| DAVID PAISLEY
Lights, camera, activism… the Scottish actor isn’t afraid to take a stand against inequality and to speak up for our trans family
As community heroes go, they don’t often come bolder and better than David Paisley. Currently starring in BBC
One Scotland’s soap opera River City, actor and activist David first made tabloid headlines in a Holby City/ Casualty crossover episode way back in 2002 when he kissed his on-screen boyfriend, played by Lee Warburton. Even David admits that the kiss was “quite a lot” for its time.
“For me, it just felt natural because it was the right thing for the character,” David says of the deep tongue action, clips of which can easily be found online, thanks to Google. (We’ll pause here while you do just that…)
David continues, “When we filmed it, the other actor, director and me wanted it to be a long, passionate kiss. So, if you watch it, we start off in one position, and then slowly spin round so it’s in the opposite position, and we did that on purpose so they couldn’t cut it or make it shorter. And that was a purposeful choice because I knew if they could cut it, they would.”
Needless to say, there was a huge outcry: “I wasn’t really aware of how much controversy there was going to be around that. The thing I’m less proud of is after the complaints, the BBC cut any future kisses for my character.” Little has changed, adds David, “What’s shocking is, even now, when you have a gay kiss, or any kind of same-sex intimacy on screen, when two people of the same gender show any kind of affection towards one another, you still get complaints, and I’m amazed at how little progress we’ve really made.”
Although bold for a primetime BBC drama, there was little doubt in his mind whether it was the right thing to do. “I never really worried about the impact on my career,” he says. “I think I just felt it was too important to be visible. A lot of the representation that was on TV was by actors that didn’t identify as LGBT, which is because there weren’t that many out gay actors at the time. Even now, I get messages from people saying, ‘That kiss in Casualty was the first time I realised that I was gay.’ For people to recognise something of themselves in the characters I’ve played, that’s a real privilege.”
Giving a voice to those who struggle to be heard has been a significant factor in David’s life since he was a child. Growing up in the town of Falkirk in Scotland, David’s early years were challenging for lots of reasons, not least because his father was a violent alcoholic. From bullying at school to the anarchy of growing up as the second-youngest of seven boys, it was a difficult environment in which to discover his identity. “It was like a wee squad, which is nice to grow up in, but it was chaos,” David says. “But my mum was a great, loving, amazing person, and held us all together.
“I was quite feminine as a child, and quite soft; that was challenging in an environment that was so masculine, and it really made me stand out a lot,” David recalls. “That’s one of the reasons why my dad, who was a massive homophobe, singled me out. He took me to the doctor at one point to see if he could cure me. The doctor was, like, ‘Well, of course we can’t cure him. He’s only five.’”
When he was six years old, his mother escaped the abusive situation, taking David and his brothers with her, and finding shelter with the help of Women’s Aid. David channelled those experiences into a positive direction and continues to support the charity that helped his family when they were most in need. “That’s been a bedrock of a lot of the things that I do now,” he says. “I’ve always been an outspoken activist. I came out when I was quite young. I came out publicly, because I played a gay character. I made a very specific choice to be out, because I felt like it was important.”
(Incidentally, his father died a few years ago and, due to Scottish laws that don’t allow a person to disinherit their children, David was left some money. “I bought a mattress. And lots of gay things have happened on that mattress. That’s all I’ll say,” he grins cheekily.)
More recently, David’s activism has built momentum on social media where he has become a vocal critic of the
LGB Alliance and its anti-trans stance. “Right now, there’s a real push against LGBT rights, and a focus on antitrans campaigning from certain sections, and there are organisations that claim to represent LGBT rights and equality, and actually don’t. They’re actually anti-trans organisations,” David says of the controversial advocacy group.
Formed in 2019, the LGB Alliance on one hand claims to represent the needs of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, but with the other often campaigns to undermine the trans community’s fundamental rights.
“As someone who’s always been quite outspoken about equality and respecting diversity, I feel like it’s even more important for cisgendered gay men like myself to speak up in support of the trans community, given what they’re going through, the toxic environment and how challenging it must be to be a trans person in the UK right now,” says David.
“Organisations such as the LGB Alliance specifically exist to campaign against trans rights, and they say they’re doing so in my name, as a gay person, and they absolutely do not speak for me. They’re being given a platform to campaign against the rights of people from my community. It’s so important to speak out about the fact that we are one community, and we need to support one another, and allow us not to be divided, because that’s what they seek.”
