Ian McKellen - Full Address

I know you're waiting for this so I'll keep it short ladies and gentlemen the Oxford Union could not be more honored to introduce Ian McKellen thank you thank you hello how nice to see you we might as well get this out of the way I just had to say to those poor people who couldn't get in what I would say to all of you facing examinations as you do if you don't if you don't work hard you know it if you if you don't do your revision you never happened you shall not pass so any of you who thought you were coming to here Imelda Marcos tonight you know disappointed or Stephen Fry at Stephen Fry and me in the same week I don't know well why am I here you might well say and your president very kindly invited me is the simple answer I was once here not that long ago and enjoyed myself enormously it's a bit more cosy an Oxford after Cambridge I have to tell you and I took advantage this afternoon of visiting chawal school and talking to some of the students there was some of the 1900 of them from 11 euros up to 18 about what it used to be like when I was their age growing up gay in the north of England and perhaps as an introduction to what would eventually be I hope a conversation you might be interested to hear what it used to be like because it scarred me for life really when I was discovering I was gay at about the same time that you were all discovering or most of you that you weren't it was against the law to make love if you were a couple of men I had friends put in prison for making love so discovering that I was gay or rather queer was the word we used in those days or rather the word that was used about us very unpleasant words queer you didn't really talk about it because you didn't really know about it and there was no way you could find out about it there were no books in the school library or in the public library there was nothing in the newspapers on television reading no chatty man you know no Paul O'Grady no Gordon Graham Norton nothing really Oscar Wilde vaguely but no mention when studying Jacobi in history that James ifirst was known by his courtiers as Queen James the man who patronized William Shakespeare and commissioned the authorized version in the Bible was a practicing homosexual who wrote some of the most beautiful letters to his boyfriends so you were in a sort of horrible non place you might call it a closet really a cupboard is the English word for the closet and I was firmly in it and didn't know how I could get out of it it seemed the door that wouldn't really open and my best friend was gay at school he's called David Hargreaves professor auguries of this University professor of education eventually and that Cambridge - a double honor and who set down the rules really about how state maintained schools are run David Hodges and I two little gay boys in Bolton and neither of us knew it of the other I didn't have sex till I was an undergraduate and I was just finishing Cambridge when I fell in love with a beautiful boy from Kansas who was but about to become a professional actor Kurt and I and at last I felt I joined the human race but not entirely because still we didn't talk about being gay the idea of gay politics or and the advancing gay rights just wasn't on the cards and we were forced to live in this odd no-man's land of our loving where you could and no clubs no bars nothing and one of the reasons I became a professional actor was that I'd heard that that there were gay people in the professional theatre and it turned out to be the case so in life not able to express my emotions not able to be honest but within the confines of a character in a play life sorted out for you lines to learn moves to follow night after night I could have a certain sort of freedom in disguise and indulge my emotions and display them through the characters I was playing I think that's why a lot of professional actors are homosexual I lived very openly and happily with Brian Taylor who was a history teacher at a comprehensive school in London we through the 60s and 70s we were had gay friends straight friends went out together never showed any affection for each other in public that would have laid us open to the charge of causing a breach of the peace can you imagine no holding hands no arms around each other's shoulders no kissing or hugging at the airport or the bus station and yet we took that as the norm and we thought it was sort of all right and when I was at the Edinburgh Festival in 1969 playing richard ii and edward ii to play all about perhaps the first play ever with a gay hero bran and i nightly broke the law of that land and somehow thought it was this was the norm and that it would always be like this and that and the advance of gay rights in the united states which began with the Stonewall riots when the drag queens of the Stonewall Inn turned against their oppressors the police and stood up for themselves and started the whole gay rights movement in the western world I didn't know anything about it really didn't pay much attention and what got me involved and what got me out of the closet the cupboard which is a journey you make coming out to yourself then to your friend friends siblings maybe family at last parents hope that goes well and then the world at large soon - there's no one who you mind knowing that you're gay that took me 49 years and uh it happened uh in this way Oh mrs. Thatcher who this University refused an honorary Doctorate - I'm very happy to say passed a law are called section 28 which you if you don't know about it you