Gay Scotland
Gay Scotland was an LGBT magazine published – directly and indirectly – by gay rights organisation, the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group (SHRG) (later Outright Scotland) between 1982 and the early 2000s.
Origins
[edit]SHRG, originally launched in 1969 as the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG), began publishing a foolscap-sized members-only newsletter from January 1971, called SMG News.
As part of the organisation's relaunch as SHRG on 1 October 1978, this was reformatted as an A4-sized newsletter re-titled Gay Scotland. Both titles were very basic, text-only publications, reproduced as cheaply as possible using a Gestetner duplicating machine. The editor until mid-1981 was Glasgow-based Paul Brownsey.
After Brownsey resigned, with no obvious successor editor in place, SHRG's National Executive Committee – at its October 1981 meeting – approved a proposal put forward by original SMG founder (and then current Chair) Ian Dunn to relaunch Gay Scotland as a more widely-distributed, outward-looking magazine with significantly improved content, reproduction and design.
Magazine
[edit]The first issue of the new-look, glossy-covered Gay Scotland was published on 1 March 1982,[1] although Dunn (who was now editor) had in fact produced a four-page "Issue 0" dated November 1981 to help give attendees at a SHRG "national forum" event, held in Edinburgh, a sense of what the relaunched publication would look like. [2]
Initially, copies of Gay Scotland magazine sent out to SHRG members as part of their membership package included a central "Pink Pages" insert covering specific SHRG news and activities. However, this practice was discontinued from the fourth issue (dated September/October 1982), in part to make way for the inclusion of a regular central "Yellow Pages" pull-out gathering together "Scene" news and cultural/arts listings.
By its first anniversary, Gay Scotland was selling around 2,000 copies an issue—reaching significantly more readers than the earlier SHRG newsletter.
Ownership
[edit]Although always editorially independent of SHRG/Outright Scotland, the magazine was initially published directly by the campaign group. By the 1990s, however, the role of publisher had been switched to Calosa Publishing Ltd, a company owned by SHRG. By 2003, the magazine was published by Outright Scotland Community Press Ltd, wholly owned by the charity (by then relaunched as Outright Scotland).
The URL GayScotland.com was originally registered on 27 January 2000 and is currently set to expire on 27 January 2025; it was most recently updated on 20 December 2023, although the identity of who did so is not publicly available. [3]
Format
[edit]For most of its history Gay Scotland (occasionally branded as GS) was either a bimonthly or monthly A4 magazine. However, in an attempt to reach significantly more readers – including "isolated men and women as well as regular scene-goers", according to one editorial – GS was relaunched, in 1998, as a monthly tabloid-sized newspaper with a deliberately increased circulation (12,000 copies) and a distribution list which went well beyond traditional LGBT venues.
Legacy
[edit]For many years, the magazine was an invaluable source of information for LGBT readers across Scotland. Through the HIV/AIDS epidemic it provided its readers with contemporary debates around HIV and Aids, keeping them informed on the latest healthcare developments, and debunking many myths.[4]
As the first publication of its kind in Scotland, Gay Scotland arguably inspired future publications produced specifically for the country's LGBT+ community.[5] Its most successful successor – and rival – in terms of number of issues published was ScotsGay. Published and often edited by former Gay Scotland editor John Hein, ScotsGay ran for 176 issues of between December 1994 and October 2016.
A near complete run of Gay Scotland (excepting "Issue 0") can be found at the National Library of Scotland, while copies are also part of the Lothian Health Services Archive in the collection of the Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard.[6][7]
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^ "Outright Scotland". lgbthistoryscotland.org.uk. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ^ "Obituary: Ian Dunn". The Independent. 1998-03-21. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ^ "URL". Retrieved 2024-11-06.
- ^ Archive, Lothian Health Services (2019-02-08). "Lothian Health Services Archive: Students and the archive". Lothian Health Services Archive. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ^ Chair, S. Y. P. (2021-05-30). "Queer, Aye! LGBTQIA+ Publishing in Scotland - Event Round-up". The Society of Young Publishers. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ^ "LGBT research resources". National Library of Scotland. Retrieved 2022-07-01.
- ^ "LGBTQ". www.lhsa.lib.ed.ac.uk. Retrieved 2022-07-01.