Carl Jason Austin-Behan is a British former politician and community activist who currently serves as

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term i ...

adviser to the

Mayor of Greater Manchester The Mayor of Greater Manchester is the directly elected metro mayor of Greater Manchester, responsible for strategic governance in the region that includes health, transport, housing, strategic planning, waste management, policing, the Greater ...

. He served as

Lord Mayor of Manchester This is a list of the Lord Mayors of the City of Manchester in the North West of England. Not to be confused with the Directly elected Greater Manchester Mayor. The Current and 124th Lord Mayor is Cllr Donna Ludford, Labour who has served Si ...

from May 2016 to May 2017, being its first openly gay Lord Mayor. He was Labour councillor for

Burnage Burnage is a suburb of the city of Manchester in North West England, about south of Manchester city centre and bisected by the dual carriageway of Kingsway. Within the boundaries of the historic county of Lancashire, the population of the Bu ...

from 2011 to 2018. He served in the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) an ...

from April 1991 until October 1997 and in 2001, aged 29, he won

Mr Gay UK Mr Gay UK is a British annual beauty contest for gay men, with regional heats held in gay nightclubs with a grand final usually at a gay venue. It began in 1982 as "Mr Hardware" (named after a fragrance) designed to promote a gay mail order c ...

Early life and education

Austin-Behan was born in north

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of City of Salford, Salford to ...

and grew up in

Crumpsall Crumpsall is an outer suburb and electoral ward of Manchester, England, north of Manchester city centre, bordered by Cheetham Hill, Blackley, Harpurhey, Broughton, and Prestwich. The population at the 2011 census was 15,959. Historically p ...

Career

Austin-Behan was discharged from the

in 1997 for being

gay ''Gay'' is a term that primarily refers to a homosexual person or the trait of being homosexual. The term originally meant 'carefree', 'cheerful', or 'bright and showy'. While scant usage referring to male homosexuality dates to the late ...

at a time when it was illegal to be openly gay in the RAF. Austin-Behan was elected to

Manchester City Council Manchester City Council is the local authority for Manchester, a city and metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. Manchester is the sixth largest city in England by population. Its city council is composed of 96 councillors, three f ...

as Labour Member for Burnage ward in May 2011. In 2016 he was made Lord Mayor of Manchester, and his term ended in May 2017. He was Manchester's first openly

Lord Mayor and one of its youngest at 44. In November 2017 Labour deselected him as the Labour candidate for the local elections in May 2018. He said that he was "hurt, upset and gutted" to have been deselected in favour of

Momentum In Newtonian mechanics, momentum (more specifically linear momentum or translational momentum) is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If is an object's mass ...

candidate Ben Clay. In August 2018, he was appointed LGBT advisor to Greater Manchester mayor,

Andy Burnham Andrew Murray Burnham (born 7 January 1970) is a British politician who has served as Mayor of Greater Manchester since 2017. He served in Gordon Brown's Cabinet as Chief Secretary to the Treasury from 2007 to 2008, Culture Secretary from 2008 ...

Awards and honours

*RAF Safety Centre "Good Show" Award,

*Bronze Medal from the

Royal Humane Society The Royal Humane Society is a British charity which promotes lifesaving intervention. It was founded in England in 1774 as the ''Society for the Recovery of Persons Apparently Drowned'', for the purpose of rendering first aid in cases of near dro ...

, for rescuing a pilot from a burning Hawk aircraft *1996: Mention in the

Queen's Birthday Honours The Birthday Honours, in some Commonwealth realms, mark the reigning British monarch's official birthday by granting various individuals appointment into national or dynastic orders or the award of decorations and medals. The honours are pres ...

, with a Commander in Chief's Commendation *2001: Winner,

*2019: Appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of the County of

Greater Manchester Greater Manchester is a metropolitan county and combined authority area in North West England, with a population of 2.8 million; comprising ten metropolitan boroughs: Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Bury, Oldham, Rochdale, Stockport, Tamesid ...

. This gave him the

Post Nominal Letters Post-nominal letters, also called post-nominal initials, post-nominal titles, designatory letters or simply post-nominals, are letters placed after a person's name to indicate that the individual holds a position, academic degree, accreditation, ...

"DL" for Life. *2019: Appointed

Officer of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry, rewarding contributions to the arts and sciences, work with charitable and welfare organisations, and public service outside the civil service. It was established o ...

(OBE) in the 2020 New Years Honours List for services to charity, LGBTQ+ equality and the community in Greater Manchester.

Personal life

Austin-Behan married his partner of 12 years, Simon Behan in December 2015. In May 2016 the ''

Metro Metro, short for metropolitan, may refer to: Geography * Metro (city), a city in Indonesia * A metropolitan area, the populated region including and surrounding an urban center Public transport * Rapid transit, a passenger railway in an urban ...

'' reported that the couple were in the process of adopting a child.

References

External links