The Accidental Stepford

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

Posts tagged Gay

Why conservative Christians flock to a Chicago gay bar

Can one man build effective bridges between evangelical Christians and Chicago’s gay community?

That is the hope of Andrew Marin - who has spent the last decade living in Boystown, Chicago’s officially-designated neighbourhood for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender (GLBT) residents.

He works to try to bring Christians and gay people together in open conversation about sexuality and spirituality - and that includes running a large-scale meeting four times a year at Roscoe’s, one of America’s most famous gay bars.

That is no small achievement in a culture where openly gay people and evangelical Christians have long viewed each other with suspicion.

But Andrew Marin’s determination to bring polarised opposites together in dialogue has grown in ways he never imagined.

From small beginnings 10 years ago, he now takes his message around the world and has worked with governments as well as churches.

He is fast becoming a well-known figure in the United States, and has collaborated with one of the country’s largest Christian publishers to produce a course for churches wishing to address questions about sexuality.

Cutting ties

His main concern is to build trust between unlikely conversation partners.

He believes that too many Christians don’t understand the complexity of the small number of Bible verses that mention homosexuality - he also thinks that gay people are often too quick to dismiss Christianity.

But why did he feel the need to address these concerns by moving into Chicago’s gay village, with its sex shops, gay bars and saunas?

The answer lies in a series of conversations Andrew Marin had with his three closest friends over a period of three months.

One by one, each friend told him that they were gay - and he says the news came as a complete surprise.

He had grown up in a conservative Christian household, and says he was “the biggest Bible-banging homophobic kid you ever met”.

He was absolutely clear that Christianity and homosexuality were incompatible.

“I didn’t know what to do. I thought there was no way my theological belief system could ever line up with my friends’ way of life, so I ended up cutting ties with them.”

But Andrew Marin says that over the following months, he believed God was asking him to get back in touch with his friends and apologise to them.

A few weeks later, along with two of the three friends, he moved into Boystown.

Christian presence

The early years were extremely difficult, he says, as he struggled to work out whether he could reconcile his friends’ sexuality with his Christian convictions.

“When I went to gay bars or events with my friends, I felt bad, because I felt that I should have been saying to people: ‘You’re wrong and you need to change.’”

But rather than condemning local people, he decided that he should be an open-minded Christian presence.

That decision brought with it some unexpected results - and an unanticipated nickname.

“For the first three years, everybody just called me Straighty Straighterson - because I was literally the only straight male [they met]. People would start talking to me about God and church and the Bible - people would just bring their questions to me.”

So chance conversations in bars and clubs spelt the beginnings of what is now an organisation at work throughout the United States.

'Creative tension’

One of the most unusual aspects of the Foundation’s work are its Living in the Tension gatherings, where people from all perspectives gather together to explore questions about Christian faith and sexuality.

I met some participants from a recent meeting - including a married Christian couple who minister to male prostitutes, and a woman who self-defines as “queer” and who left the church because of its attitude towards homosexuality.

Most intriguing were two gay Christian men who had reached dramatically different conclusions about faith and sexuality.

Will is an openly gay man, and a pastor in the United Methodist Church.

He says he has resolved a “creative tension” he initially felt between his calling to ministry and his sexuality.

Sitting opposite him was Brian, who also says he’s always known he was gay - but whose traditional theology meant he chose to marry a woman and has since fathered a child.

He says that falling in love with his wife was “an experience that I can only say was through God himself bringing my wife and me together”.

'Judgement of God’

The two men’s stories could hardly be more different.

But the Marin Foundation believes that polite, honest conversation between people of all perspectives is essential if Christians are to address questions about sexuality more effectively.

Not everyone is convinced that Christians are ready - or able - to have many such discussions.

At Harvard University, a theologian who specialises in Christian understandings of sexuality has convened an international group of scholars to try and get beyond what he calls an “impasse” in current debates about religion and sexuality.

Professor Mark Jordan suggests that it may be time for “a kind of ceasefire - a disengagement, where we stop spending all of our time sniping at each other”.

And he says that each Christian faces a personal, spiritual question about how they involve themselves in such discussions.

“My hope is that I would be willing to kneel at a communion table with my bitterest enemy in these debates.”

“There comes a moment when you have to shut up - you have to silence your angry conversation and submit yourselves in some way to the judgement of God.”

