The Accidental Stepford

Stepford - n. a married person who submits to their partner's will and is preoccupied by domestic concerns.

Of Bob Dylan and lesbians

Tonight there was a lesbian couple at the bus stop. They were both around 16-ish, and a bit vomit inducing with their cutesiness, but when one got on the same bus as me, she kissed her girlfriend goodbye… she was totally casual about it, and no one at the bus stop/ on the bus said anything or batted an eye lid. This progressive moment made me smile so much…. it seems the times they are a changin in the West Midlands…

‘Why was I born gay in Africa?’

Elizabeth Day, 27th March 2011

As a child in Uganda, John Bosco remembers hearing an old wives’ tale that if a man fell asleep in the sun and it crossed over him, he would wake up as a woman. “I used to try that as a kid,” says John now, some 30 years later. He sits at a table in a busy cafe across the road from the railway station in Southampton, his fingers playing with the handle of a glass of hot chocolate. “I’d spend all day lying under the sun. From childhood, I wanted to be a girl. I wanted dolls. At school, I played netball. I wanted to dress up like a girl … I rubbed herbs into my chest that were meant to make your breasts grow. I tried everything but it didn’t work.”

He tells me that there was not one single moment when he realised he was gay; that the knowledge of it had always been there, unexpressed until he found the right words. As he grew older, John started being attracted to men. On the radio, he heard stories of gay couples being beaten and killed by police. He says that if he could have changed himself, he would because he so desperately wanted to be considered “normal”, to fit in, to make his family proud.

When he went to university to study for a business administration degree, his relatives and neighbours in Kampala would ask why he never had a girlfriend. “I used lots of excuses – I’m not yet ready, or I have a girlfriend who doesn’t live in the same area,” he says. “It was difficult because you cannot be open [about your sexuality]. You can’t socialise like any other person. A lot of the time, you have to keep your distance. You feel you’re not yourself. It makes things really hard.”

This is the reality of being gay in modern Uganda, a place where homosexuality is criminalised under the penal code, punishable by life imprisonment. According to human rights organisations, about 500,000 homosexuals live in the country, unable to admit their sexuality for fear of violent retribution either from the police or their own communities. Anti-gay legislation is a relic of British colonialism, designed to punish what the imperial authorities thought of as “unnatural sex” – thinking that was subsequently reinforced by wave upon wave of Catholic missionaries.

Although much of that legacy has been dismantled as Uganda modernises, homophobia is as entrenched as ever. An anti-homosexuality bill, due to be discussed by parliament before June, advocates the death penalty for “aggravated homosexuality” –ie for gay people with HIV practising sex, or gay people who have sex with someone under 18. Known colloquially as the “kill the gays” bill, it would also make it a crime not to report someone you know to be a practising homosexual, thereby putting parents, siblings and friends at risk.

“One of the things the Ugandans say is that being gay is European culture, that it is un-African,” explains John, 31. “There is this idea that Europeans and Americans are recruiting people to be gay, giving them money to do it.”

Last October, the now defunct anti-gay Ugandan tabloid Rolling Stonepublished a list of the country’s “top 100” homosexuals under the headline “Hang Them”. In January, the prominent gay-rights activist David Kato was murdered – beaten to death in his home by a hammer-wielding thug. Gays, lesbians and transgendered people in Uganda face harassment, extortion, vandalism, death threats and violence on a daily basis. They can be sacked from employment if they are outed, forced to enter into heterosexual marriage and detained by the authorities without charge or access to legal defence. In some of the worst cases, they can be subjected to so-called “correctional rape”.

It is not only Uganda – for years, the developed world has turned a blind eye to the state-sanctioned persecution of homosexuals that exists in 38 out of 53 African nations, according to Human Rights Watch. Now, a new feature-length documentary film seeks to redress the balance. Getting Out, directed by film-maker Alexandra Chapman in conjunction with Christian Aid, tells the story of the gay refugees who are forced to flee discrimination in their own countries.

“It is very important for people in the west to understand that legalised and state-sanctioned homophobia is a reality in many parts of Africa,” says Dr Chris Dolan, director of the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala, who was instrumental in the making of the film. Dolan, who campaigns extensively to protect the rights of beleaguered minorities in this corner of Africa, says that the political climate in Uganda “enables a wide range of abuses and violations that seriously diminish the quality of life of all lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex persons, most of whom seek to stay under the public radar. It also places many such persons in serious and extreme danger.”

