City Of Edinburgh Council - Commission a Memorial for Derek Ogg - Influential Gay Rights Activist

City Of Edinburgh Council - Commission a Memorial Sculpture for Derek Ogg - Influentual Gay Rights Activist and Campaigner.

I have started this petition in the hope that The City Of Edinburgh Council will agree to fund and commission a memorial to honour the memory of Derek Ogg who passed away on 1st May 2020, aged 65.

Derek was a Campaigning Lawyer of whom used his influence as a legal professional to successfully campaign for the decriminalisation of gay sex/same sex relationships in Scotland in the 1970s.

In the 1980s He founded Scottish Aids Monitor (SAM) of which was the first Aids charity in the country. He also helped in the set up of Waverley Care of which was established to build the Aids Hospice in Edinburgh, the first of its kind in the whole of the UK

In the 1990s he also fought for the abolition of Section 28.

Derek later campaigned to pressure the Scottish Government to issue pardons to all gay men of whom were previously and wrongly convicted of sexual offences, solely due to their sexuality.

Up until as recently as 2001, gay and bisexual men still faced some degree of conviction due to their same sex relationships in Scotland.

Derek's campaign brought forward the "Historical Sexual Offences (Pardons and Disregards) Act."

Subsequently, all gay and bisexual men of whom were convicted simply because of their sexuality had their convictions automatically removed from record.

Aside from his Campaigning, Derek was an accomplished and respected Lawyer who worked on some of Scotland's most high profile cases.

Through his own experience of living in Scotland as a gay man throughout the 60s and 70s, he knew the oppression that many people like him faced, he went on to use his experience as an incentive that spurred him on to work tirelessly to make progressive changes to Scottish society. It is in part, thanks to him, that the LGBTQ+ community now live in far more progressive Scotland today.

For this reason, I feel it is more than fitting that there's a permanent Memorial in his name to honour Derek for generations to come. This is something that I think would have pride of place in a modern Scotland, it would also serve to hopefully inspire others to keep his fight for human rights going strong as Scottish society continually evolves to be the inclusive one that we all want.

In terms of any proposed memorial, rather than a plaque, I thought that some sort of memorial sculpture would be nice. Something similar in essence to how Manchester have honoured Alan Turing.