 The final item of business is a member's business debate on motion 15694, in the name of Jenny Gilruth, on LGBT history month. This debate will be concluded without any questions being put. We can ask those members who wish to speak in the debate to press the request to speak buttons now, and I call on Jenny Gilruth to open the debate. Ms Gilruth, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this evening's member's debate on LGBT history month. It is also a privilege to do so in a Parliament that Professor Andrew Reynolds of North Carolina University has described as the gayest Parliament in the world. I am also delighted to see that the Minister for Equalities Christina McKelvie will be responding this evening to someone who has always been a true ally of the LGBT community. Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell writing in the novel 1984. In the same year of the title of that book, Chris Smith, the Labour MP for Islington South in Finsbury, came the first openly gay member of Parliament. Ten years after, Maureen Cahoon, the MP for North Hampton North, came out as the first lesbian MP. The year before I started school in 1989, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher introduced section 28 of the local government act. The act stated that a local authority shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality or promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship. It was to remain the case until the year 2000 when I turned 16. For all but my final year at school, my teachers were told not to teach about being gay. They were not to promote it as being acceptable. Being gay was wrong and the system enshrined it in law. Thankfully, we live in more enlightened times now. Who would have thought back in the year 2000 that this Parliament would back a law to create equal marriage? Or to support inclusive education in our schools, the absolute antithesis of section 28? Or to pardon gay men and, importantly, apologise to them for ever being criminalised just because of who they loved? Undoubtedly, we live in better times. However, as the Prime Minister braced herself for an impromptue game of pool with the Italian Prime Minister on Sunday nights, I wonder if she paused for a thought to consider Mohammed Algeti, a TV presenter who was charged with promoting homosexuality, found £3,000 in Egyptian pounds and sent to prison for a year last month. Perhaps she had a glass of prosecco after the TV cameras had left with the Italian Prime Minister. I wonder if Giuseppe Conte mentioned his Minister for Families, Lorenzo Fontana, who was against civil unions passed by Italy in 2016 because he said, next time, they will ask to marry dogs. However, I am not convinced for our Prime Minister and her commitment of the LGBT community because she has already led a Government propped up by the DUP. If the history of the LGBT community has taught us anything, from Margaret Thatcher to Theresa May, it is that our activism must continue. That is why the theme of this year's LGBT history month, Catalyst 50 Years of Activism, is so important. In my constituency, Glwnorthy Sly school are the living embodiment of that activism. Staff in the school have been trained to raise awareness of LGBTI issues and its impact on pupils. They are celebrating LGBT history month right now with displays, presentations around the school and within departments, subject-specific LGBT content is being taught. Added to that, pupils have been delivering assemblies on homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. Things have definitely changed for the better in our schools. Ten years ago, I remember attending an in-service day in this city focused on discrimination in the classroom. It was around about the time of the Stonewall campaign, some people are gay, get over it. It was also not that long after the BBC radio one presenter, Chris Moyles, had attracted controversy by describing a mobile phone ringtone as gay. He said, I don't want that ringtone, that's gay, live on air. Quite how a ringtone can have a sexuality, I remain unsure. Nonetheless, what Moyles' intervention did was to spark a debate about the use of the word gay pejoratively. Something that was acceptable practice when I was at school and in the early days of my own teaching. Indeed, I was working in a profession who had been instructed in law not to discuss sexuality with pupils in any way, shape or form. They weren't used to calling it out and many didn't know that they could. That's why the work of the TIE campaign has been so transformational in Scotland schools over this parliamentary session alone. The TIE campaign achieved its campaign goal last November, when the Government fully accepted the recommendations of the LGBTI inclusive education working group. Throughout LGBTI history month, the TIE campaign has been championing LGBTI icons every day in February. One of those icons is a fellow pfeifer and former para-swimmer, swimming coach and triathlete Stefan Hogan. Ahead of today's debate, he told me, LGBTI history month means so much to me because it is a way to celebrate the hard work and sacrifice that our community has gone through in the past so that I can marry the man that I love in the present. As a community, we need to celebrate this month to make sure that young people today know what our community had to go through a short 25 years ago. Stefan Hogan is right, we should celebrate. Almost exactly a month ago, I was delighted to host Fife's own pink salter in the Scottish Parliament at a reception to mark LGBTI history month. It was a particularly powerful event where people shared their personal stories of what LGBTI history month meant to them. A couple from Fife, a student from Dundee, a transgender woman, and all of them had fought battles, but all of them were activists. George Orwell told us that who controls the present controls the past, but the same writer also used the words Nancy and Pansy in his disdain for what he called the pansy left and Nancy poets. I hope that the daily record would not today print the headline gay sex lessons for Scott's schools as he did in the year 2000, but the Daily Mail was more than happy to run with the warning gay rights lessons in all schools in November last year. Time has moved on, but ingrained prejudice remains. It might be 2019, but I still can't marry my girlfriend in the church that I was brought up in. If I had a boyfriend, that love would be welcomed. LGBTI history month is about celebrating our history, but we should never seek to