Sexual morality

So does Andrew Marin’s work in Boystown genuinely offer a way forward for Christians at war with each other over questions of sexuality?

That may depend on how many Christians are willing to tolerate the Marin Foundation’s refusal to define its own position on Christian sexual ethics.

Andrew Marin admits it is a criticism he hears frequently, but he insists that his focus is on enabling gay people who wish to explore Christianity to be able to do so.

He admits that some churches will continue to focus on “healing” gay people of homosexuality - while others will simply welcome and affirm gay people on their own terms.

He says that the Marin Foundation simply wants to get gay people thinking about Christian spirituality in its broadest sense, without a disproportionate emphasis on sexual morality.

“What we try and do is help the person live the most faithful, God-honouring life that they can through their understanding of where God is leading them.”

This open-ended approach will frustrate both traditionalist and progressive Christians.

But few can argue with the fact that Andrew Marin’s foundation has enabled many conservative churches to begin open discussions about sexuality for the first time.

And there is little doubt that the relationships that he has built between Christians and gay people in Chicago would, for now, be unimaginable in many cities around the world - and may just offer a hopeful model for the future.

(Source: BBC)

The EastEnders furore shows gay equality is still a long way off

Two weeks ago, in its primetime soap EastEnders, the BBC showed resident gay couple Christian Clarke and Syed Masood in bed. On Thursday it was forced to release a public statement to defend it. This means two things: there are still viewers out there for whom homosexuality is of such concern a nod to its existence warrants complaint, and there were enough of them to require a broadcaster to feel it had to respond. It won’t have helped that one of the characters was a Pakistani-British Muslim.

The people watching aren’t your Last of the Summer Wine demographic either, the soft sort of viewer with mild sensibilities. They’re East “brains splattered out with a Queen Vic bust on Christmas day” Enders fans. There are apparently people who happily park their children in front of fictionalised drug abuse, prostitution and murder without batting an eye, yet regurgitate their own dinner at the sight of two people of the same sex lying on a mattress.

This comes the same week as Points of View discussed viewers’ disappointment that Holby City, so far swerving it deftly, was now “following the trend” of showing a relationship that happened to be between two men. Whether said complainers thought that the onscreen depiction of straight people or indeed the interaction of humans generally was similarly a compliance to fantastical trends remains unseen (maybe next week).

What is obvious is that a country that in law has instilled (near) equality between gay and straight citizens has failed to do the same in its culture. This is not to say vast progress has not been achieved nor to overblow the significance of TV complaints (though isolated they are not). It is, however, to remind ourselves that homophobia does not just come in the extremity of thugs throwing punches in the street but the gentility of a bigot writing an email from their living room. They are very clearly different but share an entrenched ignorance at the heart of the matter.

It’s time this was acknowledged. The “I’m not a homophobe but … ” mantra – a predominant piece of nonsense spouted in response to homosexuality (and funnily enough, the opening line of the chosen POV complaint) – can still seemingly leave the mouth without many blushing or feeling any sensation close to shame. It invariably is followed by a statement that confirms the speaker is very much a homophobe, traditionally by an objection to “explicitness” or a plea for someone to protect the children.

The “explicit” objection is easily solved (even by David Cameron): if it fits within the pre-watershed guidelines, you’re good to go. Yet here’s the rub: the explicitness of a romantic scene is too often dependent on which genders are in it. A man eating a woman’s face will go undetected, but if it happens to be another man, the BBC must brace itself. It’s like maths for homophobes. One heterosexual heavy petting equals one gay peck. Or is it a cuddle? A brisk handshake? The EastEnders characters in question were simply holding each other in bed, but for some an act otherwise seen as harmless, romantic even, was seen as harmful and perverse. It wasn’t, it was said, an appropriate image for children. In contrast to the naturalness of straight relationships, it was something it needed to protect the innocent from.

These are not their children’s thoughts of course but entirely their own. They, who deem noticing the existence of homosexuality as damaging, when it is in averting their child’s gaze that they cause harm. Some of their children will be straight and left (at best) battling the confused ignorance their parent’s special brand of “censorship come outrage” have bestowed them with. Others will be gay and, sunken within the tragedy of an unaccepting home, will be deprived the smallest escape of another world, of seeing a part of themselves on screen and knowing they are OK.

