Stephen Fry Discovers What It Means To Be Gay Around The World

In a new documentary series for the BBC entitled ‘Out There’ Stephen Fry travels the world investigating its vastly contrasting attitudes towards homosexuality.

In the first of this two-part series, Stephen Fry reflects back on just how much has changed for gay people during his lifetime. He meets Elton John and David Furnish, the couple who inspired him to be open about his sexuality,as well as many others.

Stephen then travels to Uganda, where the government is considering a new law that would make homosexuality a capital crime – putting gay people to death for their sexuality. He meets the men and women targeted by this proposed law and finds out the impact it is already having on their lives.

He also travels to the USA to explore ‘reparative therapy’, which claims to offer a ‘cure’ for being gay. While in the states, he looks at how Hollywood deals with the gay issue by talking to openly gay actor Neil Patrick Harris.

In the second of the two-part series, Stephen visits Brazil, home to the largest gay pride celebration in the world and a place that has some of the best legislation on the planet for gay equality. But it has come at a price. All of the advances have brought about a violent backlash against gay people; on average, one gay person is murdered every 36 hours in Brazil.

He also visits Russia, where gays are now worse off than they have been for a long time. Their rights are being constantly eroded by a conservative government, backed by the disapproval of the Russian Orthodox Church. In this clip from the two-part series, Fry meets Vitaly Milonov who has introduced a law in Russia which bans ‘promotion of homosexuality‘.

Following his Russian visit, Stephen then travels to India, where the old British laws that criminalised homosexuality have just been overturned. Modern India is now looking to Hindu traditions as it forges a more positive way forward for its gay citizens.

The full two-part series is now available to watch on the BBC Website.

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