For John, the danger soon became too great to ignore. At his university freshers’ ball, he met and fell in love with a man called Aziz. The two of them were discreet, taking care not to be seen acting too intimately in public. In this way – never quite being honest, living in the half-shadows, always looking over their shoulders – their relationship continued after graduation when John took a well-paid job in a bank. When John first took Aziz home to visit his family, he was introduced as “my best friend. He became like another son to my mum. That was the way it was until 2001.”

Then everything changed. A group of John’s gay friends were arrested in a police crackdown. They were beaten and forced to give the names of other gay people they knew. John realised he had to get out. “I had to disappear,” he says. “I had some money saved up so I paid a private agency to get me a visa, a passport … I didn’t tell anybody I was leaving, not even my family. At first, I didn’t know where I was going. But then, luckily, the guy gave me a visa to the UK.”

John Bosco did not know it then, but his problems were only just beginning.

Florence Kizza smiles a lot. She has a sharp, pretty face with slanted eyes and straight, white teeth. When she talks, she does so in an even, clear voice, her faint Ugandan accent lending the words an irregular rhythm. We meet in a cafe in Richmond, Surrey, near to where she works as a bank clerk. Although the story she tells me is a horrific one, Florence does not show emotion as she recounts it, beyond a slight narrowing of the eyes, a glance to one side, a short pause in her narrative. She explains that to break down and cry would be to give into something she needs to resist. Because Florence is a woman who defines herself by her survival.

Florence is 32, Ugandan and a lesbian. She grew up in Najjanankumbi, on the southern edge of Kampala, the daughter of a prosperous businessman who sent Florence and her sister to a prestigious girls’ boarding school.

“I kind of knew [about my sexuality] at school, but those things you don’t talk about,” she says. “It’s something you never breathe out loud. I was brought up a Catholic. Every day, these pastors are preaching that a gay person should be stoned to death, that they should die. If you heard that, would you be open?”

When Florence was 16, both of her parents died of Aids within a year of each other. Florence was taken out of school and raised by relatives. The older she got, the more certain she became that she was gay. Lonely and increasingly isolated, she craved companionship. And then, buying food at the market one day, she met a woman called Susan, from the west of the country. “She spoke a different language,” says Florence, “but we just connected. We went for coffee, we talked and then we met up five more times.” Gradually, the two of them became closer but, like John Bosco, they were careful about how they acted together in public. Florence continued to live alone. Still, the fact that she was a woman of marriageable age without a husband aroused the suspicion of the local community.

In December 2000, neighbours broke into her house and found her in bed with Susan. The villagers stripped the two women naked, paraded them through the streets and then beat them in front of a baying crowd. “To say it was painful is an understatement,” says Florence now. “You can take being hit but being humiliated around God knows how many people – you lose your dignity. I felt, I wish I could die now.”

Banished from her village, Florence was forced to find somewhere else to stay. She spent the nights at Susan’s home, waking up early each morning to sneak out under cover of darkness. But however cautious she tried to be, it was never enough. In March 2001, Florence was arrested and, over a three-day period, was beaten and raped by three policemen at gunpoint. The assault was so ferocious that, 10 years on, Florence still bears the scars. It is cold when we meet and Florence is wearing a long-sleeved zip-up sweatshirt but, even in the milder weather, she does not like to show the twisted ridges of skin that snake all the way up her arms.

“Looking back, I think the police officers found me very challenging,” Florence says, and she half-closes her eyelids, as though squinting to make out a murky, distant shape. “There was a time when one of them hit me on the second day and I looked at him and I didn’t cry. I looked very, very calm. I told him: ‘Have you finished? It doesn’t hurt,’ and I laughed.” She looks up, meeting my gaze. “And he stopped.”

On the third day, Florence escaped when one of the policemen fell into a drunken stupor and she was able to steal the keys to her cell. She ran out into the streets and got a taxi to a friend’s house. She knew she had to get out of the country before the police tracked her down. She and Susan fled across the border to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. There, they paid a human trafficker to take them to the UK. “He said, OK, you have to pay a very big price. He asked for £20,000. I had to give up one of my dad’s plots of land as security.”

At the last minute, the trafficker said it was too dangerous for both Florence and Susan to travel at the same time. “He said, it’s one person, you choose. I said Susan should go because I was feeling ill, I didn’t have the energy. But they said I should go because my health was bad and I was the worst off.”