The LGB Alliance’s track record is a shady one. The group actively campaign against a ban on conversion therapy, in particular, for the rights of religious organisations to continue offering the controversial practice, and have also campaigned against the Scottish Hate Crime Bill. “It doesn’t make any sense that an organisation that says it’s about protecting the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people campaigns against moves to protect those people,” adds David.
He’s acutely aware that it’s also important to be the right kind of ally: “It’s vital that people who have a platform speak out in support of others. But never speak over. I think
“It’s important for cisgendered gay men like myself to speak up for the trans community”
that’s another important thing, if you’re an ally to sections of the community, it’s really important to uplift other people, provide a platform for them to speak, share their experiences. I’m a white, cis gay man — they hold a lot of privilege in the gay community. They’re often listened to a lot more than other members of the community: women, ethnic minorities, trans people, nonbinary people. The focus should be on the less-often-heard members of the community.”
The division between the LGB and T letters of the expansive queer acronym is disheartening to see, and only serves to support the antiLGBTQ+ groups that seek to suppress us all. At the heart of it, David believes, is a lack of compassion for the struggles other people face. “It’s about this real discomfort that people have with things that are different, things that they don’t understand,” he says. “I’ll never understand what it’s like to be a trans person or a non-binary person, but as a human being I have empathy, I can look at people’s experiences and listen.
“A lot of what we’re seeing is an echo of the homophobia that I experienced in the ’90s and early ’00s. A lot of the criticism that gets levelled at the trans community is very familiar: that they’re a danger to children, perverted, not to be trusted. It’s about creating a societal scapegoat. That was how we were treated, as gay men, that’s where my empathy is rooted.”
It’s become abundantly clear that the LGB Alliance is founded on a premise that seeks to revise history, and is also steeped in the privilege that exists for many LGB people now that they have achieved the rights that allow them to mostly live a life without fear of social reprisal. Groups like the LGB Alliance conveniently forget how the wider LGBTQ community exists to elevate and celebrate gender and sexual diversity. What makes our community powerful is that it represents a unified minority working to be heard in the everyday noise of the heterosexual cis majority. None of us seeks to deny the majority’s rights, yet this is exactly what the LGB Alliance continues to do with its anti-trans positioning.
“A lot of the oppression that we experience as gay men comes from the same source as the oppression that exists for trans people. It’s based on gender.” David elaborates further, “We face oppression and inequality based on the gender of the people that we love. Women face inequality based on their gender. Trans people and non-binary people face inequalities based upon the expression of their gender. So gender is at the core of why we all experience inequalities and oppression, homophobia, transphobia; it all comes from a similar root. That’s why you often find people who are homophobic are also transphobic, and biphobic, and queerphobic. It’s an intolerance towards other people that are different, often based on ideas around gender.”
This resonates with David’s relationship with his own gender and being a more feminine child. “I always feel like I look at masculinity from an outside perspective, because I just don’t feel very masculine. My ideas around my own gender are quite complex. Gender is the intersection that we all inhabit, and the oppression from society is largely focused on expressions of gender: who we love, the gender of who we love, or the expression of our own gender. The root of our oppression comes from the same source, and that’s the commonality in our community, why we have to stand together.”
In May, the LGB Alliance was granted charitable status, a situation that caused uproar since most in the LGBTQ+ community perceive them as a hate group because of their anti-trans actions. “They continually campaign online and speak about trans rights and gender issues. That’s why they exist,” says David. “So the idea that the Charity Commission would then legitimise their message by making them a registered charity is abhorrent. Their message is toxic and harmful, not just to the trans community, but to the entire community, because they’re also campaigning against the ban on conversion therapy. They don’t want it banned. They have campaigned against hate crime legislation. That has an impact on the entire LGBT community.”
“LGB Alliance’s message is toxic to the entire community”
David highlights how the group does no positive work to actually uplift LGB rights. There is even speculation that the group is associated with the American Christian right, and critics are curious about the funding that the LGB Alliance receives. “Certainly, the things that they campaign on align very closely with Christian evangelical fundamentalists in America who are very wealthy,” David says, adding that the only thing that we can really do is point this out, and hope that people recognise that the group is harmful and toxic.
Like other LGBTQ+ media, when the LGB Alliance was established, Attitude took the position to not report on its actions and avoid giving its divisive agenda the oxygen of publicity. With the group’s increased platforming by mainstream media, where its representatives frequently ‘debate’ trans issues on news and current affairs programmes, and following the Charity Commission’s flawed judgement to endorse its actions, it has become clear that we can no longer sit on the sidelines and allow the group to go unchallenged.
