It's common knowledge that Shakespeare wrote Romeo and Juliet. But how many school students know about the sonnets he dedicated to a young soldier? How many people left school without knowing about Virginia Woolf's bisexuality or studied our poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy for GCSE without knowing that she is a lesbian?
In September a gay man was killed in London's Trafalgar Square, and a young gay police cadet in Liverpool was beaten up recently and left fighting for his life.
We all go to school and most study what is in the national curriculum. Lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people, however, remain outside that curriculum. The consequences of this invisibility are clear. We are marginalised from mainstream culture.
This makes us feel isolated in school and is reinforced by the lack of role models. Our attackers are homophobic and transphobic. Their phobia is a product of their prejudice, which comes from their ignorance. They don't know any LGBT people and they think we are "other". So we're fair game.
It is this invisibility that LGBT History Month, which takes place in February, was set up in 2005 to combat. We wanted to get into schools with our two fundamental messages: we are not all victims and some of us lead very successful lives; and the words lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans might be new, but they describe same-sex desire and gender variance and they have existed in all times and all places.
Despite many successes, we are still struggling to change things in schools. But what has been essential has been the contribution from museums and art galleries. They inspire teachers and activists and interested parties in the battle for equal opportunities and human rights.
Dan Snow recognised the importance of the relationship between Hadrian and Antinuous and this was incorporated into the exhibition at the British Museum. Hello Sailor: Gay Life on the Ocean Wave was on display at the Merseyside Maritime Museum and the Discovery Museum in Newcastle.
The Museum of London always celebrates LGBT History Month with a major display and towns and cities such as Birmingham, Gloucester, Nottingham and Norwich have begun their own rainbow histories with travelling exhibitions.
These exhibitions and displays are essential to our work because they show that we exist in the real world - and that we always have.
Same-sex desire and gender variance are not 20th-century western concepts. Our museums and art galleries can prove this and they must continue to do. The same-sex desire trail in the British Museum, launched last month, will be the first permanent display of LGBT artefacts in a museum in the UK. More must follow.
Tony Fenwick is the co-chair of LGBT History Month
www.lgbthistorymonth.org.uk
