Nick Henderson
Encyclopedia
Nick Henderson is the Director of the LGBT Network
LGBT Network
The LGBT Network is a gay rights charity based in Scotland and is a registered charity with the Office of the Scottish Charity Regulator.The LGBT Network was founded as a not for profit organisation in April 2008 and operates throughout...

, Co founder and project co-ordinator of Youth End Poverty (YEP) Dundee
Dundee
Dundee is the fourth-largest city in Scotland and the 39th most populous settlement in the United Kingdom. It lies within the eastern central Lowlands on the north bank of the Firth of Tay, which feeds into the North Sea...

,. Henderson was runner up in the Arnold Kemp Young Scot of the Year awards in January 2008 for his work with the Scottish Youth Parliament
Scottish Youth Parliament
The Scottish Youth Parliament, also known as SYP, is a democratic, politically independent, inclusive, charity set up by a group of passionate youth workers as a national voice for young people in Scotland....

 and Oxfam
Oxfam
Oxfam is an international confederation of 15 organizations working in 98 countries worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and related injustice around the world. In all Oxfam’s actions, the ultimate goal is to enable people to exercise their rights and manage their own lives...

 peer education project Roars not Whispers. He later won the Young Scot of the Year Award for Democracy and Citizenship, along with other YEP co founder Jackey Chuen for the pioneering youth development and leadership project Youth End Poverty. The two were also runner up in the Youth Link Peer Educator of the Year Awards.

Henderson has spoken at numerous public forums and events, including as a panellist at the 2008 World Economic Forum in Davos. He has blogged at the Huffington Post  and regularly contributes to an LGBT
LGBT
LGBT is an initialism that collectively refers to "lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender" people. In use since the 1990s, the term "LGBT" is an adaptation of the initialism "LGB", which itself started replacing the phrase "gay community" beginning in the mid-to-late 1980s, which many within the...

 themed blog, OutFrontUK. He has appeared on radio and television to discuss LGBT issues, such as on the controversy surrounding the 2008 comments made by the Pope on gay and transgender people.

In 2009 he was named runner up Scottish Young Thinker of the Year by the Institute of Contemporary Scotland for a paper he presented on the need for open primaries, a directly elected Prime Minister and a written constitution for the UK. Henderson was also appointed as a Youth Commissioner on Alcohol in 2009, which has a mandate from the Scottish Government to investigate and report on the relationship between young people and alcohol in Scotland.

Henderson is also active in the field of HIV/Aids. He spoke to the World Economic Forum about the link between homophobic government policies and increasing rates of HIV infection among men that have sex with men in developing countries. In 2008 he organised an award winning, fully youth led World Aids Day event in Dundee, which was also Scotland's largest that year. 11 young people involved with the Youth End Poverty project who staged Dundee's World Aids Day event at the Caird Hall were the first group ever to win the Institute of Contemporary Scotlands' Young Scot of the Year award.

Same-sex marriage

In January 2009, Nick Henderson, as director of the LGBT Network, raised a petition (PE 1239) in the Scottish Parliament that called for the legalisation of civil marriage for same sex couples, and religious marriage where the religious body consents. It was accepted by the Petitions Committee and currently the Committee are considering the issue, along with the evidence submitted by faith groups, advocacy groups and the Scottish Government. It will discuss the petition again on December 1.

Scottish Nationalist MSP
Member of the Scottish Parliament
Member of the Scottish Parliament is the title given to any one of the 129 individuals elected to serve in the Scottish Parliament.-Methods of Election:MSPs are elected in one of two ways:...

 Shirley-Anne Somerville
Shirley-Anne Somerville
Shirley-Anne Somerville was a Scottish politician and SNP MSP for the Lothians region from 2007 to 2011.-Early life:Somerville was born on 2 September 1974 in Kirkcaldy and attended Kirkcaldy High School, followed by the University of Strathclyde, where she took a B.A...

 is the strongest supporter of the petition in the Parliament. UK same sex marriage advocates Celia Kitzinger and Sue Wilkinson have also given their backing to the movement in Scotland.

Nick Henderson continues to campaign for the legalisation of same sex marriage; he repeatedly states his belief that civil partnerships are not equal to marriage and segregate same sex couples. He has said he will not to enter into a civil partnership as he "refuses to be a second class citizen."
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK