| Terry Sanderson | |
| Birth Date: | 16 November 1946 |
| Birth Place: | Maltby, South Yorkshire, England |
| Nationality: | British |
| Occupation: | Secularist, gay rights activist, author, journalist |
| Partner: | Keith Porteous Wood |
Terence Arthur Sanderson[1] (16 November 1946 – 12 June 2022) was a leading British secularist and gay rights activist, author, and journalist. He served as president of the National Secular Society from 2006 to 2017 and was a long-standing columnist for Gay Times.
In 1946, Sanderson was born to a poor mining family in the South Yorkshire village of Maltby.[2] [3] He came out as gay after starting work in Rotherham at the age of seventeen. His parents found out after reading an interview with Sanderson in a local newspaper, concerning his booking a venue for a meeting of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality.[4] Moving to London in the early 1970s, Sanderson worked as a disability support worker or other similar jobs, and on the Woman's Own.
Sanderson began campaigning for equality for gay people in 1969. His MediaWatch columns for Gay Times have been a feature since 1982, and were described as "probably the most informative record of the extent of press homophobia in the UK in the 1980s".[5] In 1986, after experiencing problems with a Christian-owned publisher, Sanderson established The Other Way Press as a specifically gay-themed publishing house. Sanderson was elected President of the National Secular Society in 2006, having previously served as a vice-president for a number of years. He helped organize protests during the state visit by Pope Benedict XVI to the United Kingdom.[6]
Sanderson was in a relationship with Keith Porteous Wood, the current president of the National Secular Society. They had been together for over two decades before the recognition of same-sex relationships by the state, and they entered into a civil partnership in 2006.[7] In 2015 his autobiography The Adventures of a Happy Homosexual was published and then revised with a new epilogue in 2021 as The Reluctant Gay Activist following his diagnosis and treatment for bladder cancer.[8] His cancer returned in 2022 and he died at his home in London on 12 June that year, aged 75.[9] [10]