Piers Morgan gets an amusing rise out of homophobic presidential candidate Rick Santorum, when he calls his attitudes out for what they are. Santorum then instantaneously suggests that 2K+ moral codes are by definition not bigoted, yet conflates ethics and bigotry. The former involves judging people for what they do, the latter involves judging people for who they are; he claims he’s doing the former whilst wilfully engaging in the latter. It’s entirely consistent to say that the Catholic Church is bigoted for its viewpoint on homosexuality – it self evidently is. Morgan did well to provoke the diatribe which punches a hole very cleanly through his protestations of being able to keep his religious viewpoints outside of his potential job as leader of the free world.

Santorum: “I don’t think the truth changes.”

Oh no? Truth I might remind everyone is determined by evidence, not Bronze Age ignorance and superstition. Apparently his theory of ‘unchanging truths’ is dictated by reason, but of course this is deluded nonsense. A viable president of the United States can’t be going around picking and choosing which social changes he’s prepared to accept and which not. Of course it’s an issue which the Senator confronts directly, but in the most appalling fashion. Earlier on in the clip he says that allowing same-sex marriage would open the floodgates to “a long list of consensual activities that most people would find rather unappealing.” I know the subtext he’s toying with – suggesting it would allow legalisation of bestiality or paedophilia (I’ve had a bewildering argument with another Christian about just this today – also making no rational sense). But of course those acts aren’t consensual. Surely there’s no problem with legalising consensual, harmless adult relationships? No wonder this idiot is getting hammered in the US. Check out his tantrum afterwards,  in a school of all places:

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Can we clear something up: there’s not a person in the land, left- or right-wing, pro- or anti-Murdoch who felt anything other than the deepest horror, grief and outrage over Milly Dowler or the Soham murderers. Yet to listen to the way these tragedies are now being invoked by the liberal-left to support its pet causes you’d imagine feeling and emotion and sensitivity were the sole preserve of Guardian-reading bien-pensants.

And it doesn’t just happen on this issue but on so many others too. Consider how, for example, the left-liberal bully mob exploited the story about the snogging gay couple turned away from a London pub, or the one about the other gay couple who – quite by accident I’m sure –booked themselves into a Cornish hotel run by ardent Christians who insisted rooms should be shared by married couples only. In both those cases important issues of genuine concern to the wellbeing of our country – how far should minority “rights” be allowed to trump property rights and freedom of choice, for example? – were drowned in a sea of Twitterish name-calling. Anyone who tried putting the counterargument – even someone like me with almost as many gay friends as straight ones – was blithely written off as a homophobe.

We are back in the realm where nasty people with nasty ideas insist, shouting and stamping their feet, that their ideas have equal validity and merit purely because they have them. What utter garbage. The ‘liberal-left’ ‘pet causes’? WHAT? Does this idiot really think the outrage over those phone hacking stories is related to anything other than fury over the immorality of News International’s behaviour?

For that matter discrimination law says that people providing goods and services aren’t allowed to discriminate against gay people for any reason. Since when is holding people to the law a ‘bully mob’? Pathetic. I note Delingpole resorts to the ‘I have gay friends’ argument, as if that legitimises his homophobic rhetoric. And it is homophobic – he’s not had the courage to risk saying he opposes the Equality Act. But goes on:

No one has a less deserving claim to the moral high ground than the liberal-left, for in the name of making our “society” kinder and fairer it is actually eroding our freedoms, stealing our livelihoods, stoking resentment and social division, destroying our economic future. Yet daily we go on letting these disingenuous bleeding heart scuzzballs get away with it. Why?

So equality, in his eyes, doesn’t make society kinder. In his eyes you should show kindness to people who discriminate against people for who they are – stopping them from doing that erodes their freedom and causes resentment! It makes you a scuzzball! I can think of a few other choice words I’d call him, but he’d no doubt, missing out the irony altogether, call it Twitterish name-calling.

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Is it true that the lives of heterosexual Mancunians are haplessly intertwined with transvestites, transsexuals, teenage lesbians and a horde of homosexuals across the age range? Is Manchester now the Sodom of the North?

Coronation Street has a gay scriptwriter, Damon Rochefort. Fine. Nothing wrong with that. Indeed, its very first writer,  its inventor in 1959, Tony Warren, was gay and open about it when homosexuality was still illegal and the penalties dire — and had a tough time with homophobia.

