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Netflix’s new film Hating Peter Tatchell shines a light on one of the UK’s most prolific – and headline-grabbing – LGBT activists.

Sir Ian McKellen leads the interviews with Tatchell, reflecting on his 50-year career as a campaigner on all human rights.

The documentary also isn’t shy in exploring how his efforts split opinion.

Sir Elton John and David Furnish work as executive producers on the film, too.

Here’s everything you need to know.

Who is Peter Tatchell?

Peter Tatchell is a 69-year-old human rights campaigner. 

Arriving in London in 1971, Australian-born Tatchell already had a political background. 

This included campaigns supporting Aboriginal people, and speaking out against the Vietnam War. 

Tatchell is openly gay, and in London became a leading member of the Gay Liberation Front in the early 70s.

As part of his work with the group, he would be organising and taking part in sit-ins at restaurants refusing to serve gay people.

At the time, homosexuality was labelled a ‘medical illness’, and the campaigners continued to fight against it.

Tatchell was a founding organiser of Britain’s first Gay Pride march in 1972. 

Following that, he continued to work for equal rights for all people, including the LGBT community.

However, he’s not always praised for his methods – grabbing headlines in his activism and dividing opinion throughout his campaigns. 

As a result, his efforts earned him the title of ‘most hated man in Britain’ during the 80s. 

In 1998, police arrested Tatchell for disrupting the Archbishop of Canterbury’s Easter sermon in protest of the church’s discrimination of LGBT people.

His fights have included decriminalising homosexuality and lowering the age of consent for gay people to match that of heterosexuals.

What does the film cover?

Hating Peter Tatchell is focusing on the campaigner’s story in his own words. 

Sir Ian McKellen leads the interview with Tatchell, which explores his efforts for equality for all and what sparked his need to continually fight against prejudices in ruling governments. 

Read More: Check out more of our Netflix content here

As well as this, the team is also using archival footage to document his 50+ years of activism. 

Finally, former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey and actor Stephen Fry also appear with their comments and experiences with Tatchell. 

Leave us a comment on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix and let us know what you think of this story.

A gay couple who have been long outspoken in political matters in Milton hopes what they termed “five years of harassment” is about to end after a police investigation.

LeeMichael McLean and his husband Bryan Furze said that about 30 magazine subscriptions and even a life insurance application that they did not solicit have been showing up in the mailbox of their home on Brush Hill Road off and on over the past five years. 

The address labels would contain their correct address, but the labels would include fictional names that were clearly intended to be gay slurs, McLean said. 

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This week read about Philadelphia creating an LGBT crime tracker, and the Grand Rapids Pride Center selecting a new leader in Michigan.

Grand Rapids Pride Center Names New Leader

Grand Rapids Pride Center has found its newest executive director in Jazz McKinney, after they served as Interim Director and chair of the organization’s Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming Committee.

GRPC wrote in an announcement via Facebook, “They bring a unique perspective on how complex West Michigan can be for a BIPOC person to navigate. A natural connector, Jazz is well-known in the GRPC, GVSU and greater Grand Rapids community as an advocate for all, personally identifying most with the Black, Indigenous, trans and disabled community members we serve.”

The Grand Rapids Pride Center oversees the town’s annual pride celebration, and recently collaborated with Grand Rapids Fire and Police Departments on in-person training on LGBT-inclusive safety practices.

Mckinney told MiBiz, “My vision is to truly fulfill our mission, which is to serve all of our LGBTQ community, not just white people. My vision is to make the Pride Center more accessible to people of color and people with disabilities, and making it more accessible even with the internal things.”

Philadelphia Establishes LGBT Crime Tracker

Deja Lynn Alvarez. Photo via Facebook.

LGBT victims of crime are now being connected with aid and resources within 48 hours after an incident, thanks to a unique tracking system developed by the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office.

