Mark Gatiss talks coming out, LGBT history and political correctness in the gay community
By Will Stroude
Actor Mark Gatiss has opened up about his thoughts on political correctness in the LGBT+ community.
The League of Gentlemen star insists in the new Attitude Heroes podcast – available to listen to and download now – that as a community, we need to stop involving ourselves in fights over personal pronouns when gay people are being tortured and killed in Chechnya and by ISIS.
“What really gets me very worked up these days is that we are losing ourselves sometimes in tiny debates about personal pronouns when the world is on fire and ISIS is throwing people off buildings for being gay,” says Gatiss.
“And they’re opening fucking concentration camps in Chechnya. You know, we should be so lucky, we should wake up! And it is an inevitable result of success.
He adds: “We are bound together in adversity with a lot of strange bedfellows and the more success you have, the more you start to fall out within it, and start having rows about themselves, as opposed to the bigger picture.!”
Elsewhere in the brand new Attitude Heroes podcast, Gatiss speaks openly about how he came out to his family when he was 20-years-old.
“I was visiting home, I was about 20 I think. And my mam one night just asked me, she literally said, ‘You have a lot of friends who are girls but they never seem to be your girlfriend.’ Beat. ‘Are you not interested in girls?’
And I went, ‘No.’ And that was it. And that evening was such a relief. It was just marvellous. But the caveat was then I said, ‘Well I’d better tell dad,’ and she said, ‘No, it’ll kill him!’
Listen to his full interview in the new Attitude Heroes podcast – available to download free from iTunes or other podcast platforms now.
Attitude Heroes is produced by Wisebuddah and sponsored by the GREAT Britain campaign, which welcomes the world to visit, do business, invest and study in the UK, and also Jaguar. For more product information please visit jaguar.co.uk.