Scottish gay
Why am I the only male Scottish footballer to appear out?
Is football homophobic and what can we do if it is? Those were the questions I wanted to answer when the BBC Scotland Disclosure team approached me about making a documentary.
My choice last September to become the first male Scottish senior footballer to reach out publicly as gay was not an easy or quick one. It took a lot of hard perform.
I had told my family and close friends 18 months before but it had actually taken 20 years to get to the stage where I was qualified to be my true authentic self and continue to play football.
I'm now 31 and football is the game I have loved from the moment I started kicking a ball as a small toddler.
I was obsessed. I played all the time and I was improve than most other kids.
By my teens I was I playing for Motherwell's youth team but I was also beginning to realise I was different from my friends.
I knew I was gay and I fought against it.
I fought it because of the kind of conversations I was having in the changing room.
These were the sorts of conversations young lads hold - about girls, being tough, playing hard, an
In a recent blogpost John D’Emilio argued that AIDS and its impact upon LGBT individuals and organisations, the militancy it provoked, and the heightened attention it drew to LGBT causes needs to be more fully documented and appreciated. This is certainly applicable to Scotland, and its responses, both social and medical, to the significant challenges that HIV/AIDS brought.
My research engaged with the impact that HIV/AIDS had upon gay and bisexual men in Scotland, many of whom were relatively young when their lives were touched or influenced by this new and sinister threat to life. Scotland had only decriminalised consensual gay sex between male adults in 1980, and the drive for equality was realistically still in its infancy. This blog post is not an attempt to document Scottish responses to HIV and AIDS but to reflect the experiences of gay and attracted to both genders men during the 1980s and 1990s.
Chris was in his first 20s when the HIV/AIDS ‘dark cloud’ settled over Scotland:
It was horrendous, absolutely horrendous. Fear, dread of something you had taken for granted that was a big part of your individuality and how you find happiness and happiness and intimacy with other people that could sudden
Being the First Scottish Professional Footballer to Come Out as Gay: This is How AyeFeel
In this episode of This Is How AyeFeel, we talk to Zander Murray about being the first Scottish professional footballer to come out as gay.
Content warning: This video talks abouthomophobia
You can also claim 100 Young Scot Rewards points for listening to this episode – listen out for the code in the episode.
For more resources and support check out our #AyeFeel page on who to contact.
Other content you might be interested in
Finding queer stories in Scottish History
'And now – observe – Old Scotland is no more.
Gay men kiss at the Parliament’s door.'
Scots Makar Jackie Kay’s poem 'The Long View'(this link will open in a new window) sweeps through Scottish history with an eye to how far we’ve come. Looking back lets us spot how much progress Scotland has made for Homosexual rights and representation, and how far we still have to go.
The coronavirus restrictions have ruled out looking for the homosexual past in a physical library or archive this February. Don’t let this stop you investigating some of the mysteries of queer Scottish history from your own home.
Explore homosexual Scotland
- how did the model for Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray end up productive as a priest in Edinburgh?
- did a little Leith policeman really disguise himself as a neonate to stop public indecency?
- who tried to use a sheep to intimidate a Victorian lesbian medical pioneer?
- just how homoerotic were a Scottish king’s letters to his favourite courtiers?
- how did a transgender nobleman charm the Scottish territory dancing scene in 1960’s Aberdeenshire?
- which bisexual magician claimed to have su