stay shy away from the darkness that history also tells us. From section 28 to criminalising men just for who they loved to a seamlessly harmless round of pool, the need to challenge homophobia, biphobia and transphobia has never been greater. We should celebrate the lives of the LGBTI icons who have lived and fought battles before our time, but we should also commit to that enduring legacy of activism and work to be the catalyst for LGBTI equality every month of the year, remembering that we control the present. I want to thank my friend and colleague Jenny Garrooth for securing this debate, and I feel pretty strongly about the issue. The reason is that I want to express my solidarity with people who feel erased from history, because history as written does not give voice to all the influencers and agents of change. No group is more erased, I feel, than gay women. I certainly would not claim any right to speak on their behalf, but rather I want to express my long felt solidarity with gay women in particular who I feel are woefully underrepresented in culture and history. I feel this about women in history in general, and if you think that it is difficult to find key women who changed their world, then it is doubly difficult to find gay women who did so, because the history has just not been written by women or gay women. Stories of those catalysts need to be told and brought into the mainstream. I use the phrase often when talking about women in elected positions, if you cannot see it, you cannot be it. In the case of young women realising their sexuality, if you do not see it, you may think that you have to hide it, but the mainstreaming of LGBT characters, specific films, television series, literature, recognising the sexuality of historic figures and the unearthing of the stories of LGBT figures in history, is an epically important way of ensuring that a society which does not discriminate and is a platform for ensuring that our telling of history reaches a truth that includes every agent of change. If the catalysts who fought for LGBT rights are not agents of change, then who is? I want to use the rest of my time today to talk about the importance of cinema in rebalancing the gay women's erasure from history and reflecting history from the perspective of gay women. I am a formal film student, so forgive me, I am indulging myself. Sadly, many of the films that you have heard of detailing gay-female relationships were directed by men. Blues, The Warm's Colour, springs to mind as this cattle, although based on the work of lesbian Patricia Highsmith, was directed by Todd Haynes. English language films, where the protagonist is a gay female of significance? I cannot really think of many yet. There is one about the Queen Christina of Sweden in Swedish language, but surely there are great films to be made about Gladys Bentley or Tallulah Bankhead or many of the women in the suffragette movement who were gay. However, there are so many great female gay directors out there, Lisa Cholodenko, Kimberly Pearce, Lisa Gornick, Kanti Wichman, Cheryl Dunye, and we must not forget the work of the Scottish Queer International Film Festival in Scotland to showcase work by LGBT artists. We have watched television change from that momentous appointment viewing of the kiss between two women in Brookside in the 1980s to gay female characters being present in drama and almost as the norm, but films about LGBT relationships are multiple, in many cases mainstream, but casting our attention backwards into history and retelling history with the airbrushing of female gay sexuality removed is vitally important if we are to get closer to a truth of what really happened. It needs to be in our cinemas, our living rooms and as Jenny Gorewith was so eloquently said in our classrooms. There needs to be a recognition that stories about gay women in history are as relevant as stories about white, upper-class men in history. They are not of niche appeal. Just like hidden figures writing them wrong in the part African American women made in the space race, I want to hear stories where gay women changed the face of the earth. I want the gay women in my family to see something of themselves on screen, something of themselves that is not just in court but struggle for acceptance, as important as that is, or the nature of sexual relationships, but also about how women led the change and were protagonists of their own time. I want to end by thanking Jenny Gorewith again for giving me the opportunity to make my points on the importance of mainstreaming at LGBT film and sticking my O then as a sister and an ally. Thank you very much. I call Annie Wells. We call by David Torrance, Ms Wells, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer, and to Jenny Gorewith for bringing this topic to the chamber this evening. It is always a huge privilege to speak in these debates, celebrating LGBT History Month. In each year, I am reminded of how far we have come from when I grew up in the 70s and 80s and how drastically the lives of LGBT people have changed. LGBT History Month provides a perfect opportunity to celebrate this and to reflect on what comes next when it comes to activism. As Jenny Gorewith has covered, this is a significant year. The theme for 2019, Catalyst, 50 Years of Activism, marks 50 years since the Stonewall uprising in New York City, which kickstarted the equal rights movement for LGBT people across the globe. 50 years of hard work and personal sacrifice by dedicated activists has resulted in a save change. We have seen equal marriage, the right to adopt, LGBTI and class of education, and last year the passing of the landmark historical pardons bill. The lives of LGBTI people have changed immeasurably and with society's views. I know how proud I am to be in the LGBTI community, and I have spoken about it before. It was a real journey getting to this point. That is why I feel so strongly about the need to celebrate LGBTI History Month and why I am encouraged by the level of activity in Scotland from Stornoway to Dumfries. As LGBT youth highlighted, popularity and awareness of this month is increasing quickly. There were 125 events listed this year, which is up 25 per cent from 2018. The dedicated Twitter account, LGBT HistoryScot, now has 10,000 followers. In Glasgow there have been many events marking the month. It is not just individuals getting involved, it is communities, third sector organisations and businesses. Last week, the Gallery of Modern Art held a round table event to discuss future strategies