Allied Rainbow Communities have partnered up with 89.7Bay, Malta's No.1 Hit Music Station, to bring you a Maltese podcast that focuses solely on the LGBTIQ community. The podcast is called "Voices of Pride".
Podcasts have become a very popular form of media, and in the past year especially, many new channels have formed by different well known radio hosts, TV personalities and bloggers. The good thing about podcasts is they are played on demand and easy to look for depending on the topic of one's interest.
Over the past year in fact, a number of LGBTIQ individuals were invited to speak about different topics but the fact remained that the agenda was many times in the hand of the host, which could mean that LGBTIQ identities were often challenged or debated (We're looking at you Jon Mallia).
This time, the agenda of the podcast is purely in the hands of the guest. Our first episode featured Nicholas Bugeja, who shares a lot of his personal past and what it meant to come out as gay, back in the 80s. This was a time of great repression to be open about your sexuality, especially when stigma increased tenfold because of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. To be gay mean to have HIV and back then there was not enough knowledge about the virus, and many times considered a death sentence. Notwithstanding these hard time, people from the community had quite a thriving nightlife and places where they could hang out and meet.
Nicholas ends with a very important message in this podcast, which is to never take our rights forgranted. Our rights as a community, can be taken away with a strike of pen as we have seen in places like Hungary, Turkey and even in the USA!
Below is our first episode which you can watch or listen on Spotify, Enjoy!