair's motorcade in an anti-Iraq war protest. He forced Blair's limousine to stop, and then unfolded a banner that read "Arm the Kurds! Topple Saddam". He added that in terms of the political struggle within Britain (as opposed to struggles against absolute tyrants like Hitler and Saddam, where violent resistance can be the lesser of two evils): "I remain committed to the Gandhian principle of non-violence". After the war he signed the 'Unite Against Terror' declaration, arguing that "the pseudo-left reveals its shameless hypocrisy and its wholesale abandonment of humanitarian values" by supporting resistance and insurgent groups in Iraq that resort to indiscriminate terrorism, killing innocent civilians.

In 2003, Tatchell said he supported giving "massive material aid" to Iraqi opposition groups, including the "Shi'ite Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq" (SCIRI), to bring down Saddam. But in 2006 Tatchell noted that SCIRI had become markedly more fundamentalist and was endorsing violent attacks on anyone who did not conform to its increasingly harsh interpretation of Islam. He claimed that SCIRI, the leading force in Baghdad's ruling coalition, wanted to establish an Iranian-style religious dictatorship, with a goal of clerical fascism, and had engaged in "terrorisation of gay Iraqis", as well as terrorising Sunni Muslims, left-wingers, unveiled women and people who listen to western pop music or wear jeans or shorts.

In late 2003, Tatchell acted as a press spokesman for the launch of the Zimbabwe Freedom Movement, which claimed to be a clandestine group within Zimbabwe committed to overthrowing the Mugabe government by force. The civic action support group Sokwanele urged Tatchell to check his sources, speculating that it might have been by the Zimbabwe government to justify violent action. This speculation proved to be unfounded. The Mugabe regime dismissed the ZFM as a "hoax." However, two Central Intelligence Organization members were spotted and turned away from the ZFM launch, as shown in the film "Peter Tatchell: Just who does he think he is?" by Max Barber.

Faisal Alam, founder of American Gay Muslim group Al-Fatiha, argued in the magazine Queer that Iran was condemned before the facts were certain, and in 2003 the United Nations Committee Against Torture noted that "from different and reliable sources that there currently is no active policy of prosecution of charges of homosexuality in Iran".

In 2002, he brought an unsuccessful legal action in Bow Street Magistrate's Court for the arrest of the former U.S. Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, on charges of war crimes in Vietnam and Cambodia.

On 5 March 2001, Tatchell believed Mugabe was about to visit Brussels. He went there and attempted a second citizen's arrest. Mugabe's bodyguards were seen knocking him to the floor. Later that day, Tatchell was briefly knocked unconscious by Mugabe's bodyguards and was left with permanent damage to his right eye. The protest drew worldwide headlines, as Mugabe was highly unpopular in the Western world for his land redistribution policy. Tatchell's actions were praised by Zimbabwean activists and many of the newspapers that had previously denounced him.

Tatchell researched the Gukurahundi attacks in Matabeleland in the 1980s, when the Zimbabwean Fifth Brigade attacked supporters of the Zimbabwe African Peoples Union. He became convinced that Mugabe had broken international human rights law during the attack, which is estimated to have involved the massacre of around 20,000 civilians. Then in 1999, journalists Mark Chavunduka and Ray Choto were tortured by the Zimbabwe Army. The arrest of Augusto Pinochet in London seemed to him a precedent that human rights violations could be pursued against a head of state, thanks to the principle of universal jurisdiction. On 30 October 1999 Tatchell and three other OutRage! activists approached Mugabe's car in a London street and attempted to perform a citizen's arrest. Tatchell opened the car door and grabbed Mugabe. He then called the police. The four OutRage! activists were arrested, on charges including criminal damage, assault and breach of the peace; charges were dropped on the opening day of their trial. Mugabe responded by describing Tatchell and his OutRage! colleagues as "gay gangsters", a slogan frequently repeated by his supporters, and claimed they had been sent by the United Kingdom government.