for documenting and collecting objects that would increase the visibility of LGBTI history. Earlier this month, we saw the annual rainbow run, which, unfortunately, I was unable to take part in, but I will be doing it in 2020. Glasgow has also hosted Leaps Scotland's corporate 10-pin bowling tournament, giving businesses the opportunity to mark the month and show their support. Those are just a few examples of the many events hosted, and I wish to put on record my thanks to everyone involved in organising them. As well as celebration, LGBT HistoryScot provides an opportunity for addressing where our priorities should lie. LGBTI people are still affected by discrimination, prejudice, hate crime and social isolation, and in rural areas particularly, there is still much more to be done in the way of progress. In 2015, 18 per cent of the Scottish population still believed that sexual relations between two adults of the same sex is always wrong. When it comes to trans rights, prejudice is even more prevalent, with little public awareness of what it is like to be a trans person. In 2015, 32 per cent of people said that they would be unhappy if a close relative married or formed a long-term relationship with someone who had undergone gender reassignment, so it is clear that there is still some way to go. Using just politics as a marker, although inroads have been made with the representation of gay people in the Scottish Parliament, we are yet to see an openly trans or intersex politician in Scotland. When it comes to the Gender Recognition Act, there still needs to be discussion in this place on reforming the process by which a person can change their legal gender without interest of medical assessment. To finish today, I would like again to give praise and wish every success to the LGBTI groups across Scotland, organising events up and down the country. It is so important that LGBTI rights remain firmly on the agenda and in the Scottish Parliament, and I believe that we can continue to work together to achieve positive life-altering change. Thank you very much. I call David Torrance to follow by Kezia Dugdale, Mr Torrance, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I thank Jenny Gilruth for bringing this motion to the chamber today to raise awareness of the LGBT History Month in Scotland. I also thank the LGBT Youth Scotland for co-ordinating this incredible nationwide event. Now, in its 13th year, the LGBT History Month is a fantastic opportunity to celebrate LGBT culture. We look back at LGBT history and look forward to the future of LGBT activism. As we have heard, this year's themed catalyst, 50 years of activism, marks the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings in New York in 1969 and the birth of the modern pride movement. The Stonewall riots were decisive, irredefining moment in the struggle for LGBT equality and were a catalyst of a modern fight against LGBT oppression across the world. In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a gay bar in the west village of Manhattan became the epicenter of an event that changed the course of LGBT history. One year later, on the first anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion in June 1970, the very first gay pride march was held in Manhattan. Since then, millions have attended LGBT pride marches, parades and festivals that have taken place all over the world. Fast forward, 50 years and there has been, and I doubt there have been, many great strides made in LGBT equality. We all know that Scotland has become a leader when it comes to LGBTI equality, and we are considered to be one of the most progressive countries in Europe. Scotland has regularly been ranked as one of the best countries in Europe in relation to legal protections for LGBTI people. Last year, in a historic move, Scotland became a first country in the world to embed the teaching of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex rights in school curriculum. By teaching our children about sexual diversity, we can help to tackle discrimination and to promote acceptance towards different lifestyles. In Fife, we are extremely lucky to have many fantastic ambassadors of LGBT equality. They would like to take this opportunity to highlight the positive contributions of just a couple of these groups, Pink Saltire and the LBGT Plus group at Kirkcaldy High School. Since its formation in 2014, Pink Saltire has been an inspiration to LGBT Plus community in Fife and wider Scotland. The team's commitment and dedication to breaking barriers and promoting equality and diversity is amazing. A couple of weeks ago, I visited their pop-up heritage hub at America Shopping Centre in Kirkcaldy and met with some of the team. The exhibition featured the most detailed LGBT history timeline ever produced in Scotland, with key facts and major highlights in the fight for equality, including the same sex marriage and the abolition of discriminatory laws against gay and bisexual men. The event provided a real insight into struggles faced through years by LGBT community and the bravery of activists throughout these years. Figures for a 2017-18 annual report showed an astonishing 1350 hours of voluntary work and 13,626 miles travelled during their community work. From a now-go-five pride to their positive engagements for community consultation across Scotland and continued development of their LGBT awareness training and support, Fife has a lot to thank them for, and I for one look forward to seeing what the future holds for it. For Kirkcaldy High School, LGBT Plus group was established to tackle negative attitudes, discrimination and bullying across the school and to improve the mental health and life chances of LGBT Plus young people. The group makes weekly and comprises of those of identifying as LGBT Plus or as allies with an interest in equality and promoting human rights. In a relatively short time since their formation they have very quickly become a leading group in a fight against discrimination and promotion of equality and a proud recipients of a cosla tackling inequalities and improving health award. One of our members, Cameron Bally, was also named young volunteer at the 2018 Fife Volunteer Action Awards. Collective they have shown that they are a force to be wrecked with and shown no signs of slowing down. It was great to see purple friday features so heavily across social meet there last week. It was wonderful to see a level of engagement from all across Fife, from Kirkcaldy High School staff and the pupils to our fellow