will not believe it said that in future it would be illegal in the United Kingdom in a state maintained school to speak positively about homosexuality on the grounds that you would be promoting homosexuality that if you tell the little darlings anything about yourself as a gay person you will be trying to convert them to become gay it's a nonsense it's laughable but it became the law of the land and a cruel or - because it inhibited individuals and a whole generation of schoolchildren were denied the facts about the world at large and about individuals like me and perhaps a little bit about themselves and some of their teachers who were gay no it could not be mentioned because and the law said gay relationships were pretended family relationships this isn't that long ago during my lifetime in this country oh god did I get angry and I burst open the cupboard door and that came out on a radio interview with with a man a homophobe called Peregrine worst thorn he wasn't by any chance president of this society was it no anyway he with a name like that he could have been anything and he he was defending section 28 and I was attacking it and in doing that I kept slipped out at the door and said that I was gay which is why I objected so strongly to it and when I came to be lighted have not long after who should be standing next to me in the line to be knighted - but Sir pelegrin worse than that's called balance I suppose it's Sarah and I along with the 19 other people ten lesbians and ten gay men or openly gay formed a society a group a Lobby to change this section 28 law get rid of it and stick up for ourselves in the spirit of the Stonewall right and that's why we call ourselves Stonewall I was so ignorant I thought stonewalling was something to do with with with cricket you know and I I said that's not appropriate for us we want to be knocking things to the boundary and then they had to explain to me I was a babe but I have never led the charge I've always been in the rear and maybe carrying the banner but never designing it or but together with those people like-minded many of them veterans of the the gay rights movement who taught me about gender parity 10 men 10 women who explained what could be done III got involved in politics what do you do you know when you come out because when you join the real world you make connections and that that's what politics is all about you made connections with people that you'll never meet but who have been through the same sort of experience as you have yourself and I had the time of my life and I went to visit Downing Street mr. major I lobbied him and I went in once to lobby a woman called Victoria not Victoria Lavinia Virginia Virginia Virginia Bottomley she was she was a minister who had to be lobbied if he wanted to get laws changed and I went in to speak to her one day and I was making the case as you had to in those days do you know the the Royal College of Psychiatry thinks there's nothing wrong with being gay the Royal College of Surgeons thinks there's nothing wrong with being gay the Royal College of nurses thinks there's nothing longer than being gay unless you listen to my spiel on it and then she said well you know in many young men and women are confused about their sexuality and they seek help from professional psychiatrists to help them through and so grateful are they for the advice they receive that they decide to become psychiatrists themselves so you see the witness of the Royal College of Psychiatry to gay people and as we walked out I was with her secretary and we walked in silence and the carpeted colleges corridors of Whitehall and the secretary said to me sometimes you can't believe your own ears can you and that's true you couldn't but we made it through and we had to make it through by tackling the media who would never report gay issues Simon Callow they distinguished actor who was out at school out at university and outs when he left drama school in every interview who gave would talk about his sexuality and no newspaper would publish it because they felt it was the worst thing they could possibly say about him and even though he'd said it himself he had to write a book to come out I went to visit John major in Downing Street making the same plea the gay people should be treated equally with everybody else I took him a little book was called the pink plaque guide and it was a picture of buildings in London where gameís gay people had lived and on the cover was Downing Street and I gave this to him and I said do you know who the first gay Prime Minister was Prime Minister and he looked a bit embarrassed well William Pitt the Younger would allow no women in Downing Street except the set the housekeeper verboten no women in his life at all he died of alcoholism and I wonder if it was the pressure of staying in the cupboard for so long even though it was a distinguished one in dentistry didn't lead him to drink at an early death but there is looking very handsome in just outside the Westminster Hall inside the houses of parliament but it tight pair of trousers I noticed his way but Stonewall and others well we got rid of section 28 we made it legal for gay people to serve in the military if they wanted to we made it legal for gay people to teach we made it illegal for anyone to be sacked on grounds of sexuality we've got to establish an equal age of consent and then as a sort of gift at the end which we hadn't expected after civil partnerships were established it was made legal for gay people and lesbians to marry each other exactly