In September 2001, Florence flew to the UK and was taken by the trafficker to a B&B in Wembley, north London. He gave her a £50 note and left her there. At the age of 22, Florence was on her own in a sprawling foreign city with little money and no prospects. For days, she walked the streets, unsure of what to do or who to turn to. After her experiences in Uganda, she looked at everyone with mistrust and suspicion. She had to beg for money for food.

A man from a local church group eventually took her to the Home Office to seek refugee status but Florence was deeply intimidated by the interview process. “Basically, I didn’t trust authorities because of the bad experiences I had with them in Uganda,” says Florence. “The interviews were degrading. They would ask me to talk about my personal life, to explain how I had sex. The way they looked at me, I just thought, Jesus Christ, am I this disgusting? Honestly, I was so angry. They just had no idea.”

Already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, Florence’s symptoms got worse the further she travelled through the UK appeals system. Her initial application to stay was refused, on the grounds that she would be safe if she returned to Uganda, relocated to a different area of the country and acted “discreetly”.

According to Erin Power, the group manager of the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group, a large part of the problem for gay Ugandan refugees is an unwillingness to talk openly about a sexual identity that they have had to keep secret all their lives, often even from themselves. “If they do what they’re supposed to do and approach the Home Office as soon as they land in the UK, you’re asking them to go up to a figure of authority in a uniform and tell them they’re gay,” says Power. “But that is the person who, in their country, will persecute them for speaking openly.

"We have clients who have never said they’re gay before. The idea that they can identify themselves is problematic because often they have kept it secret all their lives … Some clients have never had sex, but we argue that being LGBT is not about who you have sex with, it’s about who you are and what your identity is. We’ve struggled to get the Home Office not to focus on sex. Up till now you’ve had to prove two things: one, that you’re gay or lesbian and two, that your country’s dangerous.”

How do you prove you’re gay? Power laughs. “Everyone always asks that.”

John Bosco was facing similar problems in a different part of town. Having arrived in London with £600, John found a room to rent in Manor Park, north London. “I thought, if I can get to an English-speaking country, I’ll be OK. As soon as I get there, I can get a job because I have qualifications. I didn’t know the asylum system at all.”

When he tried to apply for jobs, he was told he needed a national insurance number. “I didn’t know what it was,” says John. Eventually, a group of Jamaicans he met on the street directed him to the UK Border Agency offices in Croydon. But instead of what he thought would be a straightforward interview, John says he was stripped naked, asked for his fingerprints, bundled into a van and taken to the Oakington immigration detention centre in Cambridgeshire.

Here, he spoke to the authorities through a translator, but the interpreter was from a different part of Uganda and did not speak the same tribal language so John’s statement was littered with inconsistencies. John, terrified as to how the UK authorities might react, did not tell them that he was gay and that this was the real reason he had fled Uganda. “They asked me if I wanted a solicitor,” he says now, shaking his head. “I didn’t know what this word meant.”

Failing to make himself understood or to provide a consistent story to explain his refugee status ended up costing John dearly. From Oakington, he was taken to Haslar, an immigration removal centre run by the prison service in Portsmouth. For the first few weeks, he had no change of clothes and had to wash his single pair of underpants every day. When a local volunteer visited him to ask if he needed any help, John finally confessed everything.

“When she asked me, 'Why did you leave?’ I said because of my sexuality. She said: 'That’s OK, that’s not a problem.’ I had to sit back like this.” He leans back in his cafe chair, crossing his arms over his chest with an expression of shock in his eyes. “I was shivering. I’d never had anyone talk to me like that. She was the first person I’d ever told about my sexuality and she was nice to me.” He breaks off, bows his head and rapidly wipes his eyes.

After four months in Haslar, John was given leave to stay in the UK but the Home Office appealed against the decision. For the next six years, from 2002 to 2008, John’s life became an exhausting cycle of legal battles. He got a job working at a mental health charity in Southampton and poured £21,000 of his own money into solicitors’ fees. In 2008, during a routine visit to the police station (the terms of his leave to remain in the country required that he report to the police once a month), he was manhandled into a van, taken to the airport and put on a flight back to Uganda.

“I was thinking, just kill me. I have no friends, no relatives, nothing. How long is this going to go on? I’m not going to change myself to be accepted.”