councillors. Individuals pledged their support for LGBTI equality and pledged their support to tackling homophobia, biphobia and transphobia. In conclusion, Presiding Officer, I welcome LGBT History Month and offer many thanks to LGBT Youth Scotland as partners involved in the organisation for this year's events. While there have undoubtedly been many great strides in equality, the LGBT plus community will still face significant challenges and discrimination. Therefore, we must now allow ourselves to become complacent and we must continue to fight against discrimination and prejudice wherever and whenever we encounter it and we must continue to stand up for equal rights. I thank you for calling me to speak, knowing that I have to leave the chamber immediately after my contribution, something that I advised you of 24 hours ago, so I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to speak. I say to Jenny Gilruth that congratulations on securing this debate and also on all the work that you have done as a constituency MSP since your election. I know that your first event in the Parliament was for Pink Salter and you have consistently hosted events and created opportunities for LGBT people to tell their stories and to talk about the campaigns that are forthcoming. I know that you will always continue to do that. LGBT History Month is a celebration of the journey that we have come as a community. I would only reflect that when myself and Jenny Gilruth were outed about 18 months ago, people were far more interested in the difference in our politics and the fact that we were of the same gender. In many ways, that demonstrates how far we have come as a country. However, the reality is that there is still a lot of work to be done. I was reminded of that when Jenny and I travelled to New York about a year ago to see first-hand the Stonewall Inn, because, as she mentioned, it is the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots. The Stonewall Inn sits on St Christopher Street in downtown Manhattan, and, if you go there, the first thing that you will pass on the doorway into the bar is a big, bold, red sign from the New York Police Department, which says, "...raded premises", the original sign from when they were invaded by the police all those years ago. Inside the bar, there are posters on the wall. Jenny will remember this well of the Gay Teacher's Association, which was sprayed with painted blood. It was of the gay teachers who marched in 1975 for equality 25 years before we would even consider section 2A and section 28 in this Parliament, the bravery that those teachers demonstrated then to march for equality long before many other countries had even faced up to the problems that we sought to address. It is in that note that it is also worth reflecting what is happening in our schools. Jenny Gerruth did some of that in her opening remarks. When I was young, you were lucky if LGBT young people were tolerated. Ten years ago, they were accepted. Now, we are actively talking about them being included. I think that journey from tolerance to acceptance to inclusion is one that we are now hoping that our trans friends will be able to pass along and journey-wise as well. They should expect exactly the same tolerance, acceptance and inclusion that the LGBT community had before then. There is something else that is happening in our schools just now. Jenny Gerruth touched on this, too. Whenever I have been in schools recently, I have seen the posters for the local school LGBT group, and I have thought about what the 15-year-old version of myself would have thought of that. It just would not have existed in the 90s in my school, the idea that there was a group where LGBT kids could come together and talk about life. Just last week, I heard kids from Madras, high school talk very openly and casually about what it is like to be out at school. I could not have dreamt of being out at school. I did not really know who I was when I was a teenager, but I knew that I was different and I knew to keep my mouth shut. There was one gay kid in my secondary school. Everybody knew who he was, and he was tormented. His life was a living hell during the passage of his school years. I wonder where he is and how he is now. I am so very sorry that I did not do more to stand up for him then, but I know that collectively with others in this chamber we are doing so much more to stand up for him and people like him now. Keeping quiet is not something that just happened 20 years ago. Some people are still doing it today. A recent Stonewall Scotland report told us that one-third of people in Scotland still will not come out at work. I was one of them in this Parliament for a long time. I was outed by a national newspaper. Many people knew that I was gay, but I did not openly talk about it. I was not in command of my own coming out story that was taken away from me. Harvey Milk tells us that the most powerful or most political thing that he can do is come out, but he needs to be in a supportive environment to do that. That was not something that I was able to do at the time, so people being in charge of telling their own stories is immensely important, and we must continue to create an environment where everyone can do that. Another problem that I have talked about in this chamber frequently is about LGBT young people and the homelessness that they experience. 40 per cent of the young people that present is homeless in this city do so because they have had a negative experience of coming out at home, and that transcends all-class barriers. It is working-class kids, it is middle-class kids, it is kids turning up in private school uniforms, so there is so much more that we can do to help all young people to realise their potential. I appreciate that I am over my time, Presiding Officer. I would like to say something very quickly to the cabinet secretary about the Gender Recognition Act, which is coming forth. I understand why the Government has postponed this legislation because they want to get it right. It is incredibly sensitive, but you also need to understand that, in creating that delay, you have created a vacuum, and in that vacuum, fear and ignorance is growing. People's understanding of what those proposals are and what they will mean is festering in a way that I think is unhelpful, and I know that the cabinet secretary probably agrees with that. There is nothing contradictory between my feminism and my LGBT activism. Neither is a threat to the other. I know that, I am comfortable with that, but I am not the one who needs to be convinced. There is so much more that we need to do collectively in this chamber. I am sorry that I will not be able to stay to hear the final speakers or indeed to sum it up, but I endeavour to read all the contributions tomorrow, and I am grateful for the time. I do not know whether the minister will thank you for promoting her so publicly several times, but there it is. I now call Patrick Harvie, if we fall by Emma Harper. Mr Harvie, please. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I add my thanks to Jenny Gilruth, as others have, as well as to the organisations that are taking part in the LGBT history month. Caz Dugdale's excellent contribution there also touched on the anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which the motion mentions. I wanted to go back just a little bit before then, because it was in 1957 that the Wolffenden report recommended the beginnings of decriminalisation of gay male sex within the UK. It was at that point that Scotland diverged, and one of the most notable Scottish voices on the Wolffenden committee, James Adair, was pretty vociferous in saying that he would not support its recommendations. As a voice of the socially conservative religious establishment within Scotland, he was taken seriously. That is probably one of the reasons why that partial decriminalisation, that beginning of decriminalisation, did not happen in Scotland until much later legislation in 80 came into force in 81, due in no small part to the efforts of Robin Cook, whose role I think is sometimes not recognised this long after those events. However, he played a significant role in ensuring that Scotland did eventually see that decriminalisation legislation. Why did it take that much longer? Why was there that delay in Scotland's story? It was partly due to social conservatism, more often due to the perception of social conservatism. Scotland had a story of itself that was of a more religious, more socially conservative society, not just than we are now but than the rest of the UK. In the run-up to devolution, that perception was still there, and our community genuinely had anxieties. What would a Scottish Parliament do with our human rights, with our equality? We did not know that, as it happens, things have turned out better than some feared. This is a Parliament that has sometimes been ahead of the curse, sometimes it has taken longer, but this is a Parliament that still has never yet, in its 20 years of existence, voted against our equality and human rights on any issue. I think that that is a record to be proud of and want to cherish. However, that anxiety was there beforehand. We did not really know. In the first session of the Scottish Parliament, we had the section 2A campaign, section 28, as it was commonly called. As members know, I was an LGBT youth worker in Glasgow at the time. I had to walk past billboards that said, protect our children, and that meant from people like me. It echoes in that nasty homophobic campaign of Margaret Thatcher's speech in 1987 at her party conference, when she complained that children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay. That complaint from a Prime Minister who, elsewhere in the same speech, had been complaining that children were being taught such things as anti-racism. Those were the traditional moral values that she was trying to defend. That attitude echoed through the rhetoric of the Keep the Claws campaign in our early years of this devolved Parliament. Those values, the bigotry of Brian Souter and Thomas Winning, were faced down at the time, and they were defeated on that issue. However, those values did not disappear. How much have we moved on? As others have mentioned, the daily record headline, gay sex lessons for Scotland schools probably would not be printed in the daily record now, but it is very little different than gay and trans lessons for primary schools, the headline that was printed in the Sunday Times just this weekend. One of the newspapers that has so cynically driven the vicious anti-trans backlash that is taking place at the moment. Those issues resonate and they echo through time, telling the stories of our history that are so important because it grounds us in who we are and where we come from, but learning the lessons of history matters all the more. What the lessons tell me from those few examples is that we must stand together. That is the only way that we make progress. Those trying to separate the T from the LGBT will fail. We must stand up to them just as we stood up to those seeking to oppose our equality and human rights before. If they succeed in that, they will not stop at that, so we must ensure that we continue to stand together across the LGBT community, across women's and feminist organisations that support us as well across the whole of our society and across the whole of our Parliament. Before I call Emma Harper, I have several members still wishing to speak, I mind to take a motion without notice and there will be 8.14.3, and I would ask the member leading the debate to move that motion. The motion has been moved. Is the Parliament agreed to extend the debate by up to 30 minutes? I will call Emma Harper to be followed by Finlay Carson, please. I am pleased to be speaking in this important debate this evening to welcome the 13th LGBT history month with the theme catalyst 50 years of activism. I congratulate my friend and colleague Jenny Gilruth on securing the debate. From the outset, I would like to note that Scotland is a world leader in promoting equality, inclusivity, fairness and respect. Jenny Gilruth has mentioned this with her comment that this is the gayest Parliament and I am pleased that the Scottish Government has these values at the heart of all decision making, something that I am sure all of us in the chamber are proud of. I am preparing for this debate. I am reflecting on some of the history of tackling LGBT discrimination in Scotland. I think that it is worth highlighting that, in 2005, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender was made illegal, then in 2009, equal rights were given to same-sex couples who were applying for adoption. Just last year, this Parliament unanimously passed the historical sexual offences, pardons and disregard Scotland act, which allows for gay people to be pardoned from historic convictions based on outdated legislation that targeted them just because of their sexual orientation. More recently, Scotland has been regarded as the best country in Europe for LGBTI equality. The