But the pendulum has swung to the other extreme, and where once we had no gaiety at all, we now, perhaps, have rather too much.

So a man who isn’t at all ‘too gay’ says it’s ok for the country’s premier soap opera to depict homosexuality, but not beyond a certain level. Gosh. Does he not understand what a soap opera is? For that matter does he not know Manchester?! But he goes on:

We have constructed a society that surrenders to the will of minorities that shout. We see it among ethnic minorities and sexual minorities, in the disabled lobby and in the funding, patronage and promotion of the arts.

And giving these minorities a huge voice is fundamental to the philosophy of those in charge of TV. As a result, TV is far too politically correct. It fosters all minorities and gives them a disproportionate amount of airtime.
In every kind of programme — be it drama, news, debate or for children — in this land of equal opportunities, minorities are given the opportunity to punch above their weight.

This is an art critic writing, who clearly doesn’t understand what art is about. Unsurprisingly perhaps, given that he’s writing in the HateMail, he’s ascribing a negative agenda to the proper and fair depiction of social diversity – a mean spirited agenda not born out by the facts. Charlie Condou points out:

There are only four regular gay characters in Coronation Street – I play Marcus Dent, who’s in a relationship with Sean Tully (played by Antony Cotton), and there’s also the young lesbian couple Sophie Webster and Sian Powers. That’s it. Hayley Cropper was once a man, but she’s been one of the show’s most popular characters since she joined 13 years ago, the first transsexual ever in a British soap. There is a cross-dresser in Marc Selby, but he is straight and in fact has two women fighting over him. Gail’s father, Ted, was gay – but he hasn’t been in it for years. I wouldn’t have thought four characters out of a cast of about 65 regulars was excessive.

Sewell seems to suggest there’s something morally reprehensible in being gay, and that there’s some kind of promotion of a gay agenda at work (led by a sinister-sounding “mafia”). But in fact you barely see a kiss from the gay characters, just like our heterosexual counterparts. It’s not a “sexy” show.

It’s not about ‘sexy’ of course, it’s about Sewell suggesting he’ll put up with homosexuality (and the HateMail’s readership should too), as long as ‘we’ don’t rub ‘their’ noses in it. That couldn’t be more of a homophobic stance to take. Soap operas may not be high art, but they have traditionally blazed trails worldwide in confronting issues and pushing boundaries, and most viewers have always understood this. Sewell says:

If the audience responds to the proselytising and is happy for the street to swarm with gloomy lesbians and happy homosexuals engaged in relationships ranging from intensely monogamous to brief, shallow and promiscuous, then it must be broadcast after the watershed.

But I don’t think the viewers agree. The days where the pro-Section 28 argument, that we ‘recruit’, could wash with the general public have long since come to an end. Why on earth should non-sexual same-sex relationships only be shown after 9pm? What era does this camp art critic think we’re living in? This argument isn’t really about somehow ‘purifying’ our culture from a homosexual excess – by using language such as ‘Sodom of the North’, Sewell has demonstrated it’s about his promotion of naked bigotry. He’s trying to gain legitimacy by pretending to stand up for a working class which is being misrepresented, but of course the working class in this country has traditionally stood up for proper gay representation better than almost anyone else. And of course he wouldn’t dare try to publish this hatchet job in the Morning Star or Socialist Worker – he and his sponsor Paul Dacre know just who they’re really aiming at. They can both fuck off.

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I’ve had a number of discussions in the last few weeks about diversity in comics, and this scan of the Young Avengers in Avengers: Children’s Crusade #3 highlights pretty much all of the points I want to make. The subject is at the top of the agenda right now because DC Comics have highlighted the issue at the heart of their relaunch in September. In a sense they’re trying to play catch-up – Joe Quesada changed the playing field in 2001 when he took over as Editor-in-Chief at Marvel – Garth Ennis broke every rule in the book with his Punisher, Mark Millar, Ron Zimmerman and Allan Heinberg all started introducing gay characters into mainstream Marvel books, Luke Cage took over the leadership of New Avengers, Christopher Priest broke all sorts of boundaries with his Black Pather, Brian Bendis started writing Jessica Jones in Alias, and Chuck Austen brought an out gay Northstar into the X-Men . It was by no means full diversity – check out how many of those writers are female, but Marvel certainly started to acknowledge that its readership consisted of far more than its white, thirty-something, hetersexual stereotype, and needed to be responded to. If I’d seen Billy and Teddy (above) in a book while I was in my teens it would have changed my entire life.

