Being gay is a cultural taboo in BEM communities
2000
When asked about this lack of confidence about their own identity on the part of the callers to Switchboard Mike said that he felt that life as a gay person in Birmingham was as positive as in any of the other big cities and certainly better than that in the smaller market towns around the region. He did feel however that the fact that Birmingham contained such a wider diversity of social class, culture, religion and background had a huge impact on a person's sexual identity and the degree to which they were comfortable with it. He also discussed the impact of ethnic and cultural diversity in communities where to be gay is a cultural taboo, explaining that Switchboard got calls from the black and Asian communities that were "quite difficult to deal with because of the experiences of the callers."
Contributed by: Mike