May's Own Private IDAHO

Today is International Day Against Homophobia and Transphobia(IDAHO)* it is the 20th Anniversary of the World Health Organisation de-listing homosexuality as a mental illness. Some people who think there is still a cure should get with the 1990s and realise it isn't a disease.

So our Home Secretary and Equality Minister Theresa May issued this statement:

"This government is committed to creating a society that is fair for everyone and supports equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people.

"This means supporting civil partnerships, tackling homophobic bullying wherever it occurs, changing the law regarding historic convictions for consensual gay sex and using our international influence to put pressure on countries where LGB&T people are persecuted.

"These commitments show our determination to tear down the barriers that continue to hold people back."

Considering May's own voting record on gay rights and that most of her party's predecessors the lifting of historic convictions for consensual gay sex is a start of the great repeal act against some of the Conservative's policies.

However, the statement is welcome. Especially in light of the reaction earlier this year of one of their MEPs to the situation in Uganda. I hope the UK under a Tory and Lib Dem government does bring pressure internationally for gay rights.


* Look I know the T has been dropped altogether don't look at me.

How Rainbow are the Tories? Part II

Earlier this month I asked how truly gay friendly were the Tories. Tim Trent a blogger from Devon wrote to his local representatives about the Ugandan 'Anti-Homosexuality Bill' and got this response from Giles Chichester Conservative MEP for England South West and Gibraltar, I've highlighted a key phrase.

Dear Mr Trent,

Thank you for your round robin email to South West MEPs of 8th January with regard to Ugandan proposed legislation. I am replying on behalf of my Conservative colleagues because under the arrangement we have for constituency cover on a geographical county by county basis I am the initial point of contact for correspondence from Devon.

Yes I am aware of the press reports. I have the impression that being against homosexuality is not the sole or even major part of this draft legislation nevertheless I can well understand the concern it has caused in the wider world

My Personal opinion is that homosexuals have human rights like every other person. I have not made any representations in this matter up to now because I regard it as a matter for Ugandans to decide.

Of course as Tim correctly points out the name of the bill is 'The Anti-Homosexuality Bill 2009". If the sole purpose of locking up anyone who has taken part in same sex sexual activities isn't a sole purpose of being against homosexuality I want to know what Mr Chichester thinks would be. Maybe his allies in Europe are clouding his judgement, or maybe that is just his Conservative party philosophy.

Tim goes on to criticise the sentiment in the last paragraph it is just a form of words. He wrote back asking the MP to imagine he was in the 1930s, instead of 'homosexuals' use 'Jews' and instead of 'Ugandans' use 'Germans' and read the paragraph again.

I'll let you draw your own conclusions.

Nick Clegg Sets Out the Real Gay Rights' Agenda

Earlier this week David Cameron made what looked like an ad hoc adjustment to his income tax marriage person's allowance announcement when he added in civil partnerships. After the slap dash 50 minutes in which he took to clarify his position when he first announced those plans, this addendum looked like an add on from policy wonks to answer some, though not all of the inequality questions his proposal raised.

Nick Clegg this morning talking in The Independent goes further than any other leader ever has to knock out the last few areas of inequality for the gay community. He's basically saying enough of 'equal but different' why can't we just be equal.


Education

First up Nick calls for all schools to adopt anti-homophobia bullying policies and to teach that homosexuality exists and is normal. This he wants to apply even to faith schools. Many people grow up in a faith community feeling they are isolated, the feelings that they are going through are not something they can share with teachers, fellow pupils or whatever because of the way that homosexuality is treated. It can, and does, lead to depression in a number of people. Of course such feeling are not exclusive to such an school environment, but they do accentuate it in a faith school environment. At least having access to information and feeling more able to talk about it is something that people who actually are of that faith and find themselves to be gay need as much as every other teenager in our country.

As for protection from homophobic bullying, not every child has the opportunity long after the bullying ceases to go up to the bully and say, "You know you were right". To looks of confusion from the bully like I did a few years back.

Equal Marriage

Nick is calling for the same marital rights for gay men and women as straight couples. The Tories appear to be wanting to tinker around the edges of this, acknowledge it in the tax code but not much else. David Cameron talked earlier this week about extending the 'marriage' allowance to include 'civil partnerships' Nick wants to make those unions marriage. By full marital rights Nick is also saying that those that want a same sex marriage to be solemnised within a faith may do so if they find a clergyman or woman willing to do so. He's not forcing the churches, mosques, synagogues or whatever to all carry out such ceremonies merely allowing those who are inclined the option of being involved in such a ceremony where currently they are banned.

On this issue Nick has said:

"If we don’t want to discriminate, why do we make differences in language? Language is a hugely important signifier of how we segment society and how you seek to create differences between people. Since we don’t want to make differences on this and the law has moved a great deal to do that, we should be linguistically the same too."