If just one of 50 keywords or phrases associated with the local LGBT community is found within any police report on file, it will be added to an additional spreadsheet, where the DAO staff will be able to verify if the case involves LGBT individuals, and reach out to those people to provide support and services.

Deja Lynn Alvarez, a member of the DAO’s LGBTQ+ Advisory Committee, told Philidelphia Gay News, “The fact that the District Attorney’s Office is taking the initiative to start tracking the [crime] data is huge because it’s going to allow the studies necessary that we can then utilize when we are trying to create legislation or policy, whether it be in the city, the state or federally.”

Like a fart in a hallway, I was distantly, but strongly aware of the musical Dear Evan Hansen. The musical was a huge hit, winning six Tony Awards, including Best Actor in a Musical for Ben Platt, Best Featured Actress in a Musical for Rachel Bay Jones, Best Musical, and Best Score. It is now being adapted into a film, with Platt reprising his role. People have made jokes about Platt being too old to play a teenager, but what amuses me more about the reaction to the movie version is everyone realizing that the musical is not queer.

How did it get this reputation?

Dear Evan Hansen is about a socially anxious teenager named Evan Hansen who writes letters to himself at the suggestion of his therapist. One of the letters he writes gets taken by Connor Murphy, a character who is a bully and commits suicide. He is found with Evan’s letter, which leads Connor’s loved ones to think he wrote a suicide note to Evan. This leads to people thinking Evan and Connor were close and makes Evan popular. It’s pretty messed up.

Evan’s main “romance” is with a character named Zoe, who is Connor’s sister. So why was there an idea that Dear Evan Hansen was about a gay kid?

Let’s talk about Connor Murphy and Jared Kleinman. Jared is the closest thing Evan has to a friend, but also a little bit of an asshole. He makes a lot of jokes about there being a secret gay relationship between Evan and Connor. That is pretty much as “gay” as it gets. The show is actually very heterosexual, and the relationship between Zoe and Evan is at the forefront of the show.

Evan being seen as gay seems to have more to do with how—in 2016, when the show opened on Broadway—a lot of gay media had teenagers being the subject of bullying. Evan’s role as the “other” for his mental health and anxiety seemed to make those who’d never really seen the show think he was gay. It doesn’t help that the best-known song in the musical, “Waving Through a Window,” sounds very much like a gay “I Want” song.

Not to mention the hashtag for the show #youwillbefound sounds just really gay. It is the Mandela Effect in full work and also an indicator of how much people long for more overt queerness in musicals. Like The Prom. People saw what they wanted to see.

Well, at least this adaptation doesn’t have James Corden.

(image: Universal Pictures)

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The internet was abuzz when the first trailer for the upcoming musical Dear Evan Hansen premiered yesterday, and while most of it was wildly positive, there was also plenty of confusion tossed in there. 

First things first: one thread of the feedback surrounding the trailer revolved around Ben Platt reprising his role as the titular Hansen. Many pointed to his own age (27) as well as the wig and other alterations the teams made to make him appear more youthful as signs they needed to hang it up and cast someone new. In a now-deleted tweet, Platt responded to those comments. 

“The film required me to revisit areas of personal pain, so seeing ppl excited & moved makes it so deeply worth it.” he wrote. “PS to the randos being jerks about age, read this great article and/or watch grease.” The article was a Vanity Fair piece where Platt admitted he’s outgrown the role. But Platt tried to do all he could to make himself appear younger and director Stephen Chbosky pointed to his vocal prowess as well as his “understanding of the character.” But another thread of the feedback was centered on confusion.

“So many people wikipedia-ing Dear Evan Hansen today and so many people finding out it’s not a musical about a gay kid who broke his arm lol,” tweeted Vox writer Alex Abads. 