The snob may dismiss mainstream television as drivel but the power of it should not be. What we see on screen has an effect, and the more popular and widespread the programme, the greater this is. The complainers are right. What their children see does matter. This is the very reason the BBC should keep its nerve and refuse to pander to them.

(Source: Guardian)

Conversion therapy: she tried to make me ‘pray away the gay’

They described her as “reckless”, “disrespectful”, “dogmatic” and “unprofessional”. They said she showed “no empathy” towards her client. Why? Psychotherapist Lesley Pilkington had tried to turn a gay person straight.

In a landmark ruling this week, Pilkington, 60, was found guilty of “treating” a patient for his homosexuality. A hearing of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy – the largest professional body for therapists – concluded that the treatment she gave constituted “professional malpractice”.

The unanimous verdict came with heavy sanctions. Pilkington’s accreditation to the organisation was suspended. She was ordered to complete extensive training and professional development. If she does not file a report in six to 12 months, satisfying the board that she has complied, she will have her membership fully revoked: she will be struck off.

The report concluded: “Mrs Pilkington had allowed her personal preconceived views about gay lifestyle and sexual orientation to affect her professional relationship in a way that was prejudicial.”

The client Pilkington tried to cure was me. I am an out, happily gay man. I was undercover, investigating therapists who practise this so-called conversion therapy (also known as reparative therapy) – who try to “pray away the gay”. I asked her to make me straight. Her attempts to do so flout the advice of every major mental-health body in Britain.

But despite the decades of abuse that gay patients have received from therapists and psychiatrists – despite the electro-convulsive therapy used until the 1980s, despite the chemical castrations, the aversion therapy (where pain is inflicted to dissuade same-sex fantasies) and despite the recent rise in fundamentalist talking therapy – no one has ever been held to account.

The details of this case, and another I am pursuing, explain why not only gay clients but mental-health patients in general do not come forward to complain. Psychiatrists and psychotherapists routinely avoid accountability – and the government is helping them do so.

My investigation began in April 2009. I heard that a conference was taking place in London for therapists and psychiatrists who wanted to learn how to convert their patients to heterosexuality. Homosexuality was removed from psychiatry’s glossary of mental illnesses in 1973. How then could anyone treat something healthy? I went along to find out, posing as someone looking to be “cured”. Two people agreed to treat me. The first was a psychiatrist – we’ll come to him later. The second was Lesley Pilkington.

A few weeks later I was in her grand Hertfordshire home with a Dictaphone taped to my stomach. She set about trying to find the childhood “wounds” that she believes led to my homosexuality. But she found none. “There was no sexual abuse?” she pressed.

“No.”

“I think there is something there … you’ve allowed things to be done to you.” She then prayed: “Father, we give you permission to bring to the surface some of the things that have happened over the years.” I asked who could have committed this abuse – a member of my family? “Yes, very likely,” she replied.

Was homosexuality a mental illness, an addiction or an anti-religious phenomenon? “It’s all of that,” said Pilkington. During the sessions, she recited prayers for me to say whenever I thought about a man sexually. She gave me how-to-be-heterosexual tips such as taking up rugby, abstaining from masturbation and distancing myself from gay friends.

When the results of my investigation were published last year in the Independent, it sparked widespread outrage. Not least because Pilkington claimed that she had had referrals to “treat” gay clients from the NHS GP surgery to which she is attached. As a result of the investigation, the British Medical Association passed a motion condemning conversion therapy and calling on the NHS to investigate instances where it may have unwittingly paid for it.

Just before its publication, in January 2010, I made a formal complaint about Pilkington to the BACP. But by last autumn, little had happened. Three dates for a hearing were made and then cancelled. The BACP, which has 32,000 members, explained that they couldn’t find people for the adjudication panel. Why? “The legal advice we’ve been given is that the panel members can’t be very religious but nor can they be overtly pro-gay,” said Fay Reaney from the professional conduct department. So in a complaint about racism would they therefore not allow someone on the panel who is strongly opposed to racism? “This is the advice we’ve been given,” she replied.

A new date – 20 January – was confirmed. Four days before the hearing Pilkington gave an interview to the Sunday Telegraph, contrary to BACP guidelines that neither party speak publicly about the case. I had not named her in my original article. She then went on the radio to talk about it. In response to Pilkington’s disclosures – 48 hours before the hearing was due to take place – the BACP adjourned it and issued us both with confidentiality agreements.

