Terry Sanderson (writer)

Terry Sanderson (born 1946) is a leading British secularist and gay rights activist, author and journalist. He served as president of the National Secular Society from 2006 to 2017 and is a long-standing columnist for Gay Times.

Terry Sanderson
Born17 November 1946
Maltby, South Yorkshire, England
NationalityBritish
OccupationSecularist, gay rights activist, author, journalist
Spouse(s)Keith Porteous Wood
Websitegtmediawatch.org

Early life and career

In 1946, Sanderson was born to a mining family in the South Yorkshire village of Maltby.[1] He came out as gay after starting work in Rotherham at the age of seventeen. His parents found out after reading an interview with Sanderson in a local newspaper, concerning his booking a venue for a meeting of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.[2] Moving to London in the early 1970s, Sanderson worked as a counsellor and psychiatric nurse, and on the problem page of Woman's Own.

Career

Sanderson began campaigning for equality for gay people in 1969. His MediaWatch columns for Gay Times have been a feature since 1982, and were described as "probably the most informative record of the extent of press homophobia in the UK in the 1980s".[3] In 1986, after experiencing problems with a Christian-owned publisher, Sanderson established The Other Way Press as a specifically gay-themed publishing house. Sanderson was elected President of the National Secular Society in 2006, having previously served as a vice-president for a number of years. He helped organize protests during the state visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom.[4]

Personal life

Sanderson is married to Keith Porteous Wood, the current president of the National Secular Society. They had been together for over two decades before the recognition of same-sex relationships by the state, and they entered into a civil partnership in 2006[5] before converting it to marriage in c.2015.[6] In 2015 his autobiography The Adventures of a Happy Homosexual was published and then revised with a new epilogue in 2021 as The Reluctant Gay Activist following his diagnosis and treatment for bladder cancer.[7]

Works
  • How to be a Happy Homosexual (1986) London: The Other Way Press, ISBN 0-948982-00-4, (5th ed, 1999)
  • The Potts Correspondence and Other Gay Humour (1987) London: The Other Way Press, ISBN 0-948982-01-2
  • "Gays and the Press" (1989), in Shepherd, Simon and Wallis, Mick, Coming on strong: gay politics and culture London: Routledge; Chapter 13, pp. 231–241,ISBN 0-04-445352-3
  • Making Gay Relationships Work (1990) London: The Other Way Press, ISBN 0-948982-02-0
  • Stranger in the Family: how to cope if your child is gay (1991) London: The Other Way Press, ISBN 0-948982-03-9, (2nd ed, 1996)
  • Mediawatch: treatment of male and female homosexuality in the British media (1995) London: Continuum International Publishing, ISBN 978-0-304-33186-4
  • The Potts Papers (1996) London: The Other Way Press, ISBN 0-948982-09-8
  • Assertively Gay: how to build gay self-esteem (1997) 2nd revised edition, London: The Other Way Press, ISBN 978-0-948982-10-1
  • The Gay Man's Kama Sutra (2003) London: Carlton Books, ISBN 978-1-84222-794-7
  • The Adventures of a Happy Homosexual: Memoirs of an Unlikely Activist (2015) The Otherway Press ISBN 978-1786102331
  • The Reluctant Gay Activist (2021) Independently published, ISBN 979-8452007791

References
  1. The Reluctant Gay Activist. 45 of 5039: independently published. 7 August 2021. ISBN 979-8452007791. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
  2. Garner, Lesley "How to be a Happy Homosexual", interview with Terry Sanderson, Evening Standard, 13 April 1999, p.26
  3. Dollimore, Jonathan (1991) Sexual Dissidence: Augustine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault, Oxford University Press, p.235
  4. Protests planned for Pope’s visit National Secular Society, 23 September 2009
  5. Annual Report, 2005–06 Campaign for Homosexual Equality
  6. The Reluctant Gay Activist. 38 of 5039: independently published. 7 August 2021. ISBN 979-8452007791. {{cite book}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)CS1 maint: location (link)
  7. "Terry Sanderson's memoir shows gay and secularist activism go hand in hand". National Secular Society. Retrieved 18 January 2022.
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