Blood ban

As I said at Scottish Spring Conference last year, there is fallacy in the Blood Transfusion Services definition of "risky" sexual behaviour of those who donate. It isn't actually based on behaviour it is based on a categorisation of an entire section of the population, ignoring more risky sexual practitioners in the straight community over the safer members of the gay one. Recently I read another article about the shortage of O negative blood as a result of the recent cold weather, crying out for donors to come forward. My O neg of course could have helped if they'd only let me.

Asylum seekers

Currently there is no recognition that someone fleeing their country for sexual persecution can seek asylum in this country. We have sent back young men to some countries where they face certain death for admitting they are gay. We offer such protection for those who are politically or religiously persecuted. These people if they are faced with eminent danger should they be returned home will often face a favourable hearing for their case for asylum.

This of course is not about immigration but offering help to those who face persecution. Even the Christians would have to own up that Jesus told them to help those who face persecution, he didn't put any provisos unto that appeal.

On the issue of asylum seekers Nick added:

"It's a moral stain on our collective consciousnesses. The public debate has transformed asylum seekers into threats rather than human beings."

He said Lib Dem policy would be that Britain should provide sanctuary to those fleeing persecution because of their sexual orientation:

"It’s not just me that says this, it’s international law that says it."

Uganda

For those that do not know Uganda are currently debating a new policy that will lock up anyone involved in homosexual practices for live. Any who are HIV positive or who have AIDS face summary execution. Considering the rate of HIV infection on the African continent this could well turn into a cull. After all the use of HIV may well turn into the only 'evidence' that homosexual activity took place.

As with the asylum regulations above this is something we could not condone. While most of those asylum seekers come from countries where we may well have little sway with sanctions, Uganda is part of the Commonwealth and we have in the past excluded such members for taking actions against the spirit of the Commonwealth.


Finally

Speaking of the Conservative positioning on gay issues Nick said:

"He [David Cameron] is a confection. I don’t really know what he believes in. I don’t know what his convictions are and the reason is because they keep changing – and they seem to change for convenience. So when it mattered, when people went through the lobby to vote on Section 28, his convictions were on the wrong side. Suddenly they’ve changed and we get an apology!"

Mr Clegg questioned the Tory leader’s record of supporting gay equality, highlighting how Mr Cameron voted against the repeal of Section 28 (he last year apologised for the Tories’ introduction of Section 28) and how he has allied his party with right-wing anti-gay groups in Europe.

"The surveys of a lot of the next generation of Conservative MPs show massive residue of indifference at best, prejudice at worst [to the subject of gay rights]."

Nick is also being interviewed in the February edition of Attitude magazine which is out this week. But as I haven't seen that article a separate blog entry will probably follow.

Rage Against Stephen Green

I've just come back from Carols by Candlelight to hear two pieces of News, the first is that Rage Against the Machine have beaten X-Factor winner Joe McEllderry to Christmas number one. Earlier in the week Joe's mentor Cheryl Cole had said that the campaign wasn't fair to Joe, nothing personal against Joe but I think as he himself said tonight:

"It's more against the show than me and I think if any other person had have won, the same thing would have happened, because the petition was going on before the winner had been announced."

But some things are more important than the battle for the top of the charts at Christmas time and the other story that has got my attention really has my hackles up.

Stephen Green (who sometimes people mistype in blogposts instead of me) of Christian Voice has said the following:

"Gay people who have sex knowing they are HIV positive should be given the death penalty because they have 'committed murder';

"Capital punishment is acceptable because it is ordained by God in the Bible;

"Britain’s laws 'promote perversion' because they do not make homosexuality a criminal offence."

This is of course in reaction to the Ugandan Government's decision to give life sentences to anyone who has committed homosexual acts, and the death penalty. It shows the true colours of Christian Voice within this country they are not even speaking for the majority of Christians in this country. In this the season of goodwill to 'all' men Stephen Green is showing a total lack of goodwill not to mention ignorance of the issue of which he speaks.

For a start his is backing a campaign in Uganda that he believes will wipe out HIV/AIDS in the country. The actual rate of HIV in Uganda is currently 5.4% amongst adults, but is higher among women (7.5%) than men (5.0%). This is actually down on the peak so the claims that western gays are proselytising their life style and increasing the cases of HIV fly in the face of the facts.

Of course Green's comments only relate to gay people passing on knowingly HIV infection but like in most sub-Saharan countries the greater number of HIV sufferers is actually amongst the heterosexual community. Why doesn't he condone the death penalty for all HIV sufferers irrespective of sexuality? The answer is simple he has an anti-gay agenda and HIV is just in his eyes a handy excuse to exterminate the gay community. Therefore Hitler-like he wants to round up all homosexuals and place us in prison. He says as much in that he wants the UK to re-criminalise homosexuality. He'd then want to put to death those that knowingly pass on HIV; but only if they are gay.

