TV star Lorraine Kelly has hit back at the HIV crisis backlash and shared her support for transgender people.
The 65-year-old presenter, who hosts her own self-titled breakfast show weekly, is no stranger to being an ally for the LGBTQ+ community. In 2015, Attitude recognised her support and awarded her with its Honorary Gay Award.
Lorraine Kelly felt it was her ‘duty’ to support LGBTQ+ community during HIV crisis
During a chat with Metro, Lorraine revealed she “found my tribe very early on” while growing up in Glasgow in the 1970s.
“When I was a teenager, my best friend Ray was gay, then his friends became my friends, and your circle becomes wider,” she said.
During the HIV and AIDS crisis of the late 1980s, the LGBTQ+ community faced huge backlash. However, Lorraine recognised the community needed her support and felt it was her “duty” to “stand up and say: ‘No, this isn’t right.'”
As she has continued to shine a light on transgender people on her show, Lorraine said she is blessed to have been “trusted me with their stories”.
She insisted that she does not like it when her guests feel they need to “try and justify their experience because no one else has to”. Lorraine stated that people are “far more complex than labels”.
The Scottish star continued: “People look at statistics and they don’t see human beings so that’s my job. The trans community has the odds stacked against them anyway, trying to navigate a new world that’s gone backwards. When I grew up, people in the 70s and 80s and people were more tolerant about trans than they are now.”
‘Freya just so happens to be trans’
Last year, Lorraine released her debut novel, The Island Swimmer. The story “revolves around lonely Evie and the friendship she finds with a group of cold-water swimmers on Orkney”.
One of Evie’s oldest friends in the book is called Freya, who Lorraine said “just so happens to be trans”.
As far as she is concerned, Freya being a transgender woman is “the least interesting thing about her”. She also identifies with the character, stating: “There’s a little bit of me in her.”
Lorraine believes if “anyone who is frightened or scared of trans people could sit down with Freya, if she were real, they’d change their mind”.
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