“This time last week I never thought I would be standing here saying all this. The reason I am here is to stand up for not only what I believe in but what we all believe in and to push our right to freedom.
“The attack which happened last week was a massive shock to the nation and surely this is the final straw.
“No matter whether we are straight, gay or transgender it should make no difference – it’s what’s inside that counts.”
Last year it was Michael Causer, this year we’ve had Ian Baynham, and now James Parkes:
A trainee policeman is critically ill in hospital after suffering multiple head injuries in a homophobic attack in Liverpool.
PC James Parkes was off duty and on a night out with friends when he was attacked outside a gay bar, Superstar Boudoir, shortly before 10pm on Sunday.
He sustained multiple “life-threatening” skull fractures and fractures of his eye-socket and cheekbone in the assault allegedly carried out by up to 20 teenagers.
Four youths from Kirkdale, two aged 15, one 14 and one 17, have been arrested on suspicion of assault.
There’s now a widespread acknowledgment that homophobic hate crime is on a massive upward spiral. The question is of course what’s fuelling it. I came to terms years ago with the reality that social attitudes would never keep pace with equal rights legislation, but even then this resurgence of violent homophobia doesn’t seem so easily explained away. Is it identity politics? Is it the old staple of minorities going for each others’ throats when there is the perception that one of them is disadvantaged and the other not? Or is it even more insidious than that – are there deeply entrenched, and unchallenged homophobic attitudes which are being legitimised and encouraged when they weren’t before?
I can’t help but notice that this increase in violence has been accompanied an equally sudden rise in militant Christianity, both perhaps a result of recent equality legislation covering both religion and sexual orientation. We’ve seen Christianists trying to avoid performing civil partnerships, counselling gay couples, and trying to avoid the sack for anti-gay behaviour on, you guessed it, religious grounds. Gay rights and religious rights have been set against one another, and I suspect this ‘rights competition’ is partly the cause of what might otherwise have remained latent homophobic attitudes to emerge back out into the open.
Take the case of Pauline Howe, a 67 year old devout Christian, who felt compelled to write to Norwich City Council to condemn its decision to allow a Pride march. It’s clear that her rant wasn’t criminal, but it was nonetheless overtly homophobic, and it was notably defended by Daily HateMail columnist Allison Pearson, who concluded of the police investigation into Mrs Howe:
There is still plenty of mindless hatred out there. Trying to silence those who express their religious beliefs will not make it go away.
No doubt Pauline Howe, who has led a blameless life for almost seven decades, is now a juicy statistic in some smug Hate Crimes file. Result: a law-abiding woman’s faith in the criminal justice system takes another knock. And so does ours.
Sure Pauline Howe was entitled to her freedom of speech, but as with the Jan Moir debacle, she also has to take responsibility for what she has written – she shouldn’t expect a free ride just because she has devout religious convictions. Pearson accuses those who investigated Mrs Howe (and presumably those who attacked Jan Moir) of attempting to silence the devoutly religious (even if they criminally incite hatred), yet nothing could be further from the truth. She casually dismisses Howe as ‘blameless’ and officers who investigate hate crimes as ‘smug’, yet doesn’t challenge her hatred, nor what drove it – was it deep rooted homophobia, heterosexism or an underlying attitude that belief has the right to trump everything? This refusal to challenge these deep rooted attitudes further legitimises the upsurge in anti-gay violence. Is it being challenged elsewhere in the media? No. Is it being challenged in schools? No. While Pearson, Moir and their ilk casually trivialise hate crime, gay people are getting killed.
There’s now a widespread acknowledgment that homophobic hate crime is on a massive upward spiral. The question is of course what’s fuelling it. I came to terms years ago with the reality that social attitudes would never keep pace with equal rights legislation, but even then this resurgence of violent homophobia doesn’t seem so easily explained away. Is it identity politics? Is it the old staple of minorities going for each others’ throats when there is the perception that one of them is disadvantaged and the other not? Or is it even more insidious than that – are there deeply entrenched, and unchallenged homophobic attitudes which are being legitimised and encouraged when they weren’t before?
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