Doctor Who showrunner Russell T Davies has warned that a “fight is coming” because gay rights are “rapidly and urgently getting worse”.
The award-winning screenwriter, 62, best known for reviving BBC sci-fi series Doctor Who in 2005, gained prominence in 1999 for writing Queer As Folk, a programme about the lives of three men living in Manchester’s gay village.
Davies is urging young people to use the “anger of the past” to protect gay rights amid growing support for Reform UK, which has pledged to “ban transgender ideology” in schools.
Speaking to The Big Issue, Davies said: “When Queer As Folk came out in 1999, if you’d said: ‘What will gay rights be like in 2025?’, we’d have said, ‘oh, it will all be marvellous – it’ll be sunshine and skipping down the street, hand in hand – gays, queers, lesbians, everyone’.
“And look at where we are. Things got better but now things are rapidly and urgently getting worse.
“What happens in America always happens here (the UK) – and as we look down the barrel of a Reform government, we, the gay community, queer community, should be revolting in terror and anger and action.
“They’re out to get us. The President of America is literally out to get us, is discounting us.
“He would be happier with us invisible and gone, defunded, completely invisible if not biologically altered to become as straight as him.
“I hope they’re prepared to fight, that younger generation that has no idea how they got there. And neither should they – they’re busy living their lives.
“I didn’t spend my youth looking back at World War Two, but I do think: ‘are you prepared to fight, because a fight is coming?’”
Davies’ next Channel 4 series, Tip Toe, deals with the culture war that has radicalised some people into homophobia, transphobia and prejudice.
Davies said: “I’m very proud of it.
“It’s radical, it’s savage, and it’s hilarious.
“It is the strongest thing I’ve written – I do believe Queer As Folk, Cucumber, It’s A Sin and Tip Toe are the ones that will be on my gravestone.”
Reform UK has been contacted for comment.
