James Wharton

James Wharton is the author of Out in the Army: My Life as a Gay Soldier and Something for the Weekend': Life in the Chemsex Underworld and an LGBT activist.

Wharton was born in Wrexham on the first of January 1987, and grew up in the nearby village of Gwersyllt.

In September 1999, this court ruled that investigations by military authorities into a service person's sexuality breaches their right to privacy (Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights).

Before 2000, Wharton could have been court-martialled.

Until 2000, the British Ministry of Defence (MOD) policy was to continue the long-standing ban on gay people in the Armed Forces, and 298 were dismissed in 1999, the year before the ban was lifted.

A legal challenge to this stance was taken up by four people who had been investigated and dismissed for being gay — a female nurse and male administrator dismissed from the Royal Air Force, and a Lieutenant Commander and naval rating, both males, dismissed from the Royal Navy.

Their legal challenge was supported by the pressure groups Liberty and Stonewall.

After losing the case at the Court of Appeal in London, they appealed to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

In light of the ruling (which as an ECHR ruling applies to the militaries of all member states of the EU and of the Council of Europe), the MOD subsequently lifted the ban, and began allowing gay people into the services from 2000 onwards.

According to a national opinion poll published a week before the ruling, the ban had been opposed by 68% of Britons.

Having had a lifelong ambition to serve in the British Army, Wharton began his career aged sixteen, following three years with the Army Cadets.

By the mid-2000s, the Armed Forces had begun to celebrate their modern approach to diversity and in 2008, gay servicemen and lesbian service women were encouraged to take part in London Gay Pride in their uniforms.

(According to a Royal Air Force press release, "personnel will be considered to be on-duty for the uniformed element of the event").

At first worried that he might be the only serviceman to attend, Wharton was joined by over fifty uniformed men and women from across the armed services.

After his basic training at The Army Foundation College in Harrogate from 2003 to 2004, Wharton signed up as a Trooper in the Blues and Royals division of the Household Cavalry in 2005.

Covering Wharton's career in the army from 2003 to 2013, Paul Gambaccini described it as "the most moving book I have read" and publisher Ian Dale listed it as among the top 25 books published by Politico's & Biteback.

Stephen Fry described it as "a wonderful, stirring and thrilling read".

Wharton came out as gay to his regiment in 2005, aged 18 and just six years after the army's discrimination against gay people was declared a breach of human rights by the European Court of Human Rights.

For his first two years, Wharton's duties were largely ceremonial but in 2007 he saw active service in Iraq as a member of an armoured reconnaissance unit.

In 2008, Wharton was seconded to Canada to take part in the training troops for active service under the command of Prince Harry, who defended Wharton against a homophobic threat from soldiers in another regiment.

Wharton later described the incident in his book Out in the Army and he defended his publicising Prince Harry's role in it by saying "(he) wanted to write honestly about his time in the Army".

In 2009, he garnered attention by featuring on the cover of Soldier Magazine – the official monthly publication of the British Army – as an openly gay trooper in the Blues and Royals.

In 2009, Wharton was invited to appear in Soldier magazine – the official monthly publication of the British Army.

What Wharton expected to be a short article on his experience as an openly gay soldier in the British Army turned out to be the featured article.

A photograph of Wharton in dress uniform and wearing his Iraq Medal decorated the cover alongside the word "pride" in bold.

Just nine years before it was illegal to be gay and serve in the armed forces.

The following year, Wharton entered a Civil Partnership, which was later that day celebrated at the non-commissioned officers' mess in the Household Cavalry's Hyde Park barracks.

Having returned to ceremonial duties, in 2010, Wharton took part in Trooping of the Colour, which since 1748, has marked the official birthday of the British sovereign.

In 2011, Wharton formally escorted the Queen Elizabeth II at the wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge.

Wharton returned to public attention in May 2012, when a photograph of him – in uniform and without permission from his commanding officer – alongside his civil partner was published on the cover of Attitude with the heading "Have you heard the one about the Iraq veteran who can fight for his country but can't get married?"

In the same year, Wharton came 20th of 250 influential lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people on The Pink List.

Wharton left the army in 2013 after ten years' service and in 2014, he was granted the Freedom of the City of London for his work as a prominent LGBT activist.

In 2013, after a decade of service, which included meeting Prime Ministers Gordon Brown and David Cameron, and advising representatives of the US Armed Forces on their "Don't Ask, Don't tell" policy, Wharton left the army and published his autobiography.

Published in 2013 (and with an afterword) in 2014, Wharton's autobiography and first book was met with critical acclaim.

In a column for the launch edition of Winq magazine in 2014, Wharton advocated the closure of gay saunas.

He claimed that saunas promoted homophobia and were "thorns in our side that mark our community as different for the wrong reasons."

His views sparked a nationwide controversy and met with strong opposition by notable LGBT activists, including Peter Tatchell, Matthew Hodson, chief executive of the gay men's health charity GMFA, and Jason Warriner, clinical director for The Terrence Higgins Trust, who argued that "(closing saunas) would make it more difficult for organisations like Terrence Higgins Trust to provide safer sex information, supply condoms and deliver HIV testing services among groups at increased risk of sexually transmitted infections and HIV."

Wharton later retracted his comments, which he said were in part due to a traumatic experience he had in a sauna when he was eighteen.

Following working in public relations and for the LGBT-specialist insurance company Emerald Life, Wharton was the Wellbeing Services Manager at Birmingham LGBT until September 2019.

As of 2023, Wharton is a reporter working for Forces News.