Peter Tatchell: Go on, Dave. If you're really sorry about gay rights, prove it
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Independent Minds
David Cameron has done an extraordinary thing. He apologised last week for the homophobia of his own party, singling out Section 28, the Thatcher government's infamous ban on the "promotion" of homosexuality by local authorities.
Condemning it as a "mistake" and "offensive", he pledged to make the Tories the party of gay equality: "The Labour government has made some important changes. I think we have further to go," he told the Pink Paper.
These crucial words are Cameron's bold, praiseworthy commitment to further policy changes to remove the remaining vestiges of homophobia. My challenge to David Cameron is this: what specific additional legal reforms will you pledge to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community? What would you do as prime minister to end the homophobic discrimination that Gordon Brown is refusing to abolish?
Take homophobic violence and hate crime. Successive Labour home secretaries have given visas and work permits to Jamaican reggae singers such as Bounty Killer who incite the murder of LGBT people.
Inciting murder is a serious criminal offence, yet these singers are allowed to come to Britain, while the leader of the US Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan, has been banned from Britain for two decades. I may disagree with Farrakhan's views, but he has never incited violence against anyone. Why the double standards?
Moreover, the Government, police and Crown Prosecution Service permit record stores and radio stations to promote songs that encourage the killing of LGBTs. Neither Labour nor Tory ministers would tolerate similar "murder music" against Jewish or black people. Why aren't LGBTs receiving the same legal protection against incitements to kill them?
Gordon's government is refusing asylum to LGBT refugees who have been jailed and tortured in countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Nigeria, Jamaica, Iran and Uganda. The Home Office says they won't be at risk if they go back home and stop having gay relationships. It never makes such onerous demands on political, religious or ethnic refugees.
Labour said its Equality Bill would harmonise the patchwork of equality legislation. It won't. Harassment based on sexual orientation is explicitly exempted. This exemption applies to schools. They will have no legal obligation to prevent the harassment of LGBT pupils, despite the pandemic of homophobic bullying. Meanwhile faith schools will be allowed to promote their own religious ethos, which may include anti-gay teachings.
The Government supports the National Blood Service policy of banning all gay and bisexual blood donors for life, regardless of their sexual behaviour and HIV status. This is a bigoted ban. Most gay and bisexual men do not and never will have HIV. Those who have only safe sex and who test HIV negative can give blood safely. Banning them is contributing to the shortfall in blood donations.
Gordon Brown defends the prohibition of same-sex marriage. Instead of repealing this discrimination, Labour's civil partnerships reinforce and extend it. They are for same-sex couples only. Conversely, marriage remains reserved for heterosexuals. In addition, gay-supportive churches that want to conduct civil partnerships are prohibited by law from doing so. Welcome to segregation, Labour-style.
Gordon Brown could have ended all homophobic discrimination, but didn't. By leading on further gay law reform, the Tories can outmanoeuvre Labour and win lots of LGBT votes. David, are you up for it?
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Comments
But then older promiscuous gay men have an interest in misleading younger gay men from rejecting them and picking the sex partners most likely not to be HIV+ --those that are their own age. How many gay men because of Peter Tatchell got HIV+ because instead of rejecting an older gay man and selecting a younger partner of lower HIV+ risk decided to have "safe sex" with the older gay man?
SEE
Varghese B, Maher JE, Peterman TA, Branson BM, Steketee RW. (2002). Reducing the risk of sexual HIV transmission: quantifying the per-act risk for HIV on the basis of choice of partner, sex act, and condom use. Sex Transm Dis. 29(1):38-43.
http://ww2.aegis.org/files/AskDoc_r
Indeed this study noted "In practice, inconsistent use may reduce the overall effectiveness of condoms to as low as 60–70%"
To put this in perspective, condoms are commonly cited as being 97% effective at preventing pregnancy. But that does not mean that if heterosexual partners use condoms as the only means of preventing pregnancy, the woman will become pregnant 3% of the time (even if we assume that she is ovulating in every time she has sex). Anecdotally (i.e., from personal experience) I can tell you that this is not the case. Nor would any such claim be made in the literature.
I can see the merit of debating whether people who engage in high-risk sex (penetrative anal sex, with or without a condom) should be permitted to give blood. But the claim you make in the title of your comment is entirely out of proportion. I find Peter Tatchell to be an excellent commentator on many issues, even though I might disagree with him on the blood donor issue (or at least want to hear further arguments from him).
Er, none?
(1) Safer sexy advice does not present the risks to young gay men in a honest manner since it plays up the risk reduction of condoms and plays down that of avoiding older men. This is not to say condoms do not reduce the risk to "bottoms" but it is not nearly enough to justify the word "safe". The statistics say to any neutral observer that a more honest phrase is "suicidal sex"
(2) Many of those promoting condoms equal safe sex and not avoiding older men had an interest in not putting off younger potential sex partners.
(3) 15,869 AIDS deaths have occurred since 1990. Most (but not all) of them link to bottoms in gay sex. A factor in the HIV transmission of gay sex is how age segregated it is. Notably if young gay men avoid older partners it will be reduced compared to if they feel safe with older men. Peter Tatchell view of sex by over-stressing the risk reduction of condoms and downplaying that of avoiding older men has reduced that potential segregation and so the potential for reducing HIV infection. Therefore I suggest that some of those AIDS death would not have happened except for Peter Tatchell and his false message of "safe sex"
If you're monogamous and both HIV -ve then your chances of acquiring HIV through any form of sexual activity, with or without condoms is, er 0%.
I met Peter Tatchell during this time and liked him, he was (is) a decent and intelligent man who you could have a decent conversation and I thought he was quite brave in wanting to 'arrest' Mugabe. However, there are a couple of thoughts that come to mind reading this article and various others written obviously against the background of Gay Pride this weekend.
I do not think that there is any reasonable way in which schools could be included in equality legislation, it is unrealistic, there are "rights of passage" that can never be avoided whatever it is concerned with, sexual identity, gender etc. I the reason I write this is based upon my own experiences in a very busy bar which was really the closest you could get to a singles bar in the UK. Quite often young men meeting up with a friend, found it more neutral to be seen chatting to the straight doorman whilst they waited and I had many interesting and often amusing conversations.
I have no interest whether people are born Gay or becomes Gay but a fairly common theme was of them at school becoming aware that they were "different" and from starting out by hiding it before they moved on to deal with it until finally they "came out" but often by moving away from home and the area they grew up in. Whether I am expressing it well of not, my point is that for all of us and on many different issues, we have to deal with this or that as we grow up and decide just who we are - it could be the playground bully and these things are beyond legislation and neither should legislation be attempted.
The second thing that strikes me is that the 'list' Peter writes above, does not seem that crucial as in a burning issue compared with those of the past. At the time I was a doorman, there were only three openly gay bars in London's West End and perhaps a couple more that were but rather discreet. An older gay man was telling me then about the days when there were none and the gay community lived in the "West End Village" via illegal drinking clubs and cruised from one to the other.
Obviously the Police knew all about them and once in a while would raid one. The man who was telling me this said quite genuinely, that it was "All so much more fun then !" I might have quietly thought to myself that perhaps he was missing being younger but there is another point too in that when things become mainstream and accepted, they also become rather boring too...
Round the Horne with Jules and Sandy was hilarious, in comparison Graham Norton is a bit of a yawn, one should be careful what one wishes for !
That is what happened in this country, and that is what should happen in countries which still outlaw gay sex. If some gays leave their countries to come to a society where they have more freedom because that freedom has already been fought for and won, that freedom will NEVER be granted in their home countries.