As with Florence Kizza, the judge in charge of his case had decided that John would face no immediate danger if he returned to Uganda, changed his behaviour and moved to a different part of the country to live “discreetly”. This was in spite of the fact that John’s photograph had been printed on the front page of a national newspaper in Uganda only a few weeks before he was deported. Living discreetly was just about the last thing he could do.

Within days of touching down in Kampala, John was arrested. The police threw him into a cell with several other inmates and subjected him to regular beatings. “The beatings are not something you can say you get used to,” he says now. “It’s something you expect.”

He bribed the police to release him with the little money he had left and went into hiding for six months. In the end, his solicitors won him refugee status for five years and he was flown back to the UK. But the leave expires in 2014 and John still lives in a state of anxious uncertainty, isolated from his family, friends and his former boyfriend Aziz, all of whom he has found it impossible to trace.

“I have bad dreams still: people chasing me, being beaten up,” he says. “Sometimes I sleep and then I think, what will happen after 2014? All I want is freedom, where I can be who I am.”

Florence was granted permanent refugee status last year. Since leaving Uganda, she has completed a degree in business management at Kingston University. For a while she worked for a supermarket; now she has a job in the offices of a high-street bank in Twickenham, London. She never heard from her girlfriend Susan again. “We tried really hard to locate her,” she says, her voice drained of emotion. “I think I’m getting used to it.”

In July 2010, the UK’s Supreme Court categorically denounced the “discretion reasoning” that had been central to the rejection of both Florence’s and John’s refugee claims, ruling that the decision failed to recognise the human rights of homosexuals and breached the UN refugee convention. The Home Office has since produced a set of guidelines, in consultation with asylum groups, on how to assess the validity of such claims, and all senior case-workers have been put through a one-day training session on the connected issues. “That process finished at the end of February,” says Erin Power, “so we don’t know what the outcome will be. Obviously we hope there will be some improvement because some of the interviewing was horrific, quite honestly.”

Back in the cafe in Southampton, John’s hot chocolate has gone cold. He says he misses his family “all the time” and does not have much of a social life, feeling too black to be fully welcomed by the predominantly white gay community in this part of the world, and too gay to be fully accepted by the straight people he meets. He spends most of his evenings and weekends in a rented room watching TV soaps. “Calling the memories back stresses me out,” he says, at the end of our conversation. “But the reason I do it is because if I don’t, people won’t understand what is happening, especially the people in Uganda who do not have a voice. The only way they will understand is for me to tell you about it.”

As he pushes his chair neatly under the table, he says that he is plagued by two questions. “I ask myself all the time, why was I born gay? And if I was born gay, why was I born in Africa?”

He leaves, letting the cafe door slide silently shut behind him, turning back to give me a wave and a smile through the window as he goes. Perhaps there will never be an answer. But for now, at least, John Bosco is free to pose the questions out loud.

(Source: Guardian)

What I have been reading recently

image

After reading Mr Norris Changes Train it seemed appropriate that I continue the Berlin theme with Hans Fallada’s Alone in Berlin. I found it to be compelling, and gripping despite knowing how inevitable the tragic ending would be. I wish my German was better so I could have read the original version of the text, but I still felt I got a lot of enjoyment out of it.

I followed it with By Nightfall by Michael Cunningham. I had read The Hours and enjoyed it (an admission that would crush Dr Sutton who taught the Virginia Woolf module I took at university), so was curious to see what it was like. I was worried that I had made a mistake in buying it after a few pages as it felt a bit forced, but that feeling soon evaporated as Cunningham’s prose became beautiful and washed over me. The story touched me, and I found myself wanting to know what happened to the protagonist after the story came to its conclusion… one of those books, like A Single Man, where I found myself wishing for a sequal but knowing that I would not want to read it in case it spoilt the original (which it undoubtedly would).

The next book I avidly consumed was Amateur City, which is the first in the Kate Delafield series by Katherine Forest. I found Murder by Tradition incredibly empowering so was excited to read this book. It was engaging and a nice change of pace.

Currently I’m reading The Ice Storm by Rick Moody. It’s probably something I’d enjoy more if I had lived through the 1970s but it is witty, and the characters are bizarrely compelling.

Terence Blacker: Why is being alone social defeat?