on a part with the rest of the population so nothing more to do you'd think perhaps I mean we do have the most liberal laws in the world in this with regard to this matter in the United Kingdom we should be proud of that but beware that the struggle isn't over I say to the kids oh please don't call that watch that's not working gay please don't refer to that gay TV program meaning worthless useless not to be regarded because it might be overheard by someone like me who thinks that you think that I'm gay in that sense it's interesting it's a synonym for the old queer isn't it it's queer watch anyway because bad language can lead to bad behavior I think and schools understand that and now it is illegal to discriminate on grounds of sexuality so how the world has changed it used to be illegal to talk positively about homosexuality in schools and now it is required by the law and that's been the revolution and you I hope fuel reserves to be beneficiaries of it please take advantage of it and but know that it's still more to be done I mean you know four or five years ago Michael was walking through Trafalgar Square he just got a job he was a civil servant he'd been out of work for a long time and he and his husband or gay partner would arms around each other celebrating the pubs are just shut and as they passed the lines there the three teenagers spied a couple of queers then shirt lifter all those charming expressions and Michael was feeling pretty chipper and confident and went up to them said now come on what's the matter of it yes I'm gay at which point the lad kicked him behind his knees and as his head hit the flagstones one of the girls who had high heels stamped on his head and she did it again until she'd killed him in our capital city oh she's in prison of course but where did she learn that what did she think she was doing what was it inside her that made her think that she could do that to anybody on the grounds that she didn't like the fact that they were gay and that's why you have we have to go on and on about it a lad blinded in Sheffield two weeks ago with acid thrown in his face coming out of a gay bar now we don't have to look to Iran where last year they strung up six to 16 year old young men who'd made love and with steel horses around their neck pulled them up with a crane and televised it that'll teach them I'm a patron of the Albert Kennedy trust and that's a wonderful organization named after Albert Kennedy who when he was a young teenager in Manchester 25 years ago the year that Stonewall was founded was thrown out by his family because he was gay on the streets drugs I suppose on the game who knows I don't know and one night lonely and unbending he was chased by some lads up to the top of the a carpark in my truth he threw himself down and died and the other Kennedy is in place to protect people like him and last year 250 young people men and women teenagers came out to their parents and Matilda leave our house and on the streets if they're lucky they discover the Albert Kennedy trust who try and reconcile them with their families and if that doesn't work mentor and even foster them provide them with shelter and I met a young Emanuele last week who had been through the process and turned out by his family and has now completed his law degree and is going to read for the bar 150 in Manchester Albert Kelly did trust rescued a hundred in Newcastle but they don't have the funds to stretch to Birmingham or edinburgh aberdeen swansea plymouth portsmouth oxford i don't know how many kids are on the street tonight because they were thrown out by their parents because they said they were gay you see they think it's all alright the sea paul o'grady on the TV they see chatty man they maybe catch me and they think oh it's fine to be gay hmm not necessarily it's how it's a depressing situation and yet at the same time everything is in place in the law to give those people their rights as equals with us all I tell the kids this and they all get it no one's born prejudiced they learn it and they can unlearn it very very quickly because they know that their each of us a member of a minority you know whether we've got red hair curly hair blue eyes whether we're twins where they got short sight whether were disabled in some way where they were autistic whether were whether we've got brothers and sisters actually that puts you in a minority all these minorities we're all members of these minorities there's no such thing as the majority doesn't exist not a majority of sameness thank God we're all different as you look around here you see every single face is different I mean it's wonderful isn't it and if every face is different every personality is different every inside is different and for goodness sake every sexuality could be different we could all have different notions of what we are and that would be the ideal situation to recognize and kids get it and I'm sure you get it - I'm going to stop talking you can ask me any question you like and I'll answer it yeah you

Channel: OxfordUnion

Views: 132,747

Rating: 4.9083967 out of 5

Keywords: Union, Society, University, Debates, Debating, Interview, ian mckellen, ian mckellen you shall not pass, gandalf, gay rights, oxford union, ian mckellen talk, Lord (Noble Rank), Homosexuality (Quotation Subject), lgbt campaigning, LGBT Culture (Organization Sector), Stonewall (Organization), LGB rights lobby, LGB rights, The Lesbian & Gay Foundation, pride london

Id: EPwiOftyBOg

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Fri Mar 27 2015