Paul F Cockburn asks just how accessible – physically and socially – Britain’s gay scene is for those with physical and sensory impairments.
One Friday night last June, Robert Softley Gale and his partner Nathan Gale were in Glasgow. They were in celebratory mood: Nathan works with Scottish LGBT charity the Equality Network, which had earlier that evening won a “Campaign of the Year” award for its work promoting Equal Marriage. The couple, who had to an extent become spokespersons for the campaign, decided to complete the evening by sampling some of the city’s gay scene.
Robert, 33, is an established figure in Scotland’s arts scene, with more than 12 years’ experience as a performer, writer and artistic director of several theatre companies; earlier this year he was invited to join the Board of Directors overseeing the work of the National Theatre of Scotland. He also happens to have cerebral palsy, and uses a wheelchair to get around. Nathan, 28, has arthritis which, depending on circumstances, requires him to use either crutches or a wheelchair to aid mobility.
When the couple attempted to enter a bar/club called the Polo Lounge, security staff at the door refused them entry, initially on the grounds that the venue “had no disabled facilities”. Robert clambered from his wheelchair and pulled himself up the stairs to convince the door staff that he didn’t need a wheelchair ramp; the couple, however, were still not let in. As Robert and Nathan attempted to reason with staff, management called the police to have them removed because of “their disorderly and anti-social conduct”.
Now, in addition to his various artistic endeavours, Robert also somehow manages to find time to run his own company, flip, which supports arts organisations of all sizes “to embed disability equality within the fabric of their working practice”. Nathan studied law. Well aware of their rights under current equality legislation, the couple decided to take the owners of the Polo Lounge to court for unlawful discrimination under the Equality Act 2010.
Like many of Glasgow’s gay venues, the Polo Lounge — or Polo, as it’s now listed on the company’s website — is owned by the G1 Group, which manages more than 40 restaurants, bars, clubs, cinemas and hotels across the country. The best part of a year later, however, Robert and Nathan won their case, forcing one of Scotland’s highest-profile leisure companies (owned by straight leisure and property tycoon Stefan King) to admit that they had been “wrongly refused” entry due to a “a misunderstanding by staff in relation to wheelchair access to the Polo Lounge”.
More importantly, Robert and Nathan realise they have set a legal precedent in an area where there are few other examples, especially in Scotland. “It feels really strange; we took on this massive company and won,” Nathan explained some weeks later. “Importantly, it shows other disabled people that equality works, that you can access your rights, that you can enforce your rights.”
Yet despite their own knowledge and understanding of equality legislation and Scotland’s legal system, the whole experience was still traumatic. “If we — with the experience that we’ve got and the privileged situation that we’re in — found it difficult, then how is someone, who has no idea of what their rights are, going to manage?” said Nathan. “I don’t think either of us realised how much stress it was putting on us until it was over, so it feels very nice to be able to get back to really focusing on work and the rest of our lives.”
Understandably, Robert and Nathan — who live in Edinburgh — haven’t been back to the Polo Lounge since. In part, as a married couple, the lure of the commercial gay scene isn’t what it once was. Even if that wasn’t the case, however, the couple are all too aware of how few gay venues in appear to be physically accessible. If that surprises you, check out your favourite pub, bar or club. How wide is the main door? How many steps were there from the pavement outside? How easy is it to move around inside? Is there an accessible toilet?
Back in 1997, the disabled academic Tom Shakespeare published research on “the exclusion of disabled people from the British gay and lesbian community”, suggesting that disabled LGBT were “doubly disadvantaged”: “The barriers which people faced were both physical — a lack of access — and social — a lack of awareness and acceptance, and even downright prejudice on some occasions.” It didn’t help that Shakespeare found the commercial gay scene “to be dominated by people with disposable income, highly focussed on physical appearance and status.”
A lot has changed since Shakespeare’s report: after all, it was published at least a year before the launch of a small website called Gaydar, in the days when few people would ever consider putting the words “smart” and “phone” together in the same sentence. Today there are dating websites such as GayDisabled.co.uk, plus a host of apps for your smartphone which tell you exactly how far away the cute guy was just before he went offline. And if you’re really old-fashioned, there’s still the joys of “sextexting”.
What a lot of bricks and mortar venues don’t seem to have realised, however, is that the legislation outlawing discrimination against people on the grounds of either their actual or perceived disability has also advanced considerably since 1997. The Equality Act (Disability Discrimination Act 1995, which is still in force in Northern Ireland) places significant duties on service providers to ensure that premises and services do not “unreasonably” discriminate, with the emphasis on anticipating the needs of disabled people rather than belatedly reacting to any complaints that are made.
This duty to anticipate disabled people’s needs before rather than after is a challenge too few venues on the commercial scene seem to have recognised. Yet, as their legal victory shows, Robert believes it’s something they must consider, if only for blunt commercial reasons. “Do they spend a £100 on a ramp, and a couple hundred pounds on training, or £20,000 defending a court case? Hopefully, they’ll make the right choice!”
First published in Pride Life #17 Winter 2014.