Looking at DC, they appear to be making similar moves. Wildstorm’s Apollo and the Midnighter are being reintroduced into Stormwatch by Paul Cornell, Cyborg is being placed at the heart of a rebooted Justice League, Judd Winick is writing Batwing and JH Williams III is finally back with the out gay Batwoman. But what effect will this have on the readership? Rich Johnson points out the fall in female authorship at DC across the relaunched line:

Of the 52 new number ones, 7 of the books are headlined by solo women or all-female teams, and several other team books feature female characters (most of them wearing pants, though Supergirl seems to have REALLY missed the memo and even left her skirt at home). But in terms of creators, it’s not a good situation. The 52 titles feature 160 credited creators, 157 male and 3 female.

So did accepting diversity made any difference to Marvel last decade? Dirk Deppey shows the answer was more complicated than just a change in attitude towards the single issue:

Asked in 2003 by readers of the online webzine X-Fan why sales had gone down so drastically in the previous decade, Jemas started out with the same answer he’d always given to the question: because the comics sucked. “My explanation is attached to an actionable and practical solution,” Jemas continued. “Start to write the kinds of stories that those millions of people used to like to read. When we get our mojo working, people will beat a path to our door.”

By this argument, as he continues, rebooting the line, Ultimate-style, could be a dramatic turnaround for DC. Without the same old, tired, comics memes and continuities holding kids and other back from reading the books, the company’s long-term fortunes could improve. Hiring high quality writers like Grant Morrison (one of Jemas’ success stories at Marvel), Scott Snyder, Jeff Lemire, Paul Cornell and others, and putting them on books well suited to their talents, may be a success. I would argue the jury’s out – for every Morrison there’s a Lobdell, for every Cornell there’s a Jurgens; then again Marvel’s approach to writing with the future in mind hasn’t stood the test of time either. Going back to what executives think works – the Spider-Man in-continuity reboot, the X-Men getting into ever more complicated, continuity-heavy, internecine wars, Bendis using the Avengers merely to break things, isn’t challenging anyone, and they may be defeating DC in market share, but they’re contributing inexorably to the long-term destruction of their market as a whole. Hopefully DC will see the value in Batwoman, start risking having far more women in high profile writing and drawing roles (there’s not exactly a shortage), and truly challenge their readership. Geoff Johns and Jim Lee will make a huge splash when Justice League relaunches but it’ll help the long-term market about as much as Joe Madureira on Spider-Man.

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Edson ‘Eddy’ Cosmas has lived and studied in London for several years.  As a child, he spent time in Manchester whilst his father studied there.  Eddy, a young, black, gay man from Tanzania, in east Africa, has built up a circle of friends and fellow students, and is determined to succeed in life.  He has strong political beliefs, and never misses an opportunity to speak out in support of gay rights, immigrant rights and anti-racism campaigns.

On Monday 9th May, Eddy went to the Home Office in Croydon to submit an initial claim for asylum, and to take a screening interview.  Long gone were the days of British immigration officials telling gay people seeking asylum to just ‘stay in the closet’, or to ‘act straight’; a ruling from the Supreme Court in July 2010 ordered that gay people could not be sent back to countries where they would face persecution for their sexuality.  With this in mind, Eddy was understandably shocked when, at the end of his interview, he was detained and put into the back of a van.

Only then was he told that he was being taken to Harmondsworth detention centre.  When I spoke to Edson in his cell at Harmondsworth on Thursday evening, via mobile phone, he sounds tired and frustrated, but determined to resist deportation.

“I’ve been here for ten days,” Eddy tells me.  “They call it a ‘detention centre’, but really it is like a jail.  We are locked up, and followed everywhere by security.”

The Supreme Court ruling was designed to end years of discriminatory, anti-gay immigration policies, but instead, it has had the opposite effect.  Openly gay activists such as Eddy, who should be automatically granted asylum under the landmark ruling, are being ‘fast-tracked’; held without their right to access to a lawyer of their choice, and scheduled for hastily-arranged hearings, and quick deportations.

“If I am sent back to Tanzania,” Eddy says on the phone, “I am facing being beaten, or death.  The immigration officials told me that they didn’t believe me; I said to them, I am the one that has lived in Tanzania, not you, so how can you tell me whether this is true or not?”