Where are they now, those brave little books released into the community on Saturday – World Book Day – sometimes delivered by the very hand that wrote them? Many, I fear, will already be languishing under coffee cups, blocking draughts from windows, or gathering dust on a shelf, serving a strictly ornamental purpose.

The good-hearted people who were giving away books in the hope of winning new converts to literature were unfortunately not able to provide those other essential ingredients that reading requires: time and a modicum of solitude. Leisure now demands as much effort as work. It is easier to be swept along on the babbling torrent of busy, interactive, chatty modern life than to allow oneself the time to read a book, to listen to music, or even to think.

So addicted to movement and noise have we become that not being in company has become a source of embarrassment, associated with social defeat. A survey has just been published which reveals that, of 5,000 people questioned, more than one in four admitted to lying regularly about what they have done over the weekend. Most claimed to have gone out with friends on a Saturday night, while others pathetically invented dinner parties or claimed to have gone for a weekend break.

“It’s the horrible feeling that everyone else is having a better time than us, going away, partying or having fun,” a Professor of Stating-the-Bleeding-Obvious Studies has concluded, without asking why staying at home should be associated with dullness and boredom. The compulsion to surround oneself with company – almost any company – is a powerful modern addiction.

The great eroder of tranquillity has been the computer. Life may be easier thanks to the new technology, but the old idea that it would be a labour-saving device which would herald a golden age of leisure has turned out to be a joke in poor taste. It is work which has been liberated, and it follows us around wherever we are.

Leisure itself has become more frenetic and competitive. The computerisation of our social life means friendship has been ratcheted up into a numbers game. Quantity is all: the number of friends or followers you have, whether you are liked or unliked, favourited or unfavourited.

The restless busyness of the internet has infected every aspect of our lives. According to the American psychiatrist Dr Elias Aboujade, whose new book Virtually You adds to the growing body of evidence pointing to the neurological harm which computers can cause, those who spend a significant time online will develop an alternative personality, which is an extreme, unattractive version of their real selves – more e-abusive, more e-sexually perverse, more e-quarrelsome and e-bullying. Not only does it unleash our worst mob instincts, it allows us to remain anonymous. Aboujade argues that this dysfunctional online persona soon infects the real world.

The buzz of communication and interaction is addictive. One in five people now eat their dinners in front of computers, according to yet another depressing survey. Even when we are eating, we have to remain in touch, to be dementedly multi-tasking.

Who could be surprised that people have begun to feel ashamed about staying in, that they lie about what they do over the weekend? Not to be busy is not to be truly alive. Silence has become the enemy. Even in the debate that surrounds libraries, there is a school of opinion that these institutions should be about vibrancy and social interaction. The act of reading in an atmosphere of quiet is now eccentric, old-fashioned, out of touch with the real world.

In the noise and hectic forward movement of modern life, something quiet, personal and important is danger of being drowned out.

(Source: independent.co.uk)

Tomorrow I shall be 24 on the 24th… today is my last day of being 23 (on the 23rd). Freaky.

Butterscotch Banana Cake

image

It had been ages since I had baked anything, so on Sunday I went about changing that…

———————————————————————

Ingredients:

  • 250g caster sugar
  • 250g banana flesh, chopped into 2cm pieces
  • 1 tbsp unsalted butter
  • 2 tsp vanilla extract
  • 175ml sunflower oil
  • 2 large eggs
  • 150g plain flour
  • 75g wholemeal flour
  • 2 tsp mixed spice
  • 2 tsp baking powder
  • 50ml plain yoghurt

Method:

  1. Heat 150g of the sugar in a frying pan with 25ml of water, bring to a boil, then cook over a high heat until the sugar turns a dark reddish caramel.
  2. Add the banana pieces, butter and vanilla extract, and simmer until the bananas break up in the caramel and the mixture is thick.
  3. Spoon onto a plate to cool. Meanwhile, beat the eggs, the remaining sugar and oil until slightly aerated.
  4. Beat in the banana mix and the yoghurt. Then sift in the flour, spice and baking powder and fold it until mixed properly.
  5. Pour the mixture into a pre-buttered tin and bake in a 180C (160C fan) oven or until a skewer comes out clean.

Gay church ‘marriages’ set to get the go-ahead

Ministers are expected to publish plans to enable same-sex couples to “marry” in church, the BBC has learned.

Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is to propose lifting the ban on civil partnerships taking place in religious settings in England and Wales.

