Autumn Lecture Series 2022: Human Rights

(Monday 17th October 2022)

What Am I Living For? Human Rights In this lecture we bring together three people who have confronted prejudice and oppression and spent their lives speaking out with tremendous courage and at personal cost for human rights and to bring about change.

Peter Tatchell has courageously campaigned for human rights, democracy, global justice and LGBT+ freedom for 55 years. He pioneered ideas for comprehensive equality laws in the late 1970s, and spearheaded the campaigns for same-sex marriage and opposite-sex civil partnerships. His human rights activism has resulted in him being badly beaten by President Mugabe’s bodyguards in 2001 and by Russian neo-Nazis in 2007. Peter also works in solidarity with human rights activists in many countries, including Iran, Syria, Ukraine, Russia and West Papua. He is Director of the Peter Tatchell Foundation: www.PeterTatchellFoundation.org

Canon Rachel Mann is a writer, priest and broadcaster. Author of 12 books, her memoir of growing up trans, Dazzling Darkness, was a bestseller. She is a member of the Church of England’s General Synod, and the Faith & Order Commission. Her poetry has been highly commended in the Forward Prizes and her theology shortlisted for the Michael Ramsey Prize. A regular on BBC Radio 4 as well as Radio 2’s Pause for Thought, she is Visiting Fellow at the Manchester Writing School and a Patron of LGBT+ charity, Open Table Network.

Bernárd Lynch is an author and activist who has worked for the rights of LGBTQIA+ people for fifty years. In 1982, he founded the first AIDS ministry in NYC. His support for LGBT+ rights brought unprecedented hostility from church and state. In 1992 he became the first priest of a mainline Church to march in London Pride. In 2006, he became the first Catholic priest in the world to have a civil partnership and married in 2017. Bernárd was honoured by Proclamation of NYC Council and was awarded the Irish Presidential Distinguished Service Award.