On 12 April 1998, Tatchell led an OutRage! protest, which disrupted the Easter sermon by George Carey, the Archbishop of Canterbury, with Tatchell mounting the pulpit to denounce what he claimed was Carey's opposition to legal equality for lesbian and gay people. The protest garnered media coverage and led to Tatchell's prosecution under the little-used Ecclesiastical Courts Jurisdiction Act 1860 (formerly part of the Brawling Act 1551), which prohibits any form of disruption or protest in a church. Tatchell failed in his attempt to summon Carey as a witness and was convicted. The judge fined him the trivial sum of £18.60, which commentators theorised was a wry allusion to the year of the statute used to convict him.

In 1997 Tatchell wrote a letter to The Guardian, defending an academic book about "boy-love", calling the work "courageous", before writing:

Two years later, he passed through police security disguised as a TV cameraman to quiz Mugabe during the "Africa at 40" conference at Methodist Central Hall, Westminster. Mugabe told him that allegations of human rights abuses were grossly exaggerated; he became agitated when Tatchell told him that he was gay. Mugabe's minders summoned Special Branch guards, who ejected Tatchell. On 26 October 1997 a letter from Tatchell to The Observer argued that the United Kingdom should suspend aid to Zimbabwe because of its violence against LGBT people.

Tatchell describes the Muslim Council of Britain as "anti-gay", asking how can "they expect to win respect for their community, if at the same time as demanding action against Islamophobia, they themselves demand the legal enforcement of homophobia?". He noted that the MCB had joined forces with the "rightwing Christian Institute" to oppose every gay law reform from 1997 to 2006. In January 2006, the MCB Chairman Iqbal Sacranie said that homosexuals are immoral, harmful and diseased on BBC Radio 4.

In 1996, Tatchell led an OutRage! campaign to reduce the age of consent in the UK to 14 years, to adjust for studies that showed nearly half of all young people had their first sexual experiences prior to 16 years old, regardless of sexuality. He stated that he wished to exempt these people from being "treated as criminals by the law," and that the campaign claimed there should be no prosecution if the difference in ages of the sexual partners was no more than three years, provided that these youths are given a more comprehensive sex education at a younger date.

Tatchell is critical of Islam, and first wrote about its rise in Britain in 1995. In 1995, he wrote that "although not all Muslims are anti-gay, significant numbers are violently homophobic [...] homophobic Muslim voters may be able to influence the outcome of elections in 20 or more marginal constituencies." At the 2019 Conservative Party Conference he said he was "jealous" of Trevor Philips when Mr. Philips was nominated to be Islamophobe of the year - though he later suggested this was an ironic joke. He is critical of the UK government's All-Party Parliamentary Group definition of Islamophobia, suggesting that he tries "to avoid the term", that Muslimness is a vague and subjective term, and that the Islamophobia term is a "a de facto threat to free speech and liberal values" and "virtue-signalling".

Some OutRage! activities were highly controversial. In 1994, it unveiled placards inviting ten Church of England bishops to "tell the truth" about what Outrage! alleged was their homosexuality and accusing them of condemning homosexuality in public while leading secret gay lives. Shortly afterwards the group wrote to twenty UK MPs, condemning their alleged support for anti-gay laws and claiming they would out them if the MPs did not stop what they described as attacks on the gay community. The MP Sir James Kilfedder, one such opponent of gay equality, who had received one of the letters, died two months later of a sudden heart attack on the day one of the Belfast newspapers planned to out him. In a comment in The Independent in October 2003, Tatchell claimed the OutRage! action against the bishops was his greatest mistake because he failed to anticipate that the media and the church would treat it as an invasion of privacy.

OutRage!'s protest against Chief Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, who supported the idea of genetic engineering to eliminate homosexuality, led to accusations that Tatchell was antisemitic, following OutRage!'s leaflets citing the similarity of Jakobovits ideas for the eradication of homosexuality to those of Heinrich Himmler were distributed outside the Western and Marble Arch Synagogue on the Rosh Hashanah in September 1993.

Tatchell argues that a number of Afro-Caribbean artists produce music that glorifies murder of homosexual men, and incites violence against homosexuals. He argued that British laws against incitement to violence were not being enforced on foreign artists traveling to the UK. He also organised protests outside the concerts of singers whose lyrics he says incite violence, mainly Jamaican dancehall and ragga artists who he says glorify violence toward lesbians and gay men, including murder. Tatchell's campaign began in 1992 when Buju Banton's song "Boom bye-bye" was released. He has picketed the MOBO Awards ceremony to protest at their inviting performers of what he terms "murder music".

