GAY NEWS was the first LGBTQ+ newspaper in the UK, and it had a huge set of balls!  Founded in June 1972 in a collaboration between former members of the Gay Liberation Front and members of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE). At the newspaper’s height, circulation was 18,000 to 19,000 copies.. With homosexuality partially decriminalized in the 1960s, the paper played a pivotal role in the struggle for gay rights in the 1970s in the UK.

In those early days, Gay News challenged the authorities from the outset by publishing personal contact ads, in defiance of the law; in early editions, this section was always headlined “Love knoweth no laws’. In 1976, Mary Whitehouse, a self-annointed public censor, brought a private prosecution of blasphemy against both the newspaper and its editor, Denis Lemon, over the publication of James Kirkup’s poem The Love that Dares to Speak its Name in the issue dated 3 June 1976.

Lemon was found guilty when the case came to court in July 1977 and was sentenced to a suspended nine-month prison sentence and personally fined £1,000. Gay News Ltd ceased trading on 15 April 1983. On the eve of a special presentation at the Bishopsgate Institute, two of the original staff members, Bob Workman and Keith Howes talked with Queerguru about thelife and death of Gay News and how it fits in the annals of queer history