Scottish Government's review of hate crime legislation was also welcome and I am pleased that the Government is currently working to implement some of its key recommendations. I also reflected on the time that I spent living and working in West Hollywood, Los Angeles, during the 90s, a time when LGBT issues across America were very contentious. Members may recall that I led a debate in chamber last year to mark World AIDS Day, where I spoke about some of the stigma that I witnessed whilst living and working in Los Angeles. Challenging the stigma and discrimination is so important and I note that the Thai campaign's success that Jenny Gilruth has already mentioned and I think that it is fantastic to see that that work is going forward. In my South Scotland region, the LGBT community can sometimes struggle to access support because of the rurality of the region and I welcome Annie Wells' comments regarding rurality, which is great, coming from a weekday. We have several outstanding people working in the LGBT community and I would like to give a shout out to Jonathan Gallacher, Ian Campbell and Alice Pooley from Dumfries and Galloway LGBT+. They know the struggles that people in our rural communities face and they keep me up to date with their vital work to support people and tackle homophobia and transphobia with support from other agencies around us. For me, I have contacted the Scottish Horticultural Society with support from a local couple around LGBT discussions. The Scottish Horticultural Society has agreed to take part in an LGBT event and photo op at the Royal Highland show this year to support LGBT issues in the horticultural sector. Again, I congratulate Jenny Gilruth on bringing this important debate to chamber and I reaffirm my support for the progress that this Parliament has made in bringing about equality for all across the LGBT community while also stressing the need for further action to be taken, particularly in our rural areas, to continue to make Scotland the fairest and most progressive country that it can be. I love Kezia Dugdale's words, tolerance, acceptance and inclusion. Those are perfect words to take this work forward. Thank you very much. I call Finlay Carson. We have followed by Gail Ross and Ms Ross. I would also like to thank Jenny Gilruth for bringing this important debate to the chamber this evening. I believe that it is important that we continue to mark LGBT history month. In my contribution, I would like to focus on the contribution that organisations and groups based in Dumfries and Galloway are a hugely rural area where delivery of support can be much less straightforward than in more populated areas. It also represents an opportunity for us to talk about where more work can be done to support the LGBT community, as well as strive for equality in all quarters of society. Although, as other members including Kezia Dugdale have noted, with regard to LGBT, there have been great strides across the globe. In rural constituencies such as my own of Galloway and Western Fries, ensuring equity and equality is more difficult to achieve no matter what the issue is, whether it be health, education or social inclusion, and that is putting aside the historic barriers and prejudices facing our LGBT communities. There are issues in delivering equity and equality, not purely in terms of resources and support for organisations, but for reaching out to the individuals who may live at the end of a farm road or in a rural village. That is why I was extremely pleased during this month to see positive things happening in Dumfries and Galloway with the Dumfries and Galloway LGBT plus receiving £120,000 from the national lottery community fund, which will be used over the next three years. This six-figured sum will be used by the group to offer support and to ease rural isolation and rural communities through a range of different social activities. The importance of that funding to the group was quite tangible when the service manager, Ian Campbell, said that upon announcing the funding, there were quite a few of the members just burst into tears. He stated that we do not want people to travel to us, we want to travel to them. Providing the resource to do that across rural areas such as Galloway and West Dumfries can only send out a positive message to the LGBT community. I know that Dumfries and Galloway LGBT plus recognises issues relating to the issues that we have and the identities and the issues that affect more than just individuals themselves, but also their friends, families and colleagues. They offer many different types of support across the region, including one-to-one support, advocacy, befending, specific transgender support, regional drop-ins and a whole range of other services. During the summer, they get out into their field quite literally at agricultural shows, where I know that they are very warmly welcome by the farming community. As other members have noted, including my colleague Annie Wells, there has been a welcome rise in the number of events taking place in the local areas across this month in particular. In Dumfries, I was also pleased to see the renowned group Lamidor Menace and local artist group We Agree With Eggs run a queer pop-up library in the heart of Dumfries on the High Street over the weekend past. There was a whole host of other free events on offer this weekend, from simply providing a cup of tea and chats to workshops and a human library, which gave LGBT people the chance to tell their own life experiences of living in the area. I hope that those sort of events and more can take place, yes, importantly during this month but also all year round. Only on Sunday there was a speculation regarding the potential LGBT use of one of Dumfries' iconic buildings. The church in the High Street has stood for over 150 years, but numbers have continued to dwindle unfortunately. However, now they are looking for a funding package to put together for the possibility of LGBT friendly housing at the site, particularly for older people with the aim of creating more town centre housing. That is an idea that would have been totally unthinkable a few decades ago or even a few years ago, never mind in the 1860s when the church was first constructed. When we are linking other major issues such as ensuring good quality housing and our town centres alongside LGBT support, then there could be no doubt we have made significant progress. Indeed, after only a few months after my election in 2016, I was delighted to pay a visit alongside other politicians