Discover why we created Forbidden Colours
By & For LGBTIQ+ People
In 2018, 6 gay friends from Belgium came together. They concluded that although they were having successful careers in arts and business, too many people within the LGBTIQ+ communities in Europe were enduring injustice. Fully understanding their privileges, together with the King Baudouin Foundation, they founded Forbidden Colours.
Read their stories bellow.
Communications Director, Automotive
Gabriel Goffoy
I’m grateful that my family, friends and colleagues never question or judge my homosexuality and accept me and my husband for who we are. I know many people fought for the rights we have today and I think it is the responsibility of those who live in freedom to continue the fight for equal rights for all LGBTIQ+ people for whom their sexual identity still is a struggle.
Too many LGBTIQ+ people still face discrimination, prosecution, exclusion, torture and even execution. Therefore I want to thank the founding members, members of the steering committee, all our ambassadors and people who support Forbidden Colours in our mission to make the world a better place for all LGBTIQ+ people.
Speaker & Executive Creative Director
Benoit Vancauwenberghe
Speaker & Executive Creative Director
Benoit Van- cauwenberghe
I am 41 years of age and have been married to the man of my life for 20 years now. My family has always supported us and I was able to get the job of my dreams. I am one of the lucky few because my life could have taken a very different turn. 2500 kilometres away from here, outing yourself as LGBTIQ+ results in jail time without a trial. A 2-hour flight away from Brussels, people get beaten to death for holding hands with the one they love.
Architect and founder of Arcanne
Gregory Hye
We’re all different. We’re all the same. We’re all abnormal. We’re all normal. Being gay has become for me a non-subject, thanks to my family, my friends, my city. I’m conscious that this privilege is fragile and I want to commit myself to the defence of those everywhere in the world who still have to fight for who they are. Through my commitment, I want those who point fingers to question their own morality.
Art22 Gallery founder
Didier Brouwers
Being happy with my own difference and able to express myself freely in my professional and private life have always been a goal in itself. I grew up in a rather tolerant environment where conflict called for dialogue, even though homosexuality was something new to be tamed, easily or with difficulty, for those around me.
When I made my coming out, someone close to me made the essential decision to change her sexual identity. During our respective journeys as “battle companions”, I have come to see the extent to which an assumed sexual identity is key to one’s life, whatever the price to pay, despite the “battles” that shouldn’t even exist in contemporary society in the first place.
Opera-intendant
Peter de Caluwe
Equal rights are the basis of living together in harmony. It has always been my adagio that every human being deserves the same rights as those I dare claim for myself… .
Where this moral basis of democracy is now widely accepted, it is still different when it comes to LGBTIQ+ rights. Not everyone understands that sexual choices are a choice of identity and self-respect and that others have no right to claim anything as regards another person’s affections.
Noble Purpose entrepreneur & activist
Olivier Onghena-
‘t Hooft
From a very young adult age I adopted the attitude “If you have a problem with me being gay, that tells more about your limitations than about me being the human being I was born!” My homosexuality has never prevented me from doing what I wanted to do, from being aware and from becoming successful.
supporters from the start
Forbidden Colours exists thanks to the support of these wonderful people
thank you for your hard work and commitment
Jean-Pol Lejeune, photography
Stijn Zeebroek, IT consultant
