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I was very sorry to read Professor Brian Cox's eloquent tribute to our friend Tony Dyson [1 August]. Although we lived only a few minutes' journey apart, Dyson's poor health had made him reclusive in recent years, and I saw too little of him.
I first met Tony in 1958, when I was one of the earliest homosexual men to volunteer help to the Homosexual Law Reform Society. It was indeed fortunate that someone of his outstanding integrity and courage had undertaken this fraught task, which in less skilful and dedicated hands could have backfired disastrously. But, even when inevitable internal disagreements arose, everyone concerned knew that Dyson's selfless commitment to the cause was unflinching.
In the post-reform years, although his main energies were elsewhere, Tony Dyson remained concerned to fight ignorance and prejudice against homosexual people. In 1978 he assembled 174 distinguished sponsors for a published declaration, "Towards a Charter of Homosexual Rights", which stated,
We believe that fear or hatred of homosexuals is a social evil, akin to anti-Semitism, racism, slavery, and with the same evil consequences . . . We are rapidly approaching a situation in which homosexuals are the only natural minority who are still regarded, by some, as intrinsically evil, and who are still liable to be mocked and persecuted by people claiming to represent ordinary social opinion, or the Christian Church.
This was typical of Tony's enduring concern for the human dignity of everyone.
Antony Grey
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