David is unsure how the conflict between LGB anti-trans activists and the wider LGBTQ+ community can be resolved. “I think the resolution is to increase awareness of what’s going on. You’d hope that resolution could come through dialogue, but I think there’s an entrenched position that exists within the UK where people have taken this very transphobic, anti-trans position, and what I’ve seen in terms of the dialogue that happens online is not fruitful.
“If we can get to a point where that does seem possible, then dialogue might be helpful, but at the moment I think it’s more raising the alarm,” David cautions, also highlighting
how the LGB Alliance’s views seem to be infiltrating government policy. “The LGBT Action Plan has been abandoned by the Conservative government. Seeing initiatives that were supposed to help LGBT people be abandoned, and commitments to equality and diversity being watered down should concern everyone. We’re seeing organisations like Stonewall having their funding threatened [by Equalities Minister Liz Truss], because there’s a campaign against them to have their funding cut.”
Aiming to provide a ray of light in a grey sky, David is part of a group that launched the campaign and fundraising platform LGBT+ Glitterati, and a not-for-profit, Together LGBTQ, to promote equality, diversity, cohesion and mutual support in the community. Set up in reaction to a comment from a member of the LGB Alliance who exclaimed, “Oh, it’s the typical gay glitterati,” David decided to reclaim the insult and sells LGBT Glitteratibranded merchandise to fundraise for the Legal Defence Fund for Transgender Lives. “We’ve raised quite a lot of money. But largely what we want to do is just campaign in a positive way, to try and uplift other members of the community,” he says.
His work to bring those who support hate groups into public awareness extended to SNP MP Joanna Cherry. He took to social media to question why the MP was supporting a fundraiser that was questioning hate crime guidance that the police use. This particular campaign was from a group that used the hashtag #SayYesToHate. Needless to say, Ms Cherry, who is also a lawyer, didn’t like the question and reciprocated by filing a legal claim of £2,500 against David.
“It was terrifying,” David says. “I’m not a wealthy person, I don’t get paid a lot working for the BBC, and also it’s scary to feel that someone’s going to use their power and influence and legal ability against me. The letter was very serious about its intent. All I had done was ask a question.”
David says Ms Cherry’s legal action was all about her seeking to stop people asking legitimate questions. “To question an elected representative is absolutely valid; to ask why are you supporting a group that wants to say yes to hate? And they used that hashtag on Trans Day of Remembrance, which is a day about celebrating the lives of trans people that we’ve lost. I had to take legal advice, and it cost me quite a lot of money, but I felt it was important to defend myself against the actions of this person. We never got an answer about why she chose to support this particular campaign group that says yes to hate.”
David is keen to add that, following the event, the MP experienced abuse online, which he highlights is never fair or acceptable. “I’ve experienced that as well, and from my perspective, I know how harmful that can be to a person’s wellbeing.”
The situation left David with severe anxiety, which worsened when someone sent him death threats. “It had a really difficult impact on my mental health and wellbeing. I’ve also experienced harassment at my workplace. I had panic attacks. I couldn’t leave the house. I didn’t want to go back to work. I had to get help from the local mental health team, and try and get support.”
On the day of his Pride Awards shoot, David is shaken by news of an ongoing police action investigating the worst of these threats: “The online stuff was so toxic and harmful.
There were accusations that I was a paedophile, and that I abused women and children. There were points where I considered taking my own life, I felt that the environment was so oppressive. My childhood was marked by abuse, so to see people freely accuse me of that kind of behaviour as if that’s an OK thing to say about a gay man, caused me a lot of emotional difficulty.”
He continues, “When you come from a minority community that is historically oppressed, online abuse has a real impact on your wellbeing, your sense of safety, your sense of acceptance within society. I got to a point where I felt unsafe going outside. I felt unsafe being myself, being an out, open, gay man. It brought back a lot of experiences from my youth, and I had to reach out and get proper mental health support.”
Despite the fact that his advocacy has had a personal impact, David believes it’s important to continue calling people out. “No matter how much it’s impacted me personally, I can’t imagine the stress and anxiety of being a trans person in the UK at the moment, given the public debate that’s had about their lives every day. As much as it might have had a personal impact on my wellbeing, it’s going to be ten times more challenging for members of that community.
“I can step away from this debate. I can turn the internet off and not look at those comments. I can go under a duvet and forget. Trans people can’t step away from themselves and from society’s transphobia. They can’t, because that’s their life, that’s their day-to-day.”
As Pride Award recipients go, David Paisley is a worthy hero.
“There were points where I considered taking my own life”