RUSSELL T DAVIES: Queer rights are backsliding

YOU'RE QUEER IN 2026. YOU'RE A POLITICAL ACT

Russell T Davies doesn't do small talk. So when he stood up at BFI Flare this week — the London LGBTQ+ film festival now celebrating its 40th year — and said the world is "sliding back" on queer rights, people listened. Not because it was news. But because it was him saying it, with the weight of three decades of groundbreaking television behind him.

Davies previewed his upcoming Channel 4 drama Tip Toe, a five-part series starring Alan Cumming as Leo, a gay bar owner in Manchester's Gay Village, and David Morrissey as the buttoned-up conservative neighbour who unleashes hell on him. In a clip shown to the audience, Leo's friend Melba — a drag queen played by Paul Rhys — delivers a line that landed like a punch: "The president of America has given these men permission to attack us. You're queer in 2026. You're a political act."

That single line carries more political charge than most manifestos. Because it's not about Washington. It's about the climate that seeps across borders. The permission structures that embolden people. The slow normalisation of hostility dressed up as common sense.

Davies also couldn't resist weighing in on Heated Rivalry, the hockey romance that's become a global streaming phenomenon. He loves it, he said. Thinks creator Jacob Tierney is brilliant. But when people call it a revolutionary gay show? "Hello!?" He pointed to fans online saying Queer as Folk walked so Heated Rivalry could run. His response: "We were fucking running from the start."

It's a fair point, and it opens a bigger conversation. Are we actually making progress in queer storytelling, or are we just repackaging the same breakthroughs for new audiences who don't know what came before? Queer as Folk aired in 1999 and blew the doors off. It's a Sin did it again in 2021. Now Heated Rivalry is doing extraordinary numbers. But the political ground underneath all of it is shifting. The shows are getting bolder. The world around them is getting meaner.

Davies said he thinks we're "on the precipice of something much worse." He talked about how it suddenly feels possible that London could be bombed. That the far right isn't a fringe anymore — it's infrastructure. And that trans stories are being weaponised to incite negative emotions across the board.

But here's what makes Davies essential rather than just alarming: he still believes in the kitchen table. He said he'd love to write like Aaron Sorkin, all corridors of power and walk-and-talk monologues. But his instinct is domestic. Intimate. Two people talking over tea about the thing that's breaking their hearts. Tip Toe, he promised, is "the ultimate suburban drama — and you'll never look at suburbia the same way again."

That's the challenge for all of us in 2026. The political is personal. Your local pub, your neighbour's vote, your kid's school — it's all the frontline now. And if being queer is a political act just by existing, then the question isn't whether to fight. It's how loudly.