to relationship Scotland's premises in Dumfries after there was awarded a silver charter award by LGBT Youth Scotland. They made and carried out extensive engagement with the local community and commemorated a number of LGBT events throughout the year, just to name a couple of things of why they achieved the charter. There is a lot of great work being done across Dumfries and Galloway and indeed Scotland, so that is why it is so pleasing to hear from so many other members tonight highlighting the success and their own areas. We have many disagreements in this chamber, but on this subject we can all play our part to support the LGBT community, and then the future will be no doubt very positive. I thank my good friend and colleague Jenny Gilruth for bringing this timely and very important members' debate to the chamber of the Scottish Parliament and I would like to also congratulate her on a truly brilliant speech. I would also like to thank everyone who got in touch with material and briefing for today's debate, in particular LGBT Youth Scotland, and I would thoroughly recommend their Twitter account and website to see some of the fantastic work that they are doing. Many have mentioned the great work that we have done and are doing in this Parliament, and I am a member of the Equalities and Human Rights Committee, and we pride ourselves on furthering equalities in human rights for everyone. I would like to mention the minister, Christina McKelvie, our past convener, who is sitting in front of me and is going to reply to this debate, because a lot of the work that we are doing and have done is down to her and her commitment to this cause. Through our work we have heard some worrying examples of discrimination and stereotyping, but we have also heard lots of fantastic work that is going on as well. One of the core values of LGBT History Month is to focus national attention on the LGBTI community and enhance LGBTI equality at a local and national level. Being from a huge rural constituency, I am acutely aware that a lot of the attitudes towards the LGBT community in some areas have not really changed over the years. We still have a lot of work to do to make sure that people, especially our young people, are supported. In fact, LGBT Youth Scotland has done a lot of research in this area. I would like to quote from a couple of the paragraphs of their parliamentary briefing. It tells us that increasing numbers of LGBT young people in Scotland think that it is a good place to live. 81 per cent of respondents to the Life in Scotland survey said this in 2017, compared to just 57 per cent in 2016. However, there is a notable difference from respondents in rural and urban areas across a number of relevant policy areas such as transport, education and isolation. LGBT young people are at risk of social isolation when there are limited socialisation opportunities available to them, or when discrimination stops them from seeking or accessing opportunities. There is also evidence to suggest that young people who experience social isolation are more likely to experience poor mental health. Expendable income can also play a role in an individual's ability to access certain socialisation opportunities, particularly when the only available socialisation takes place in commercial venues or when a significant amount of travel is required. It is also clear that LGBT young people can have reduced social networks if family or friends reacted negatively to them coming out. LGBT young people may face homelessness as a result of coming out to a parent or carer, or feel as though they need to leave home in order to avoid discrimination. For example, 22 per cent of transgender young people who responded to the survey left home under negative circumstances and often commented that this was typically due to how their family reacted to their status. It goes on to say that, as a result of a lack of access to safe spaces, young people often need to use public transport to access services such as LGBT youth work. However, research shows that, although 67 per cent of lesbian gay and bisexual young people said that they felt safe on public transport, that is not the case for transgender young people, for whom only 51 per cent felt safe. In conclusion, LGBT history month celebrates, raises awareness and calls out inequality, but inequality exists not only within our society but also geographically. LGBT youth Scotland captures it perfectly when they say that it is important that young people across Scotland have access to the same support and resources in order to ensure that they are adequately supported. That will help to build resilience and welcome in rural communities that are open and welcome in to LGBTI people. I thank Jenny Gilruth very much for bringing this debate to the chamber and to also thank all the members for their amazing contributions. I can just say to Jenny Gilruth that you are a true champion. Gillian Martin and her remark said that you cannot be what you cannot see. I think that many young women and young men looking at you leading this debate today can see what they can be, and that is a great thing to be proud of, so well done. I also had the privilege of attending Pink Saltire's parliamentary reception. It was a fantastic event. It celebrated LGBT history months. We have heard many personal stories from individuals, and many were highlighted by all of us in how they worked incredibly hard for the equality and progress of that equality in the LGBT community. From the couple from Fife, who spoke about their personal experiences, from the young purple dragon from Dundee, who is a young person, talked about her experience, and from the very deep, emotional and honest speech from a trans woman called Stevie Mae Banks—absolutely amazing speeches from them all, all from different perspectives, but all saying the same thing. We have made progress, but we have much, much more to do. It is hugely important that we celebrate LGBT history months to acknowledge the challenges that people have faced to understand the impact of each and every contribution. Each and every contribution at that event, I cannot overstate how moving it was, but it also took us that step forward to eradicating that discrimination, eradicating that prejudice and actually creating that equal world that we want to see for LGBT people, to see so many of the daily media posts from schools, from workplaces, from communities, yes, even from politicians all sporting at our purple on purple Friday, celebrating, commemorating and, most importantly, educating being those catalysts for change that we all want to see has been an absolute joy and to see my friends in the TIE campaigns daily icon, which has been enlightening education for me, but we have one of these every single day of LGBT history months and it just demonstrates very clearly that people who came before us, the people who have fought those battles and how we have to take up those battles and continue to fight on, but let's hope that the battles that we fight are not big battles anymore, they're only small ones, then we can push away all of that discrimination. Presiding Officer, this Government recognises that discrimination of gay, lesbian and bisexual and trans people face every day of their lives for no other reason than being who they are, just themselves, and they're trying to just be true to who they are themselves. That, for me, epitomises why we need to celebrate LGBT history month, a series of events to recognise the struggles people before us have faced, and are still facing today, to mark the progress that has been made and to proudly state that who we are, regardless of our sexual orientation or gender identity, and that no one will change that. That's very, very important. As I mentioned by others in the chamber, this year's theme is catalysts, 50 years of activism. It marks 50th anniversary of the Stonewall uprisings in New York in 1969, which was a very pivotal moment in the Pride movement. The LGBT history month is not only about LGBT people standing up for their rights. The power of allies and role models in this respect should not be underestimated, and we've heard from many of them today. There is no greater ally for LGBT equality than this Parliament, and I'd like to say this Government. Patrick Harvie reminded us that we should be rightly proud of that, and we should be. We still have work to do, though. At this Parliament, which overwhelming voted in favour of legalising same-sex marriage, a great day I was here. It was wonderful. A Parliament that legislated to allow pardons and disregard for gay men convicted of same-sex activity, which would now not be considered illegal, and an apology from this Government to those men who committed no more than to love who they loved. This Government is absolutely committed to reviewing and reforming gender recognition legislation to improve the lives and experience of trans people in Scotland. I hear the calls from many that we have to ensure that we get this right, and we're working very closely with everyone. We can to get that absolutely right. This Government is committed to reforming hate crime legislation, where we heard some comments about that earlier. Emma Harper reminded us that we've got this bit of work to do, and we have to get on with it and get it right as well. Emma also told us very interestingly, because it's very diverse in those debates, that we always get wonderful things coming from about a horticultural project and the Royal Highland show. I'm sure that all of the rural people in here, maybe not so much rural people, would be interested in hearing that. However, I wanted to comment briefly on some of the comments from other speakers in the debate. Jenny Gilruth reminded us how far we have come from the times of section 28. She reminded us about Glenruth's high school and that all schools approach. I was a wee bit worried, Presiding Officer, when Jenny was making her remarks about marrying her girlfriend in the church that she wants to hear. I thought that we were hearing a proposal for today, and I was like, I already picked my hat out, but she's off. She reminded us about how important that is, of the wee things that make you the person that you are and how important they are. Gillian Martin reminds us about the intersectionality and the issue of gay women and politics influencers telling us of that history, that truth is agents of change. In our cinemas, in our living rooms and in our schools, being what you see and what you can be is incredibly important. Annie Wells also talked about the community approach to LGBT history month. The rainbow run—I'll be sponsoring if she's running on that, because I might just go and run behind her for a bit of a laugh. I think that it's great when people commit themselves to doing things, and we're all going to watch Annie running on the rainbow run, aren't we? Yeah, we are. David Torrance reminded us about the vibrancy of the pride movement, that education changes cultures, and he knows that from Cercodi high school. I know that from Cercodi high school because we have heard from it in this place, but he warns us against complacency, which leads me on to Kezia Dugdale's remarks and our reminder about the Stonewall Inn, about the posters of raided premises, of blood-dobbed posters for the gay teachers, about the fact that tolerance, acceptance to inclusion is the route that we should be taking. Reminding us that people were tormented and that people we know are tormented and how do we create the environment where people can tell their own story. Patrick Torrance told us to learn the lessons of history, and that's why history month is so important. Emma Harper, Finlay Carson and Gail Ross reminded us about the challenges that have been in rural communities and how areas are working very closely to make the difference. It looks like there's loads going on in Dumfries and Galloway, so we might have to come for a visit, especially when I'd be interested in my old adults ministers hat on about the LGBT housing. Gail Ross recalled about the fantastic work of LGBT Youth Scotland and everything that it does. Those achievements have meant that Scotland is recognised as one of the most progressive countries in Europe for LGBT equality and human rights. However, the truth is that this process would not have been made had it not been for the tireless work of the organisations and activists, some of whom I will expect to be watching, who have sought day and night to advance equality for LGBT people in Scotland. We thank them deeply for their activism and their work. The Government's open dialogue with LGBTI organisations has been vital in informing our approach to policy, a policy that we will continue to work on and that engagement with those organisations will always continue to be the case. As we work on eliminating inequalities that continue to exist in society so that anyone who is LGBT or I is empowered to fulfil their potential in our Scotland. Thank you. Thank you. That concludes the debate. Now close this meeting of Parliament.