The signed agreements would have prevented either side from ever talking about the case. My barrister, Sarah Bourke, advised me not to sign. But I couldn’t decide. I didn’t want to jeopardise the case but was it worth pursuing if it could never be discussed publicly? The BACP wouldn’t tell me what would happen if I refused to sign.

Meanwhile, Pilkington’s representatives – the Christian Legal Centre – were making intriguing claims. On the day the hearing would have taken place, they stated that it had been postponed because one of the expert witnesses she had cited in her defence had been subject to “menacing phone calls, threats and intimidation”. I was the only person named in her lawyers’ statement. Although she submitted testimony from several witnesses, I never knew their names and the BACP did not call any of them.

But the Daily Mail ran a story regardless: “Trial of therapist who tried to ‘cure’ gay man is halted after 'expert defence witness is intimidated’,” screamed the headline. Countless Christian websites repeated the claims. Hate mail poured in. Pilkington continued to give interviews and gave a talk at another conversion-therapy conference in London. With the agreements unsigned, the BACP decided to go ahead regardless. What was the point of adjourning the case for four months? The BACP would not explain.

Finally, the date was set. During the hearing, Pilkington said she still “feels there’s a need” for my homosexuality to be treated. The panel asked her if it was good practice to say to someone who had stated they had not been sexually abused: “You’ve let things be done to you.” She replied: “It didn’t come across like that.”

Was it, the panel asked, her belief that homosexuality was wrong, sinful or unnatural? “Oh yes,” she replied. “There’s no question about that … but there’s a way out.”

Pilkington revealed that she was trying to convert another gay client to heterosexuality. But that now she’s “clearer” about it – she uses a contract adapted from a US-based conversion-therapy organisation. Equally startling, however, was what the panel asked me: on what basis did I assert that the BACP was publicly opposed to conversion therapy? I read aloud the letter the BACP had written to the Guardian in 2009 describing such therapy as “absurd” and stating that it “makes people with gay thoughts suffer extra pain”. The panel was unaware of the letter and the BACP’s position on the subject. After lunch the chair announced that they would disregard the statement as they “don’t know who authorised it”.

As the hearing progressed, I discovered the strain all complainants go through. I was cross-examined at length by Pilkington’s barrister and by the panel. How would someone with mental-health problems cope with that? And it isn’t just the emotional challenges that could deter a complainant. Without being well educated and having free legal help to interpret the BACP’s jargon-dense literature and legal letters, I would have found the process incomprehensible and intimidating.

The BACP’s ruling in the Pilkington case will, however, help to reassure the victims of conversion therapy. Since my first article was published dozens of people have contacted me describing their experiences. Young people whose parents had forced them into residential gay “cure” centres in the US deep south. Middle-aged men and women who wasted decades trying to be straight. Several people who had attempted suicide. One young man showed me the self-harm scars on his arms. I thought about him every day.

But although this case will serve as a precedent, it does not solve the wider problem. Even if Pilkington had been struck off completely she would still be able to carry on practising. Anyone can claim to be a therapist in Britain because there is no state regulation of the profession. “Psychotherapist” and “counsellor” are not protected titles. The BACP is a self-regulating, independent body. No one has to be a member. Thus you can’t stop a bad therapist seeing clients any more than you can a fortune-teller.

The previous government had planned to regulate counsellors and psychotherapists by bringing them under the Health Professions Council, in line with other health workers, such as chiropodists, hearing aid dispensers and art therapists. This would have provided a central body offering standardised codes of conduct. But, contrary to the advice of mental-health charities such as Mind, the coalition has decided not to do this. Instead, the HPC will introduce a voluntary register for therapists.

But there is another unsettling thread to this story: that of the psychiatrist. His name is Dr Paul Miller. After meeting him at the London conference, he agreed to “treat” me for my homosexuality via Skype – as he lives in Belfast. He claims to have “resolved” his own conflicted sexuality and is now married with children.

Miller told me that homosexuality “represents a pathology”. He added: “The men you were having sex with or falling in love with are just as wounded as you.” He concluded that because my father is a physicist, and I was always more creative, that prevented a “gender-affirming process” which in turn led to my sexualising men.

