Marcus Morgan is one of the UK's leading Bisexual Activists.
Since 2001 Marcus has kept a journal on the Livejournal website.
Marcus can be emailed at his firstname.surname @ gmail.com, and is on Facebook.
He has been active in the bisexual community since 1992 and has been involved as an organiser with many bisexual groups and events.
In 2002 he was presented with a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the UK's Bisexual community.
Marcus currently lives on the outskirts of London with his partners and their daughter.
Marcus's speech from Pride 2005 is available here
A regular attendee of London's Pride march and festival, right up until it started being an all-ticketed event, Marcus worked with the festival organisers as part of a bisexual focus group and hosted Pride's only (to date) Bisexual Tent in 1996.
When Pride split into two events in 2005 he was invited by the organisers of the rally held in Trafalgar Square to address the crowd about Anti-Bisexual Discrimination in the gay community. Other speakers on the day included Ian McKellen, Ben Summerskill, Peter Tatchell and Stephen Fry. The organisers' estimate for the audience was 15,000.
For full details of this year's BiFests please visit the BiFest UK website.
In 1999 Marcus was compere for the evening entertainments of the one-day London Bisexual festival BiFest, organised by the hosts of The Fencesitters' Ball. Although hugely successful, it wasn't repeated in the years following but the idea of a London bisexual festival kept being suggested. Marcus joined the small group of activists who organised a new BiFest in 2004, with a loan of £1,000 from BiCon (the National Bisexual Conference).
BiFest has a very different 'feel' to BiCon - the intention is to reach the people who wouldn't attend a sexuality conference at an academic venue, but who might come to a one-day festival in a community centre. It was a remarkable success, bringing in more than 110 people, over three-quarters of whom had not been to a large bisexual event before.
At BiCon 2005 Marcus reported back to BiCon about the day and won support for the loan being converted to a permanent grant. The organisers of Manchester's popular "Celebrate Bisexuality Day" announced shortly after this decision that they were re-branding their event as BiFest North-Bi-Northwest and adopting the London event's model. Their event in late 2005 was a great success. Marcus co-presented a session on bisexual identity and was also one of two comperes for the evening entertainment.
The Bisexual Underground is currently held at The Blue Posts on Newman Street. Full details and maps available at the B.U. website.
The Bisexual Underground is a London pub meet for bisexuals, their friends, partners, and anyone curious. Jointly organised by London activists, it currently runs on the second Tuesday of the month in a central London pub. B.U. is intended to be a more relaxed social environment than groups which have formal discussions, such as the London Bisexual Group, because as the website says - 'workshops are for lathes'.
The regular attendance is forty to sixty people, with an approximately even gender split.
For links to this year's UK bisexual conference visit the BiCon website.
A regular attendee of the UK's annual Bisexual Conference (aka BiCon) since 1992, Marcus put together the team to organise the 14th, BiCon '96 in Kingston-Upon-Thames. Attended by over 250 people it was a resounding success and a number of the team's innovations have been since incorporated into the ideal BiCon template.
He went on to work with the teams of BiCon 99 and BiCon 2000 / IBC6 (the International BiCon) and was honoured during an awards ceremony for bisexual activists in 2002 with a lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the UK's Bisexual community. A year later he was at the helm of BiCon again - the 2003 BiCon in London's Docklands which is widely regarded as one of the best organised yet.
"A Manifesto For BiCon Organisers" can be downloaded from bi.org (pdf).
Following his attendance at the International Bisexual Conference in Minneapolis in 2004, Marcus decided to set down his thoughts on how to organise a good conference. Originally intended to be a single-author document he decided to bring in other bi-activists and convention organisers and published "A Manifesto For BiCon Organisers" in March 2005. It has been very well received in the bi community.
Details of the ongiong work of the Spanner Trust can be found on their website.
Countdown On Spanner was the UK's first BDSM rights group. Through his involvement with the group Marcus was one of the organisers of the first SM Pride, and as the 'back-up speaker' only narrowly avoided addressing the rally at the University of London Union (ULU), when the booked bisexual speaker arrived with seconds to spare. Countdown On Spanner took the prominent Spanner Case all the way to the European Court of Human Rights, and it was Marcus who volunteered to watch Liberty's fax machine on the day of the judgement to wait for first sight of the final adjudication and forward it on to the other campaigners.
As a result of the number of bisexuals attending Countdown On Spanner and participating in the hands-on SM demonstrations and workshops, a number of bisexuals got together in 1993 to form the group SM Bisexuals and Marcus chaired their first discussion, "SM Safety". He acted as the group's joint co-ordinator until 1996 and then sole co-ordinator until 1997 when it then changed to being run by an elected committee.
In 1995 the Health Education Authority decided to run a programme training HIV peer-educators - giving some key members of perceived risk groups the information needed to combat the spread of the disease and training them to deliver this as an education session back in their communities. Marcus was one of the group selected to receive the training for the bisexual community and went on the run a number of workshops discussing safer sex and ways to prevent the spread of HIV.
"When I was 21 I started to suspect I wasn't 100% gay. So I rang the London Lesbian and Gay Switchboard and I asked them if there were any bisexual groups, preferably meeting on a Friday night as that was the easiest for me to get into London. The man on the other end said that yes, there not only was a London Bisexual Group but they also met on a Friday night.
But before he'd give me their details he said he felt 'obliged' to ask me if I was sure that was what I wanted. We get a lot of calls from bisexuals, he said, and I always ask them if it wouldn't be easier to come out as gay, without all the pretence.
"I calmly explained that I had in fact already come out as gay to my parents, including telling them that I had a boyfriend twelve years older than me. I wasn't trying to ease myself out of any closet. His response was that I was presumably making the reverse journey - I was doing this as a precursor to becoming straight!
"Somehow I managed to get the details for the group from him before I slammed the phone down."
After a lifespan of more than 23 years the London Bisexual Group is currently on hiatus.
Within a year of joining the London Bisexual Group in 1992, and despite a clash of personalities with some members of the previous committee, Marcus was elected as Chair of the group - standing aside initially to allow the only female committee member to assume the post. They had both stood for chair and vice-chair and the result had been very narrow. When she stood down Marcus took over the role and was then re-elected in the following elections for another term.
Marcus's comic strip "Jake The Rake" is back online
Marcus has written articles for BiFrost, Bi Community News, Escape, Fetish Times, and appeared in Maxim. He has been interviewed by the Pink Paper, Axiom, AXM, Fyne Times, Gay Times and the Australian website bi.org.au.
He has appeared on BBC Radio and on Channel 4's 'Right to Reply', and his drawings and cartoons have featured in BiFrost, Bi Community News and on the internet.
Marcus is a fan of most UK science fiction, but especially Doctor Who. He has a presence in Second Life under the name 'Marcus Prospero', and in his spare time enjoys puppeteering.
This page last updated: 30/11/2007