The UK Border Agency has long shown itself to be disinterested in basic human decency, let alone holding to the rule of law.  Sign this petition right now to send Theresa May a signal. How appalling that a Home Office which trumpets how well it treats its own gay staff, should continue to treat the most vulnerable gay people it’s responsible for in this way.

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Emma Ginn, co-ordinator of Medical Justice, said: “Despite compelling medical evidence, the UK Border Agency disbelieves Ms Tibikawa’s story. UKBA do not dispute that Ms Tibikawa has scars caused by a hot flat iron, but conclude that she did not suffer any ill-treatment in Uganda. We condemn the fact that they intend to deport Ms Tibakawa to a country where being gay is illegal and puts your life at risk.”

Human Rights Watch spokeswoman Gauri van Gulik said: “Our research has shown that many cases of women like Betty are not taken seriously by the UK Border Agency. Unfortunately women who suffer this kind of violence have serious difficulty claiming asylum.”

From Liberal Conspiracy:

Betty Tibakawa, a young lesbian living in Uganda, had gone for a walk on the beach when she was approached by three men she did not know, but who knew her by reputation, who began taunting her about her sexuality.

They took her to a disused building where she was violently assaulted. The men kicked her in the stomach, pinned her down and branded her inner thighs with hot irons. She lost consciousness and when she woke up, the men were gone. Her injuries were so severe that she could not leave her home for two months.

In February, Ugandan magazine Red Pepper outed Betty as a lesbian, publishing an article about her illustrated with photos, and the claim that she is ‘wanted’ for being a lesbian.

It has become incredibly dangerous for her to return to Uganda, where she has been disowned by her family and faces the risk of violent persecution for being gay.

Betty Tibakawa has had her asylum application turned down and is facing deportation back to Uganda, where homosexuality is illegal. Gay women who are deported to Uganda risk being raped and assaulted whilst they are in custody.

We are petitioning the Home Office to overrule this decision from the UK Border Agency, to give Betty the chance to live a life free from violence and fear. No one should be deported to country where they will be persecuted for their sexuality. We owe those seeking asylum in this country better than this.

Please sign the petition from this page.
Petition put together by Betty Tibakawa’s Campaign Group.

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A man who attended Tracy Morgan’s recent show in Nashville claims the comedian launched an anti-gay tirade during which he said he’d “pull out a knife and stab” his son if he were gay.

In a Facebook post titled “Why I No Longer ‘Like’ Tracy Morgan — A Must Read,” Kevin Rogerswrote that he’d been a big fan of Morgan’s since he was a cast member on Saturday Night Live.Rogers, who is gay, wrote that he was prepared for “a good ribbing of straight gay humor” but was surprised at what he claims the 30 Rock star said onstage. GLAAD responds to Morgan’s anti-gay jokes.

“I have very thick skin when it comes to humor; I can dish and I can take,” Rogers wrote. “What I can’t take is when Mr. Morgan took it upon himself to mention about how he feels all this gay shit was crazy and that women are a gift from God and that ‘Born this Way’ is bulls-it, gay is a choice, and the reason he knows this is exactly because ‘God don’t make no mistakes’ (referring to God not making someone gay cause that would be a mistake).  He said that there is no way a woman could love and have sexual desire for another woman, that’s just a woman pretending because she hates a f–king man.  He took time to visit the bullshit of this bullying stuff and informed us that the gays needed to quit being pussies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying.”

Morgan allegedly added that “gay was something kids learn from the media and programming” (Rogers’ words).

Continued Rogers: “He said if his son that was gay he better come home and talk to him like a man and not [he mimicked a gay, high pitched voice] or he would pull out a knife and stab that little N (one word I refuse to use) to death. …  Tracy then said he didn’t f–king care if he pissed off some gays, because if they can take a f–king d-ck up their a–… they can take a f–king joke.”

Rogers claims that “none of this rant was a joke. His entire demeanor changed during that portion of the night.  He was truly filled with some hate towards us.”

(from Hollywood Reporter)

If this is exactly what happened (I can’t imagine how the comments could possibly have been misconstrued), Morgan needs to lose his job in ’30 Rock’, it’s very simple. Homophobia like this needs to be stamped on and stamped on fast. I doubt anything will happen though, because of course Charlie Sheen had to lose his dignity entirely (and repeatedly) and trash his bosses in public for that to happen to him – why should Tracy Morgan face any significant consequences for naked anti-gay hate? He’s since apologised:

“I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent stand-up act in Nashville. I’m not a hateful person and don’t condone any kind of violence against others. While I am an equal opportunity jokester, and my friends know what is in my heart, even in a comedy club this clearly went too far and was not funny in any context.”

