Rainbow List celebrates Open Table members on Merseyside
PRIDE IN LIVERPOOL is this weekend - to mark the occasion, the city’s newspaper has published a list of LGBTQ+ people nominated by the public for their contributions to their community.
Three of the nominees have Open Table connections, including the leader of the second Open Table community, and a former asylum seeker who won his appeal to remain in the UK with the charity’s support.
Yew Fook Sam, outside red wooden door of St Bride's Liverpool, where he has attended the Open Table community for many years.
Yew Fook Sam
First on the list is Sam, who was told he was ‘not gay enough’ to stay in the UK.
The 71-year-old faced being sent back to his home country where homosexuality is illegal - because the UK Home Office believed he was lying about his sexuality. Sam feared deportation to Malaysia, where he claims he could have been thrown in jail, attacked or killed.
He was sent to live in Liverpool while claiming asylum, and appealed against the Home Office’s decision with the help of the Open Table communities in Liverpool and Manchester.
Now, five years after being granted asylum in the UK, Sam told the ECHO how he no longer has to ‘hide’ who he really is.
Gail Yorke believed she couldn't have both her faith and her sexuality for a long time. Now she leads an Open Table community.
Gail Yorke
Next up is Gail, who hid her sexuality for most of her life as she believed you couldn’t be both gay and Christian.
The mum-of-one was so committed to her faith that she even went through ‘conversion therapy’.
After years of struggling, the 53-year-old social worker has found a happy balance between her sexuality and her faith thanks to support from the Open Table communities in Liverpool and Warrington.
She is now the leader of the second longest-running Open Table community in Warrington, and has ‘a future to look forward to’ as she is set to marry her fiancé, Tina, next year.
Kieran Bohan
Last of the three on the list is Kieran, Coordinator of the Open Table Network, and one of the founding members of the first Open Table community in Liverpool.
Kieran previously told the ECHO how he has overcome his own struggles with faith to be in the position he is today.
He and his husband Warren, who leads the Open Table Liverpool community, also spoke to the ECHO on the tenth anniversary of their civil partnership, the first to be registered in a place of worship in the UK.