In 1991, a small group of OutRage! members covertly formed a separate group to engage in a campaign of outing public figures who were homophobic in public but gay in private. The group took the name FROCS (Faggots Rooting Out Closeted Sexuality). Tatchell was the group's go-between with the press, forwarding their news statements to his media contacts. Considerable publicity and public debate followed FROCS's threat to out 200 leading public personalities from the world of politics, religion, business and sport. With Tatchell's assistance, members of FROCS eventually called a press conference to tell the world that their campaign was a hoax intended to demonstrate the hypocrisy of those newspapers that had condemned the campaign despite having themselves outed celebrities and politicians.

Tatchell took part in many gay rights campaigns over issues such as Section 28. Following the murder of actor Michael Boothe on 10 May 1990, Tatchell was one of thirty people to attend the inaugural meeting of the radical gay rights non-violent direct action group OutRage! – although he was not a co-founder – and has remained a leading member. The group fuses theatrical performance styles with queer protest. As the most prominent OutRage! member, Tatchell is sometimes assumed to be the leader of the group, though he has never claimed this, saying he is one among equals.

He also comments on an interview he conducted in the late 1990s on the subject of paedophilia and child prostitution, in which he interviewed a 14-year-old boy (under the pseudonym "Lee") who had had sex with older men, in some cases for money. In this interview, Tatchell makes various counterarguments against Lee's point of view, such as: "How can a young child understand sex and give meaningful consent?", "Perhaps your friends were particularly mature for their age. Most young people are not so sophisticated about sex", "Many people worry that the power imbalance in a relationship between a youth and an adult means the younger person can be easily manipulated and exploited", "Many people fear that making sex easier for under-age teenagers will expose them to dangers like HIV. Isn't that a legitimate worry?".

Tatchell's book Democratic Defence was published in 1985. This outlined how defence of the United Kingdom might be assured after the nuclear disarmament that he and the Labour Party were then committed to. (Labour has since abandoned this policy.) It argued that the British military was still organised on an imperialist strategy of basing troops abroad rather than on a strategy of defending the UK itself against foreign attacks.

Tatchell was selected as the Labour Party's parliamentary candidate for Bermondsey in 1981. He was then denounced by party leader Michael Foot for ostensibly supporting extra-parliamentary action against the Thatcher government. Labour subsequently allowed him to stand in the Bermondsey by-election in February 1983, in which the party lost the seat to the Liberals. In the 1990s he campaigned for LGBT rights through the direct action group OutRage!, which he co-founded. He has worked on various campaigns, such as Stop Murder Music against music lyrics allegedly inciting violence against LGBT people and writes and broadcasts on various human rights and social justice issues. He attempted a citizen's arrest of Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe in 1999 and again in 2001.

In an article for a left-wing magazine, Tatchell urged the Labour Party to support direct action campaigning to challenge the Margaret Thatcher-led Tory government, stating "we must look to new more militant forms of extra-parliamentary opposition which involve mass popular participation and challenge the government's right to rule". Social Democratic Party MP James Wellbeloved, arguing the article was anti-Parliamentary, quoted it at Prime Minister's Questions in November 1981.[1] Foot denounced Tatchell, stating that he would not be endorsed as a candidate and a vote at the Labour Party National Executive Committee denied Tatchell's endorsement. However, the Bermondsey Labour Party continued to support him and it was eventually agreed that when the selection was rerun, Tatchell would be eligible, and he duly won. When Mellish resigned from Parliament and triggered a by-election, Tatchell's candidacy was endorsed, and the ensuing campaign was regarded as one of the dirtiest and most violent in modern British history.

Tatchell contributed a chapter to the 1980 book Betrayal of Youth that questioned whether 16 was the appropriate age of consent, but did not make any specific recommendation for the appropriate age. He wrote in 2012 that he would not have written for the book had he known that the editor and many of the other contributors were involved in paedophile advocacy.