But I don’t think his apology should be accepted – it’s abundantly clear what’s ‘in his heart’. He clearly meant what he said (it wasn’t the first time – read the whole article) and only apologised to get out of trouble. This being the Internet, I’m bound to get a number of Americans bleating about the First Amendment, and it’s a worthwhile point to raise. Firstly my country has no such thing – freedom of speech isn’t absolute here (as it isn’t in America), but secondly by all means let the homophobe say what he likes. Hate speech should have social consequences and he should lose his job anyway. Also there may not be legal consequences to hate speech like this in America, but in the UK what Morgan said would be enough to (rightly) generate criminal charges.

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In court he said:

“Basically, some people just handed them to me so I just put them up. I didn’t say anything, it doesn’t say that I am going to punish them it just says what God says in the Koran.

“I wasn’t the one who made them, some people gave them to me and I only put up a few, there were hundreds of them up. I didn’t know the police were going to get involved or that it was a offence or anything.”

And in response he was given a slap on the wrist:

Hasnath, who lives with his family in Tower Hamlets and survives on job seekers allowance, was fined £100, ordered to pay £85 costs and a £15 victim surcharge. The offence could not carry a custodial sentence.

District Judge Coleman said: “I think you used these stickers deliberately to offend and distress people, you certainly succeeded in doing that.

“You have upset people and they deserve an apology, you are not entitled to behave in this way.”

An apology? £100? Inciting homophobic hatred in the community is worthy of a trivial fine and a demand for an apology? This asshole should be in jail! What if that sticker had said ‘Muslim free zone’? ‘Jew free zone’? I can’t believe that a message of outright hatred, with the clear implicit threat of violence, wouldn’t merit a custodial sentence. Turns out it could have – last month the CPS said:

“This case has now been referred to the CPS Special Crime and Counter Terrorism Division to consider whether a section 29C (1) of Public Order Act 1986 offence should be added. This offence is committed if a person uses threatening words or behaviour, or displays any written material which is threatening, if they intend thereby to stir up hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.”

So they decided not to bother even trying to jail him for up to six months, sending out a message that there are no meaningful consequences to anti-gay extremism like this. Others have pointed it out for many other reasons recently, but it’s clear that there’s something really rotten at the heart of the Crown Prosecution Service.

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Britain abandoned Section 28, but the legislature in the American state of Tennessee has now passed a similar piece of anti-gay nonsense, which would prohibit teachers in elementary and middle schools from talking about homosexuality at all. It blows my mind that anyone ever thought that the discussion of same-sex attraction could make someone gay, but it shocks me even more that an American state should try to enshrine such moronic prejudice into law now.

Out gay former Star Trek actor George Takei has something to say about this development. Love George, who didn’t even remark on the irony of the bill being sponsored by Sen. Stacey Campfield. Americans, eh?

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Caroline Green, who was married to the anti-gay Christian extremist for 26 years, says she has come forward now because “the people who support him financially and morally should know what he is really like”.

She told the Mail on Sunday that he had beaten her and her children, “brainwashed” them and forced them to live in a dilapidated caravan in remote Wales to protect them from the “evil” of urban life.

Mrs Green described the incident which prompted her to leave him, recalling how he made a list of her failings as a wife and then beat her until she bled with a piece of wood.

She said: “He even framed our marriage vows — he always put particular emphasis on my promise to obey him — and hung them over our bed. He believed there was no such thing as marital rape and for years I’d been reluctant to have sex with him, but he said it was my duty and was angry if I refused him.

“But the beating was the last straw. It ­convinced me I had to divorce him.”

She also said that he had beaten their eldest and middle sons with belts and broomsticks.

She added: “It was almost like living in a cult. We were all subjugated to his will and cowed by him. Over the years he belittled us and made us feel worthless.

So the next time Stephen Green is interviewed by the BBC as a counter-balance to gay-related news, you know just how severely to condemn them too.

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In an email, she wrote: “I’m sorry if what I wrote has offended some of your readers. You tell me that they may regard it as ‘over the top’. In fact, that is how I would describe some of the reaction to what I wrote.

“I have nothing against gay people and would always defend them against true prejudice – as I did in my article, and as I often do when considering the threat posed to them by radical Islamism. What does concern me, however, is the ‘gay rights’ political agenda which, as activists have often made clear, aims to change the basic moral framework of society.