His advice was for me to have massages with male masseurs and to stand in front of the mirror naked, touching myself, thus somehow affirming my masculinity/heterosexuality. He told me to visualise a red light when aroused: “I want you to move that red from your genitals up into your chest,” he said.

I complained to the General Medical Council (the Royal College of Psychiatrists has no remit for disciplinary procedures). The RCPsych has stated: “There is no sound scientific evidence that sexual orientation can be changed.” Yet the GMC let Miller off without even a warning – in fact, without even a hearing.

After receiving my complaint they appointed a consultant psychiatrist – whose identity was redacted – to write a report about the taped evidence I submitted. The crux of the report was that conventional therapeutic practices used by many psychotherapists have “as much or little scientific evidence” as conversion/reparative therapy. And yet reparative therapy is based on the work of self-proclaimed psychologist Elizabeth Moberly, who is not trained – her degree was in theology – and whose theories were not based on clinical research. The professional guideline document Good Psychiatric Practice, to which all psychiatrists are bound, states: “A psychiatrist must provide care that does not discriminate and is sensitive to issues of sexual orientation.” The GMC report relating to my experience concludes: “I do not consider that Dr Miller’s actions were inconsistent with Good Psychiatric Practice.” I will appeal.

Reaction to the report has been unrestrained. The psychiatrist and author Dr Max Pemberton told me: “The GMC’s decision is scandalous. Conversion therapy has been shown consistently to be dangerous and damaging. It is a disgrace that a qualified doctor is engaging in such practice, and an even greater disgrace that the GMC do not appear to feel that this warrants their attention.”

A 2002 study by US clinical psychologists Ariel Shidlo and Michael Shroeder found that 55% of patients experienced psychological harm from conversion therapy, the results of which included depression and suicide attempts.

Furthermore, as Michael King, professor of psychiatry at UCL, points out: “There is an error in the GMC’s logic: homosexuality is not a diagnosis. To therefore offer any kind of treatment can be damaging.” He added: “Self-regulation is a problem. Professions are inward looking. People don’t like to criticise each other.”

But until the government steps in, self-regulation will continue to protect psychiatrists and therapists. Dissatisfied patients, meanwhile, will be deterred from complaining.

Dr Miller is still practising in his clinic in Belfast. Lesley Pilkington can carry on charging patients and praying for God to “bring to the surface” their non-existent traumas. No one can stop them.

(Source: Guardian)

LTA joins national programme to promote gay equality for staff

The Lawn Tennis Association, one of the first sporting national governing bodies to sign the new Charter launched by the government to tackle homophobia in sport, has joined Stonewall’s Diversity Champions programme.

The Diversity Champions programme promotes a good working environment for all existing and potential employees and helps to ensure equal treatment for those who are lesbian, gay and bisexual.

The Lawn Tennis Association joins other sporting bodies including the Rugby Football League, Sport Wales, UK Sport, Youth Sport Trust and the Professional Footballers Association on the Diversity Champions programme that has more than 600 major employer members.

Members of the programme benefit from business benchmarking through the Workplace Equality Index, good practice seminars around the country and exclusive entry into Stonewall’s Starting Out Recruitment Guide that profiles gay-friendly employers.

Last year tennis topped an online poll by Stonewall as the most gay-friendly sport, with 65 per cent of the vote.

Roger Draper, LTA Chief Executive, said: “We were very pleased that tennis was voted the most LGB friendly sport last year and we look forward to building on the sport’s good reputation as a diverse and inclusive sport.

"By supporting and developing our staff through the Diversity Champions programme we’re sending out a message that all sports should be inclusive to people who are lesbian, gay or bisexual. Joining the Diversity Champions is a strong step towards achieving this in tennis, and we’re proud to join the programme.”

David Shields, Stonewall Director of Workplace Programmes said: “By joining the Diversity Champions programme the Lawn Tennis Association has joined the list of sporting organisations who recognise that people perform better when they can be themselves.

"Our members are forward thinking 21st century employers who want to recruit, recognise, and support the very best staff regardless of background. Good employers understand that providing support for all their staff improves their operational effectiveness.”

(Source: lta.org.uk)

Representative Steve Simon (DFL Hopkins/St. Louis Park) says a proposed Minnesota constitutional amendment is largely about religion. He says if sexual orientation is innate as science is showing us, and not a lifestyle choice, then God created gay people. He asks how many gay people must God create before we accept that he wants them around.

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)

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)