He of course ignores the fact that some couples live with one member being HIV positive and follow safer sex practises to ensure that the other does not capture the disease. Therefore the act of sex is not as itself an act of 'murder' as he would have you believe, indeed with current advances in medical science it need not be the imminent death sentence it once was in the 80s.

So Stephen is advocating mass concentration camps and genocide. Christian Voice would be guilty of far greater crimes that those they seek to prosecute.

Chris Bryant MP for Rhondda as said of Green:

"Ignorance is one thing but deliberate ignorance is quite another. Aids is caused by a virus not by anybody’s sexuality and if people keep on propagating these myths then many more African people will die of Aids.

"It is comments like this that mean some people will grow up in Wales worrying about their sexuality and worrying that if they tell other people they will be verbally and physically assaulted."

Stephen Green flies inf the face of what it means to be a Christian to love one another as Christ loves the Church. He is upholding Old Testament law to the exclusion of New Testament forgiveness.

Should the BBC be Exorcised? - UPDATED

I give a hat tip to Caron for this who tweeted my attention to it via SohoPolitico.

Now I have friends who work, some of them quite high up, in BBC New Media, but I hope that none of them were involved in approving or setting up this debate in have your say. The question is "Should Homosexuals be executed?". I'm pretty sure my jaw dropping wasn't due to a particularly heavy swell hitting the ship but abject disbelieve that I am reading this on the BBC. Has the Daily Fail bought out the public broadcaster? It feels like it.

Of course the debate is about the Ugandan Government's sickening proposal to lock up anyone who commits a homosexual act for live, unless the person is HIV+ or has committed the act on someone under 18, then they will be summarily executed. I'm sure there are ways to have had a debate on this issue without phrasing the question as they have done. Even the BBC seem to realise that this question is going too far as the opening paragraph of explanation says:

"Yes, we accept it is a stark and disturbing question. But this is the reality behind an Anti-Homosexuality Bill being debated on Friday by the Ugandan parliament which would see some homosexual offences punishable by death."

I don't think that excuses them for saying it. What is disturbing even more is the little box on the side which says how the debate is going. When I logged on to the page it read:

• Comments posted 405
• Published comments 169
• Rejected comments 119
• Moderation queue 117

For a fully moderated BBC news threat that is a startling statistic. It equates to 41.3% of the comments that the moderators have so far looked at being deemed unpublishable on the BBC website.

There is one very sage comment that I picked up which sums up the Ugandan Parliaments attitude in a nutshell.

"It is ironic and disturbing that out of a so-called 'moral' view (i.e. homosexuality is wrong) one condones the act of murder. For that is what it is."

Handily the first sentence is 126 characters long (including the full stop). If you tweet replace one with Uganda and tweet away I say. Neighbouring MP Eric Joyce of Falkirk has also blogged on this issue.

UPDATE: Having finally got home having started to write this on the HSS I see that the BBC has finally closed comments on the debate, that shouldn't have been opened in the first place.

Of the 395 comments that were actually moderated on this subject before it was closed 189 or 47.8% had been rejected.

FURTHER UPDATE: The BBC have deemed it necessary to write an blog entry about the decision. I would class it in the category unpology.

It starts by saying that the editors of BBC Africa though "long and hard" about using the question. Then they go on to say:

"We agree that it is a stark and challenging question, but think that it accurately focuses on and illustrates the real issue at stake."

I have no question that there is a real issue at stake. People are going to lose their freedom because of who they end up loving and how they express it, the unfortunate ones will end up being killed, murdered. Of course the Ugandan Government is not threatening to kill HIV+ heterosexuals. Now that is a question that deserved to be debated.

They conclude by saying:

"We have sought to moderate these rigorously while at the same time trying to reflect the varied and hugely diverse views about homosexuality in Africa."

Now I don't see the word sorry anywhere in this statement from the BBC. What I do see is an attempt to shift the blame to African sensibilities. We didn't hear the BBC use such an excuse in the 1930s or 40s about German sensibilites. The BBC Africa section seem to have forgotten that the BBC stands for 'British' Broadcasting Corporation, if it really is them that are to blame.


The Times, the Guardian, The Independent, and Sky News are all covering the story this morning.

UPDATED: Peter Horrocks the director of the BBC World Service wrote this on the BBC Editors blogs.

"The original headline on our website was, in hindsight, too stark. We apologise for any offence it caused. But it's important that this does not detract from what is a crucial debate for Africans and the international community.

"The programme was a legitimate and responsible attempt to support a challenging discussion about proposed legislation that advocates the death penalty for those who undertake certain homosexual activities in Uganda - an important issue where the BBC can provide a platform for debate that otherwise would not exist across the continent and beyond."

Sadly of course it wasn't a platform for debate as my comment about the number of non-approved comments above showed. While it is a crucial issue for African's it shouldn't be the subject of debate whether such executions are right and legitimate. There were debates that could have been had around this issue, this Mr Horrocks was not the one to be had.

First posted at 17:34 on 16 December 2009