This past weekend’s Pride festivities were a welcome sight for all who battled for decades to end homophobia in the island.
Sadly, it came just a month too late for an internationally acclaimed gay activist to finally witness it in the town where he was born.
Tributes have been paid to humanist gay activist George Alfred Broadhead, who died in Kenilworth, Warwickshire, last month.
Stuart Hill paid tribute to his friend and fellow activist, saying: ’George was not only a remarkable - and very funny - human being but a good friend, a fellow Manxman and a keen supporter of Isle of Man Freethinkers, the local humanist group, since the early days.’
Mr Broadhead grew up in Hutchinson Square, Douglas, where his parents ran a bed and breakfast hotel before the area was requisitioned and converted into a camp for internees during the Second World War.
The camp was described as ’the artists’ camp’ due to the amount of artists and intellectuals who resided there.
Within weeks of the camp opening, the internees set up a camp ’university’, and went on to launch a highbrow newspaper, as well as hosting lectures, concerts and plays.
Mr Hill said: ’George was particularly amused to learn a few years ago that the plays included a daring skit on Romeo and Juliet entitled Romeo and Julian - quite astonishing anywhere in 1940, especially the Isle of Man.’
In the 1950s, Mr Broadhead relocated to London, and later was among the first members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE).
He also acted as a mentor to the young Peter Tatchell, an internationally renowned gay rights campaigner, who recently sent a message of good luck and thanks to the island for celebrating the first public Pride.
In the late 1970s, when social conservative activist and ’clean-up TV’ campaigner Mary Whitehouse successfully brought a private prosecution for blasphemous libel against the publication Gay News, she declared ’everything good and true’ in Britain was being undermined by ’the humanist gay lobby’.
As both a gay man and a humanist, Mr Broadhead knew of no such lobby, but swiftly formed one, named the Gay Humanist Group - later renamed the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association.
He later founded another effective campaign group, the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT).
They are now two of the longest established gay and lesbian groups in the UK.
Mr Hill continued: ’One later campaign of George’s particularly makes Manx humanists proud, because only one classroom in Africa gratefully bears the name of a Manxman, and he is a gay atheist.
’Some years ago, the PTT began heavily contributing to a secular school in Uganda - a country where some of the most notorious religious prejudice continues. In return, one schoolroom there is named the George Broadhead and Roy Saich Classroom.
Mr Broadhead is survived by his long-term partner and husband, Roy Saich.