There are no plans to compel religious organisations to hold ceremonies and the Church of England has said it would not allow its churches to be used.

Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell said the change was “long overdue”.

Civil partnership ceremonies are currently entirely secular.

It is not clear whether the proposals will suggest that civil ceremonies in religious surroundings could incorporate elements such as hymns or Bible readings or be formally described as marriages.

It is thought this might be part of a consultation process.

Equality Act

Marriage between people of the same gender is not legal in the UK but civil partnerships were introduced in 2005 to give couples the same legal protection as if they were wed.

The proposals were welcomed by gay rights campaigners but may raise the ire of many churchgoers.

Mr Tatchell said: “Permitting faith organisations to make their own decision on whether to conduct same-sex civil partnerships is the democratic and decent thing to do.

"The current law prevents them from doing so, even if they want to. No religious institution will be forced to perform civil partnerships if they do not wish to do so.”

The Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, gave the news a guarded welcome.

He told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show that he “believes in a liberal democracy, and actually wants equality with everybody”.

A Church of England spokesman said: “Given the Church’s view on the nature of marriage, the House of Bishops has consistently been clear that the Church of England should not provide services of blessing for those who register civil partnerships.”

He added the worry was that any changes could “lead to inconsistencies with civil marriage, have unexplored impacts, and lead to confusion, with a number of difficult and unintended consequences for churches and faiths”.

“Any change could therefore only be brought after proper and careful consideration of all the issues involved, to ensure that the intended freedom for all denominations over these matters is genuinely secured,” he said.

The Sunday Telegraph claims the decision to push ahead with the legislation is a victory for Mrs Featherstone and her fellow Liberal Democrats.

The Roman Catholic Church has long held that homosexuality is a “deviation” and is not expected to agree to same-sex ceremonies.

The legislation would also cover synagogues and mosques although homosexual relationships are forbidden under Islam and Orthodox Judaism.

But Quakers, Unitarians, and liberal Jews are thought to be more sympathetic to the idea, says the newspaper.

In February last year several senior Anglican clergymen wrote to The Times calling for the law to be changed.

The group of clerics, which includes the Bishop of Salisbury, the Dean of Southwark and five former bishops, said: “Straight couples have the choice between civil marriage and religious marriage. Gay couples are denied a similar choice.”

The move follows an amendment to the Equality Act by Lord Alli, a Labour peer.

That amendment, which would not force religious venues to accept gay couples, has not yet been implemented and would require a standing order.

The BBC understands Mrs Featherstone has been consulting with gay and lesbian groups and churches about this issue and is expected to make an announcement within the next few weeks.

According to reports, the government plans would also see straight couples being allowed to become civil partners.

On Friday, the Protection of Freedoms Bill included plans to lift a ban on night-time weddings and also gave gay men the right to clear their name by removing out-of-date convictions for consensual acts.

A Home Office spokesman said: “The government is currently considering what the next stage should be for civil partnerships, including how some religious organisations can allow same-sex couples to register their relationship in a religious setting if they wish to do so.

"Ministers have met a range of people and organisations to hear their views on this issue. An announcement will be made in due course.”

The Office Of National Statistics reported in May 2010 that 26,000 same-sex couples had undergone civil partnerships.

(Source: BBC)

Three times last night whilst I was asleep I sat up and “ate and drank”, or at least I clearly thought I did in my dream state, but in reality I was just flailing my limbs around and freaking out my fiance. FUN.

Johann Hari: Why is it wrong to protect gay children?

I am exhausted. I have spent all week trying to brainwash small children into being gay, by relentlessly inserting homosexuality into their maths, geography and science lessons. Their little eyes widened when the gay algebra lesson started, but it worked: their concept of “normal sexual behaviour” has been successfully destroyed. It’s all part of the program brilliantly co-ordinated by the Homintern to imposed The Gay Agenda on Every Aspect of British Life.

That, at least, is what you would believe if you had read some of Britain’s best-selling newspapers this week, or listened to some prominent Tory politicians. The headlines were filled with fury. The Conservative MP Richard Drax said gays were trying to impose “questionable sexual standards” on kids, while the Daily Mail said we were mounting a massive “abuse of childhood.”

Here’s what is actually happening. A detailed study by the Schools Health Education Unit found that in Britain today, 70 percent of gay children get bullied, 41 percent get beaten up, and 17 percent get told at some point in their childhood that they are going to be killed.

