Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays

Families and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (FFLAG) is a voluntary organization and registered charity in the United Kingdom which offers support to parents and their lesbian/gay children. They have over 40 telephone helplines across the country, as well as several parent support groups and are a recognized support group by the UK Government. FFLAG also works outside the UK with other LGBT family support organizations particularly in Europe and the USA.

Formation
The national organization was established in 1993, although the earliest of its constituent support groups were established as previous as the 1970s. The organizations roots are in 1965 when Rose Ellen Robertson set up Parents Enquiry, Britain’s first helpline to advise and support parents and their lesbian, gay and bisexual children. The help line ran for three decades. FFLAG was created as a response to the high number of referrals from the police and social services.

Although FFLAG had been in existence a long time before its first web site only went live in 1997. Subsequent to the publishing of the first web site FFLAG gained sponsorship from Procter & Gamble for its printed publications and gay.com who offered the organization free web hosting and subject to gay.com web design.

The organizations aims and objectives are to provide support to parents and their Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual sons and daughters and is a central hub in a network of local parents groups providing support and friendship across the UK. The organization supports equal human and civil rights of Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals. Parents meet at groups in their local area and each year at the FFLAG conference.

Support Resources
One of the organizations publications in 1990 was the video 'Parents Talking' featuring an introduction by Sir Ian McKellen. The video is a support resource exploring the thoughts of parents of Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual people, the video was first broadcast and available free of charge via the internet from 1997. Other free resources since the early 1970s include booklets titled ' A Guide for Families and Friends' and deals with the many issues that in some cases may arise when a person makes the disclosure of sexuality. The second is 'How Do I Tell My Parents' and this discusses the many issues that often worry young people about the disclosure of sexuality. The booklets, both by Rose Robertson aim to assist all parties in looking at the different aspects of the disclosure of sexuality.

Patrons
Long standing Patrons of the organization are Dame Angela Mason CBE of the charity Stonewall, Sir Ian McKellen, British Actor, Michael Cashman MEP and member of the House of Lords Baroness Massey of Darwen. The number of patrons increased to seven by 2012 and now also include Ian Rivers PhD, an award winning psychologist, academic and author, Deidre Sanders otherwise known as Dear Deidre, an agony aunt from The Sun newspaper and Peter Tatchell of OutRage!.