In 1978, Tatchell joined the Labour Party and moved to a council flat in Bermondsey, south-east London. At the Bermondsey Constituency Labour Party's (CLP) AGM in February 1980, the left group won control and Tatchell was elected Secretary. When the sitting Labour MP, Bob Mellish, announced his retirement in 1981, Tatchell was selected as his successor, despite Arthur Latham, a former MP and former Chairman of the Tribune Group, being considered the favourite. While Militant was cited as the reason for Tatchell's selection, Tatchell disagrees and ascribes his selection to the support of the "older, 'born and bred' working class; the younger professional and intellectual members swung behind Latham".

In 1973, he attended the 10th World Youth Festival in East Berlin on GLF's behalf. His actions triggered opposition within and between different groups of national delegates including the Communist Party of Great Britain and National Union of Students. He was banned from conferences, had his leaflets confiscated and burned, was interrogated by the secret police (the Stasi) and threatened and assaulted by other delegates, mostly communists.

To avoid conscription into the Australian Army, Tatchell moved to London in 1971. He had accepted being gay in 1969, and in London became a leading member of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) until its 1974 collapse. During this time Tatchell was prominent in organising sit-ins at pubs that refused to serve "poofs" and protests against police harassment and the medical classification of homosexuality as an illness. With others he helped organise Britain's first Gay Pride march in 1972.

Part of Tatchell's political activism and journalism in the 1970s involved the Bush War (or Second Chimurenga) in Rhodesia, in which he supported the black nationalist movement, including the Zimbabwe African National Union and its military wing. Mugabe's denunciation of male homosexuality in 1995 led Tatchell to help organise a protest for LGBT rights in Zimbabwe outside the Zimbabwe High Commission in London.

In the 1970s and 1980s, Tatchell was involved in campaigns against the National Front and the British National Party. He campaigned with Rock Against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League.

A long-time anti-apartheid activist, (since 1969), his lobbying of the ANC in 1987 contributed to it renouncing homophobia and making its first public commitment to lesbian and gay human rights. Later, in 1989 and 1990, he helped persuade the ANC to include a ban on anti-gay discrimination in the post-apartheid constitution (he assisted in drafting model clauses for the ANC)

He was involved in the anti-apartheid movement from 1969 until the end of the white minority regime in 1990, being a regular protester and speaker at the 24/7 non-stop, four-year-long picket outside South Africa House.

Since the family finances were strained by medical bills, he had to leave school at 16 in 1968. He started work as a sign-writer and window-dresser in department stores. Tatchell claims to have incorporated the theatricality of these displays into his activism.

In 1968, Tatchell began campaigning against the American and Australian involvement in the Vietnam War, in his view a war of aggression in support of a "brutal and corrupt dictatorship" responsible for torture and executions. The Victoria state government and Melbourne city council attempted to suppress the anti-Vietnam War campaign by banning street leafleting and taking police action against anti-war demonstrations.

His anti-imperialist activism began in 1968 and involved campaigns against the war in Vietnam. He participated in the mass Vietnam Moratorium protests in his Melbourne in 1970. The same year he founded and was elected secretary of the inter-denominational anti-war movement, Christians for Peace. Later, on moving to London in 1971, he was active in solidarity work with the independence movements in Mozambique, Angola, Guinea Bissau, Namibia, Eritrea, Oman, New Hebrides, Western Sahara, Palestine, East Timor and West Papua.

Tatchell's political activity began at Mount Waverley Secondary College, where in 1967 he launched campaigns in support of Australia's Aboriginal people. Tatchell was elected secretary of the school's Student Representative Council. In his final year in 1968, as school captain, he took the lead in setting up a scholarship scheme for Aborigines and led a campaign for Aboriginal land rights. These activities led the headmaster to claim he had been manipulated by communists.

He joined the Australian campaign against the death penalty. Prompted by the impending hanging of Ronald Ryan in 1967, Tatchell went round his local area painting slogans against the hanging, a fact he did not reveal until nearly 30 years later. Ryan was accused of killing a prison warder while escaping from Pentridge Prison in Coburg, Victoria. Tatchell claimed, unsuccessfully, that the trajectory of the bullet through the warder's body probably made it impossible that Ryan could have fired the fatal shot.

Peter Gary Tatchell (born 25 January 1952) is a British human rights campaigner, originally from Australia, best known for his work with LGBT social movements.