For those who haven’t seen the Broadway production and have only the play to guide them, making the assumptioin that Dear Evan Hansen was about a gay teen who was going through about of depression and broke his arm seems easy enough. But, in actuality the hit musical is about a straight boy who pretends to have been friends with another boy who killed himself. There’s even a song where Evan sings about how he and Conner, the other boy, weren’t gay. “Our friendship goes beyond/Your average kind of bond/But not because we’re gay/We’re close, but not that way,” they sing in the song “Sincerely, Me.”

So, why did the entire internet think this musical was gay? Well, there are several reasons.

One is that the lead role hasn’t only been played by multiple gay actors, but that those actors seem to keep ending up in relationships with each other. Platt, who stars in the movie, originated the role, and in 2017 was replaced by Noah Galvin. Platt and Galvin started dating in January of 2020.

Two other actors who have played the role, and even costarred together, Taylor Trensch and Ben Levi Ross, are also in a relationship, and have been since 2017. If this musical isn’t gay, why are so many of the actors who play the title character gay? We’ll leave to the casting directors. 

Twitter user @peabrainidiot also makes a compelling case by showing the poster for the musical. They tweeted, “ppl are like how did people think dear evan hansen was gay like look at this cover that is the cover of a gay ya novel.”

Other users pointed out the similarities between the titles of Dear Evan Hansen and Love, Simon, which is actually about a gay teen writing letters. In Dear Evan Hansen‘s trailer, after finding one of Hansen’s letters to himself, Conner becomes upset, running out even. If you already think that he’s gay, you could easily assume that he had written the letter to himself about his crush on Conner. But that’s not the case.

Writer Jorge Molina really said what all of us where thinking when he tweeted out the infamous clip of Britney Spears realizing in real-time during an interview that Ryan Seacrest is, in fact, not gay, and labelled it “Gay Twitter reading the Wikipedia for Dear Evan Hansen today.”

So, Dear Evan Hansen might not be a gay story, but we love Ben Platt, and we love a musical, so we’re definitely still going to see it. Besides, it can always be a gay love story in our fanfics.

RELATED: Ben Platt Weighs In on Controversial Debate Around Queer Roles, Actors

A thug who left a gay couple in a trauma unit after a brutal homophobic, transphobic attack has been jailed for nearly 10 years.

Brandon Taylor, 19, will serve an extended sentence of nine and a half years after a Worcester Crown Court judge in England ruled he was a dangerous offender on Friday (14 May).

Taylor admitted grievous bodily harm with intent and actual bodily harm after attacking William Senior and his partner Barnaby Edgar, who is trans, as they walked to a Morrison’s supermarket in Malvern.

He was also convicted of a string of other malicious attacks across the Worcester and Malvern areas, where Taylor bit a McDonald’s patron, bit a police officer, battered one man with a pool bar and robbed a victim of his £150 skateboard.

On 20 September, 2019, Senior and Edgar, who both live with anxiety and depression and are on the autistic spectrum, were approached by a group of “rowdy males”, prosecutors said, according to Worcester News.

Taylor, alongside another man, lobbed homophobic and transphobic slurs at them before brutally beating them with knuckle dusters until they were both unconscious.

Senior was left with an open wound to the left of his temple and his jaw was broken in at least two places, which forced him to be placed on a liquid diet for eight weeks. Edgar suffered a broken nose.

One of the other men in the group of attackers, Asfandyar Kiani, 21, was handed a similarly hefty sentence of nine years in March.

Taylor also admitted two counts of assault occasioning actual bodily harm for punching Bryn Hayes at a McDonald’s in Worcester city center 21 February, 2019. He bit into the victim’s ear and, when asked to leave by staff, proceeded to stick the victim again in the cheek.

On that same day, he lobbed a pool ball at Christopher Lancaster at the Horn and Trumpet pub.

The following day, he made off with a victim’s skateboard by a bus stop along London Road.

He also stole a meal deal BP Garage in Castle Street on 31 December and, later that day, punched a man in the jaw at McDonald’s in Worcester.

When approached by police, he bit one officer, PC Bradbury, and said: “You’re not arresting me. I’m going to bed.”