What she means is gay people must know their place. As long as we accept we’re abnormal and unequal she’ll defend us against true prejudice (whatever that is).

“I am very surprised that readers may be offended by my suggestion that this agenda aims to destroy ‘normal’ sexual behaviour; as Andrew Sullivan made clear in his famous book, ‘Virtually Normal’, this is indeed a core aim.

“As for the issue of the teaching materials I would have thought that, given your readers’ concern for civil liberties, they would be disturbed by any manipulation of the school curriculum to promote a particular viewpoint about any group. There is no evidence at all that any such initiative has ever diminished any kind of prejudice or bullying in schools.

Yes there is – such an utter lie, but let me jump on the phrase ‘manipulation of the school curriculum to promote a particular viewpoint about … group’ and the nasty subtext contained therein. First off the Schools Out teaching materials for LGBT History Month are just that – additions which could be made to certain classes to inform children and young people about gay people if they want. How terrible it would be for gay kids to find out about the contributions made to society about other gay people. How terrible it would be for gay kids to be spoken about in classrooms as normal. Yet even that is disparaged by Phillips:

“And I know that many gay people are very decently troubled by my central point, that the equality agenda is depriving Christians of their rights to live their lives in accordance with their principles.

“I hope this helps explain my position more fully.”

It does. She’s arguing that Christian zealots should be allowed to discriminate freely based on belief alone.

Johann Hari on the other hand demonstrates that hate such has hers has consequences:

Jonathan Reynolds was a 15-year old boy from Bridgend in South Wales who was accused – accurately or not, we’ll never know – of being gay. He was yelled at for being a “faggot” and a “poof”. So one day, he sat a GSCE exam – later graded as an A – and went to the train tracks near his school and lay on them. He texted his sister: “Tell everyone that this is for anybody who eva said anything bad about me, see I do have feelings too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust to me, see I do have feeling too. Blame the people who were horrible and injust to me. This is because of them, I am human just like them. None of you blame yourself, mum, dad, Sam and the rest of the family. This is not because of you.” And then the train killed him.

I guess nobody told Jonathan Reynolds that, as the columnist Melanie Phillips put it, “just about everything in Britain is now run according to the gay agenda.” The great Gay Conquest didn’t make it from her imagination to his playground, or any playground in Britain. Gay kids are six times more likely to commit suicide than their straight siblings. Every week, I get emails from despairing gay kids who describe being thrown against lockers, scorned by their teachers if they complain, and – in some faith schools – told they will burn in Hell. Every day they have to brave playgrounds where the worst insult you can apply is to call something “gay”. They feel totally lost. This could have been your child, or my child, or Melanie Phillips’ child.

Melanie Phillips can go straight to hell.

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Inside Yarl’s Wood detention centre, awaiting deportation to Uganda in less than 24 hours, Brenda Namigadde is desperate.

Namigadde fled her home country eight years ago after being persecuted for her relationship with another woman. She says she has always intended to return home when “things were better”. But things, she says, have just got worse.

After the murder of the gay Ugandan activist David Kato and with a chilling warning from Ugandan MP David Bahati ringing in her ears, she says she fears her life is over. Bahati, the author of a bill which would impose the death penalty on homosexuals, intervened in Namigadde’s case to warn her she should “repent” or be arrested on her return.

Speaking from Yarl’s Wood, Namigadde, 29, says: “My life is in danger. I don’t know what will happen to me. I’m very scared. I haven’t eaten, I haven’t slept.”

She knows from experience what returning to her country will mean for her, she says. “I’ll be tortured, or killed, if I’m sent back. They’ve put people like me to death there.”

My point is this: even if the UK Border Agency were convinced (which they are) that she’s not gay (she demonstrably is), using the argument they always fall back on that ‘anyone could claim asylum by just pretending to be gay’, how could she morally be repatriated if Ugandan homophobes are on public record threatening her life anyway? The agency, a branch of the supposedly gay-friendly Home Office (don’t make me laugh, Stonewall), may not have suggested she just go home and ‘be discreet’ as they did under New Labour with gay Iranian asylum seekers, but just saying ‘she can’t prove she’s gay’ is surely no more acceptable.

Her asylum claim was turned down partly on the basis that the judge did not believe there was any evidence that she was homosexual.

