Nick Henderson

Nick Henderson (born 27 April 1988) is a Scottish Jew who lives in Israel. He came to prominence as a gay-rights advocate where he successfully lobbied for Same-sex marriage to be introduced in Scotland. He also worked in a variety of advisory roles to the Scottish government in particular looking at the problems young people face with poverty.

He was Director of the LGBT Network. He was co founder and project co-ordinator of Youth End Poverty (YEP) Dundee,. 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 and Oxfam 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.

Advocacy work
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 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 Member of the Scottish Parliament Shirley-Anne Somerville 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."

On February 14, 2014, the same-sex marriage bill was passed by the Scottish government over five years after Henderson launched the petition in Parliament.

Later work
Following his work in LGBT advocacy and anti poverty activism Henderson began working at the national governing body Sportscotland as a Strategic Partnership Officer. He worked in a variety of roles including responding to public and ministerial inquiries to the agency and was responsible for providing the Scottish government with updates during the London Olympics 2012.

After leaving this role in March 2013 he began working for the Glasgow Disability Alliance, which lobbies for disability rights, as a Policy, Communications & Research Officer.

Henderson left this role in May 2014 and made Aliyah to Israel. He began volunteering at the Livnot U'Lehibanot, Kabbalah centre in Sefad which provides educational and spiritual tours mainly to young North American Jews. Henderson commented that "Israel is the only place in the world where I can be openly Jewish, and openly gay. For me, these two identities have never been in conflict with each other."