LGBT heroes - Patrick Trevor-Roper

A hero is someone admired for their achievements and/or qualities. An LGBT hero can be:

1. A hero who's achievements and/or qualities relate to the LGBT community
2. A hero who is also lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered (LGBT)
3. Both of the above

Most lists of LGBT heroes tend to be US-based or based on the first category. The list of UK heroes who are also LGBT normally just consists of Alan Turing. I want to expand that list as much as i can, continuing with...

Patrick Trevor-Roper (1916-2004)

Patrick Trevor-Roper was a British eye-surgeon and gay rights activist. He was born in Northumberland and was educated at Charterhouse and the University of Cambridge. During World War II he served in the Royal New Zealand Army Medical Corps in the Mediterranean. After the war he became a specialist in ophthalmic surgery.

In 1954 the then Conservative Government set up the Wolfenden Committee to review both homosexual offences and prostitution. The committee could only find three gay men willing to testify as witnesses to the committee, including Patrick Trevor-Roper. The others were the journalist Peter Wildeblood (who had been convicted of a homosexual offence) and Carl Winter (director of the Fitzwilliam Museum). 

All three should be much more famous for their bravery in testifying for gay rights in the 1950s!

The committee reported in 1957 and recommended that "homosexual behaviour between consenting adults in private should no longer be a criminal offence". This eventually led to the Sexual Offences Act 1967 which decriminalised homosexual acts in private between two men  in England and Wales, both of whom had to have attained the age of 21.

In his self-written obituary(!), Trevor-Roper wrote:

"He led a mildly unconventional life, continuing to practise until well into his 80s from his house in Regent’s Park, and retiring at weekends to a writers’ sanctuary in a Dorset rectory. There he produced several ophthalmic textbooks, of which his Lecture Notes survived seven editions (and six translations), and four editions of The World Through Blunted Sight, relating eye defects to patterns of artistry; he also edited a book of essays on 18th century opera. For 38 years he was editor of the Transactions of the Ophthalmological Society, UK (later entitled Eye)."

He also founded an eye hospital in Addis Ababa, a mobile eye unit in Sierra Leone, and organised an oculoplastic unit in Lagos during their civil war. 

In the 1980's as the AIDS epidemic started, Trevor-Roper was one of the founders of the Terrence Higgins Trust, the United Kingdom's leading AIDS service organisation, which held its first meeting at his home.

Trevor-Roper was diagnosed as having Alzheimer’s disease in 2003. In 2004 he developed a cancer in his neck, of unknown primary site. He was survived by Herman Chan, his partner of many years.

I believe that Trevor-Roper's achievements made the world a better place generally and specifically the UK a better place for gay and bisexual men, and that he wasn't straight - an LGBT hero.

Previous LGBT heroes

John Maynard Keynes - economist

Arthur C Clarke - science fiction and science writer