Matthew Coats, head of immigration at the UK Border Agency, said her case had been considered by both the UK Border Agency and the courts on two separate occasions. “She has been found not to have a right to remain here,” he said. “An Immigration Judge found on the evidence before him that Ms Namigadde was not homosexual.”

What should she do to prove her sexual orientation? Have sex with a woman in front of a judge? For that matter is Coats suggesting that the story the Guardian reports of her past relationship is a lie? I’d be interested to know what criteria the UK Border Agency uses to prove whether or not someone is ‘homosexual’, and whether or not they take into account whether or not other people, even erroneously, believe they’re gay. The coalition agreement says:

“We will stop the deportation of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation or gender identification puts them at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution.”

And what about the http://madikazemi.blogspot.com/2011/01/in-uk-new-instructions-on-deciding-lgbt.html, forcibly updated by the Supreme Court?

Brenda Namigadde must not be deported to Uganda.

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One of Uganda‘s most prominent gay rights activists has been murdered in his home weeks after winning a court victory over a tabloid that called for homosexuals to be killed.

David Kato, the advocacy officer for Sexual Minorities Uganda, was bludgeoned to death in Mukono, Kampala, yesterday afternoon. Witnesses saw a man fleeing the scene in a car, and police are investigating.

Along with other Ugandan gay activists, Kato had reported increased harassment since 3 January, when a high court judge granted a permanent injunction against the Rolling Stone tabloid newspaper, preventing it from identifying homosexuals in its pages.

Late last year, Kato had been pictured on the front page of an issue carrying the headline “Hang Them”. He was one of the three complainants in the court case.

“Since the ruling, David said people had been harassing him, and warning they would ‘deal with him,’” Julian Pepe Onziema, a close friend and fellow gay rights activist, said.

The homophobia currently going mad in Uganda is religiously inflamed. That’s right – Christians who are supposed to believe in charity actually denying people equal rights (or indeed the right to life) for their inherent sexual orientation. Love the sinner, hate the sin? Not in Uganda – they at least know there’s no difference.

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Ruby Thomas, 19, was one of three teenagers who attacked 62-year-old Ian Baynham in an incident likened by one witness at the Old Bailey last month to something out of Stanley Kubrick’s A Clockwork Orange.

Jurors then convicted Thomas, of Anerley, south London, and her ex-boyfriend Joel Alexander, now 20, of nearby Thornton Heath – who was today sentenced to six years – after hearing details of the assault in September 2009.

Thomas had been acting in a “lairy, mouthy way” and flirting with passersby before she turned on Baynham and his friend Philip Brown and screamed “fucking faggots” at them as they crossed the square.

She also smiled as she “put the boot into” an unconscious Baynham after Alexander had knocked him to the ground and caused a severe brain injury.

Baynham died 18 days later at the Royal London hospital without recovering consciousness. Police found his blood on Thomas’s handbag and the ballet pumps she had been wearing.

Judge Richard Hawkins increased Thomas’s sentence from six years to seven because of the homophobic nature of her actions. He said: “This was a case of mindless, drink-fuelled violence committed in public.”

A third defendant, Rachael Burke, 18, of Upper Norwood, south London, will serve a two-year sentence in a young offenders’ institution after being convicted of affray at a separate trial.

Surely a real example of ‘broken Britain’ is when a judge increases a tariff for killing someone for being gay by a year rather than twenty. These are two, six and seven year sentences for murder -yet again homophobic scum get away with it by being ‘public schoolgirls’, ‘usually responsible’ or the jury believing the most preposterous justifications for Thomas’ behaviour from her barrister, reducing the charge to manslaughter . This is what happened:

The court was told that Thomas, of Anerley, south-east London, had been acting in a “lairy, mouthy way” and flirting with random passersby before turning on Baynham and his friend Philip Brown and screaming “fucking faggots” at them as they crossed the square.

When Baynham confronted her, there was a scuffle during which she hit him with her handbag. Alexander knocked him to the ground, causing a severe brain injury as his head hit the pavement.

Brian Altman QC, prosecuting, told the court: “That did not suffice. There is evidence that the female defendants then began putting the boot into Mr Baynham, who was still prone on his back, clearly unconscious and in distress … shocked onlookers saw repeated stamping to his chest and forceful kicks to his head.” He said the girls had been fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol.

How on earth was this manslaughter? How on earth could the sentences be this puny? How on earth could Ben Summerskill of Stonewall not condemn their leniency?

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