I’ll tell you the story of just one of them. 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.

Is it “political correctness” and “McCarthyism” to try to ensure these kids can feel safe in their own schools – or is it basic decency? A few very mild proposals were made this week for how to change the attitudes behind this. They came from an excellent organization called Schools Out, which is run with a small grant from the tax-payer. They gave out a voluntary information pack in which they suggested that, to mark LGBT History Month, teachers acknowledge the existence of gay people in their lessons. They could teach in history about how Alan Turing played a vital role in saving the world from the Nazis and paved the way for the invention of the computer, only to be hounded to death for being gay. They could learn in science that homosexuality occurs in hundreds of species of animals. They could – yes! – maybe even look in maths lessons at the census data, figuring out how prevalent gay people are.

We know that these lessons work in making gay kids much safer. The Schools Health Education Unit found that homophobic violence was dramatically lower in schools that taught about homosexuality. Good schools like Stoke Newington Secondary that followed this program were assessed to have “virtually eliminated homophobic bullying.” That has a very powerful educational purpose: when gay kids feel safe, they can learn.

Yet these pragmatic policies to make kids safe were presented as a wicked plot to endanger children. We can’t stop the endemic intimidation and violence if every time there is a policy to do it, it is grossly distorted and demonized in this way. The critics even whispered that gays want to “impose” sexuality on kids – with hints of the ugliest and oldest lie about gay men, that they are paedophiles.

Yet in one strange way, the current backlash is reassuring. When I was a kid in the 1980s, these sentiments were so widespread that a law – Section 28 – was passed to resolve them, and the cowed critics were derided as “the loony left.” Today, the opinion polls show 80 percent of the British people support gay marriage, and the people offering these views are regarded as the loons. It’s worth pausing and saying to all the people who have been open to persuasion and have changed their minds on this question: thank you. It’s incredibly moving to see how many heterosexual people have rallied to the defence of gay people, and it’s a reminder that we will never go back now.

But this anti-equality shouting still has an effect. It stops many schools from pursuing sensible policies that would save kids like Jonathan Reynolds, for fear of being accused of “political correctness gone mad” – so it’s important to answer the arguments now.

These critics don’t appear to understand what homosexuality actually is. In every human society that has ever existed, and ever will, some 3 to 10 percent of the population has wanted to have sex with their own gender. This is a fixed and unchangeable reality. The only choice is whether you are pointlessly cruel to them, or accept their harmless difference. Homosexuality is “normal sexual behaviour”: it occurs wherever human societies exist. It is not engaged in by a majority, but using that logic, Jews and Muslims are “abnormal” in Britain too – an ugly and foolish claim.

Informing children about these facts can’t make them gay. Nothing can. You can no more teach a child homosexuality than you can teach them left-handedness. Oddly, the homophobes seem to understand this about their own sexuality, but not about other people’s. I once asked Michael Howard, the architect of Section 28, if he would be gay now if he had been taught to be as a child. He moved very anxiously in his seat and mumbled something incoherent.

In order to justify their desire to discriminate against gay people, the few remaining homophobes have concocted a scenario where they are The Real Victims. They can say what they want, set up churches or mosques that preach what they want, and turn away gay people from their homes every day of the week if they so desire – and I would defend every one of those rights to the last ditch. There is only one thing they can’t do. They can’t choose to offer a service to the general public, and then turn people away on the basis of race or sexuality. They can’t put up de facto signs saying ‘No blacks, no Irish, no gays’ at their B&B.

This isn’t a form of prejudice – it is a way of preventing prejudice. Nobody will ever force you to work in a registry office or open a B&B, but if you choose to, you can’t reject the gay couples and expect to remain in post. (In one case where this happened, they offered her a job in the office instead, but she chose to be a bizarre cause célèbre of prejudice instead.) Services for the general public have to be available without contamination by bigotry. It’s a simple principle. Don’t demand the right to spit in the face of gay people, and claim you’re being picked on when you’re asked to stop.

Yes, I know your religious texts mandate bigotry against gay people. They also mandate slavery and stoning adulterers, and they laud a God who feeds small children to bears (see II Kings ii, 23-24). As secular morality has evolved, you have managed to overcome those beliefs. Here’s another that has to catch up. If you are really going to defend Biblical or Koranic literalism, you’ll end up as Stephen Green, head of the tiny Christian Voice sect, who argues that there is biblical authority for the legalisation of rape by husbands. So febrile is the atmosphere in Uganda that David Kato, the incredibly brave campaigner for gay equality, was just lynched as part of the hate-wave.

