Interview with John Barrowman of "Doctor Who"

AE: Yeah. Yeah, it's so totally bizarre, that attitude in America that still... You know, in movies, any movie, people shooting each other, blasting each other's heads off with guns--
JB: No problem, but two men or two women kiss--don't watch it.

AE: Yeah. It's totally bizarre. So, in terms of Doctor Who, it really was the case that there was no pressure from the BBC, and no restrictions from them. John Barrowman kissing Chris Eccleston was fine with them?
JB: Well that was there... that was in the script.

The BBC, remember, are a public company, they are not a privately owned company. In Britain, we pay a license fee in order to have television. And that fee goes to the BBC. Therefore, the BBC must produce programming for the wide majority of the public. So they have to include everybody. I mean, we have gay programming all the time on the BBC. And it's watched by a mainstream audience.

The BBC, like all the other channels in the UK, is supportive of gay and lesbian programming. [Gay and lesbian characters] get introduced in programmes...and also, to be honest with you, if [the BBC] weren't [supportive]--it's the law now. It's part of the European law. If our military fire someone out of the military because they're gay, they get sued, and the gay people win.

AE: Yup. I find it so amazing how that change has happened since the 1997 UK General Election [in which Tony Blair's Labour Party won by a landslide after 18 years of Conservative government in the UK]. Since then it's just been this ongoing, complete transformation of the landscape in terms of gay and lesbian civil rights.
JB: Well that's the thing, that's the key you're hitting upon. It's no longer conservative-- what they call “values”. Because, what are conservative values? Because most conservatives who have those values, live a lie.

AE: Yup. Well when I look at the old footage of Margaret Thatcher [Conservative Prime Minister of the UK from 1979 to 1990] on television, this horrendous speech that she had given. She said “Children who should be brought up with normal family values are being told that they have the inalienable right to be gay”. And that was the message that was coming from the Prime Minister of the country, fifteen or twenty years ago.
JB: Ludicrous!

AE: Well it's so ludicrous to talk about “an inalienable right.” I mean it's not a right or not a right, they just are gay.
JB: Exactly.

AE: But I look at the change in terms of, on the one hand, fifteen or twenty years ago, a Prime Minister of the country who was giving that message. To the change now where you have Tony Blair going on the cover of Attitude magazine [a gay UK magazine] and being interviewed by them. And I think the fact that the Conservatives for so long had this horrible kind of...
JB: Well to be honest with you though, although I'm not a Conservative, as you can tell - [laughs]--the Conservatives here have changed their tone.

AE: Which is fantastic as well.
JB: Which is a huge step, because they've realised--it's kind of the analogy I was using with the Church--they've realised that more and more people are not living under the fear of something that doesn't exist. They're living their lives as they feel free to live them.

They're not being controlled, and they're not allowing the government to control them, and that's why the Conservatives now... You know, you have gay Conservative MPs, (which I don't understand), it's like the gay Republicans. I don't get it, but they're there.

AE: Yeah. Well I was going to say, it's the one thing that gives me hope, in terms of the current political situation in the States. The fact that there was this really quite hardline conservative climate in the UK for so long, and then it was suddenly turned around so quickly, and so beyond what anyone could have expected. I mean they've pretty much levelled the playing field for gay and lesbian citizens now.

So, I suppose when I look at what's going on in the US, and I just despair in terms of some of the attitudes and the laws there, you hope it won't take [forever to change]. Because sometimes I think: oh God, it's going to be like fifty years before they have gay marriage across the States...
JB: Well I think, I think you're right. It's the fear tactics that they have in America. That's what's causing it to be so backwards. Everything is based on fear: what you don't understand, you fear. Keep people fearful of things, and they will listen to you, they will follow.