When people say that a “deeply held religious conviction” should enable you to break anti-discrimination laws and treat gay people as second class citizens, I reply – what about the Mormons? Until 1975, they believed black people did not have souls. (They only changed their minds when the Supreme Court ruled it illegal, and God conveniently appeared to say they did have souls after all.) Should they have been allowed to run adoption agencies that refused to give babies to black people, because of their “deeply held religious conviction”?

But there is an even lower point in the homophobes’ rhetorical arsenal. Being subjected to bullying and violence as children and teenagers makes gay people unusually vulnerable to depression and despair. The homophobes then use that depression and despair to claim that homosexuality is inherently a miserable state – and we shouldn’t do anything that might “encourage” it. They create misery, and then use it as a pretext to create even more misery.

Yet Melanie Phillips, Richard Drax and the last raging band of homophobes are right about one thing. There is a “Gay Agenda.” They are only wrong about its contents. It has one item on the list, and one item only: to ensure that gay people are treated exactly the same as everybody else. That’s it. That’s all. That’s the sum total of our ambitions. To get there we may – yes – have to mention the existence of gay people in schools. It is the only way to save kids like Jonathan Reynolds, and make sure everyone knows – as he said in his final text, before the train hit – “I am human just like them.”

POSTSCRIPT

As a side-note, it’s especially galling to be accused of endangering children by Melanie Phillips, the journalist in Britain who has done more to recklessly endanger children than any other I can think of. She was the leading journalistic champion of the false claim that the MMR vaccine causes autism. She refused to listen to the overwhelming scientific consensus and instead promoted the claims of a fraudster called Andrew Wakefield. After she played a key role in spreading and popularizing his claims, the rate of children being vaccinated plummeted, and several have died.

Even after the British Medical Journal concluded that Wakefield staged an “elaborate fraud”, she has refused to apologise. I’d say persuading parents not to give their kids a life-saving vaccine based on the claims of a charlatan was a bigger “abuse of childhood” than teaching them that gay people exist, wouldn’t you?

(Source: independent.co.uk)

Help the homeless?

Beggars can’t be choosers bullies, or rather they shouldn’t be. I am very open to the idea of donating money to homeless charities, and am an occasional buyer of The Big Issue (let’s face it no one buys it to actually read it), but I resent people begging for short change - something I don’t carry generally, and would be suspicious about giving.

The homeless people that ask for change whilst sat on the floor, wrapped in cardboard to try to keep warm, I genuinely feel sorry for. I would like to give them change if I had it, but have grown up being told by teachers not to. We were always taught to give money to the charities helping the homeless rather than to the specific homeless people, I think because then you know the money is being used for the right reasons. Cynical? Very much so.

Last week I met the other kind of homeless person (twice) or in these cases “homeless” person. Whilst waiting for my bus to work in Birmingham a twitchy, angry guy came over and started talking to me. He asked me if I would help a homeless person if I saw one… then he asked if I would buy him a hot drink since it was such a cold day… so was he saying he was homeless? I assume so. His tone was threatening, and made me feel uncomfortable. I was not convinced he was homeless, and I was late for work. So I walked/ran away to a different bus stop. Cowardly move I know, but no one else was about and I was feeling like I was about to be mugged…

Whilst waiting for my bus home that night, a lady approached me to ask if I had any change. I assumed it was for the bus/ something else, and had to tell her that I didn’t carry change as I had a bus pass (true for the most part, I believe I had about 10p in change on me). She then asked if she could use my phone… what?? I told her that I didn’t want to give my phone to a stranger… she said she wouldn’t run off with it… well she would say that wouldn’t she? The bus arrived and I thought that would end things, but no. She had a frickin bus pass, so got on and proceeded to ask to borrow the phone of every person on the bus. No one did. I felt bad, but confused, and justified in my decision, as she could have taken the phone and run off with it…. I was about to tell her about dialling a reverse charge call at a phone box but didn’t.

The incidents made me feel unnerved and ashamed in equal measures. Maybe my actions were cynical and selfish, but I’m not sure I’d do anything differently if similar situations arose in the future.