Read the latest news and analysis of anti-gay crime and policy in the UK and abroad. Browse THEGAYUK’s entire archive on news about anti-gay behaviours in the UK and abroad.
Have you ever thought of the Power Rangers as an X-rated or adult show? No? Well then maybe you wanna move to Russia, where the bar has been set at an all-time low.
Russian officials have slapped an 18 certificate on the Power Rangers film because it now includes a lesbian/questioning/bisexual/curious character played by Becky G.
The rating was introduced after one of Russia’s most vociferously anti-gay politicians, Vitaly Milonov, lobbied for the film to be given the highest rating by WDSSPR, the Russian distributor of the film. Milonov even argued that the film should be shown in Russia because it promoted “perverted sexual relations”.
Miles Hirson, writing on the forum said that they should wait until they are no longer financially dependent on them. This echoes the thoughts and advice of sex expert, Dan Savage, who often advises LGBT people on his weekly podcast to wait until they are able to afford their own rent, finish their education and fend for themselves without having to rely on their anti-gay parents.
Miles said,
“Don’t listen to what the liberal media tells you, use your head. Do you really need to tell your parents that you’re gay more than you need to finish school with a place to live and food to eat?
“The people on TV telling you to come out aren’t gonna be at your front door to take care of you when your family kicks you out. be rational and get real,”
It’s worth noting that in the UK, one-quarter of homeless people, on the street, are part of the LGBT+ community who have been chucked out by homophobic parents.
A London man, who believed that Adolf Hitler was God, has been jailed for terrorism offences, including promoting ISIS and writing homophobic and racist posts on social media.
CREDIT: Metropolitan Police
Enfield resident and neo-Nazi extremist Sean Creighton has been jailed for five years following an investigation by the Metropolitan police in London. The 45-year-old was accused of a terrorism offence as well as writing anti-gay and racist posts on social media that were intended to incite hatred.
Creighton, a right-wing extremist, pleaded guilty to seven public order offences and one terrorism offence at Kingston Crown Court on Friday, 6 January.
He was sentenced on Thursday, 23 February to four years’ imprisonment for the public order offences and five years’ imprisonment for the terrorism offence, to run concurrently.
The police launched an investigation after a post appeared of Mr Creighton holding an assault rifle, standing in front of a Nazi flag, on social media.
In June 2016 police executed a Section 46 Firearms Act warrant.
The court heard how police found a “terrorism manual” on his laptop, which contained “viable recipes” for making bombs following a raid on his North London home.
He was arrested under Section 19 Public Order Act 1986 – distributing written material intending to stir up racial hatred in relation to material on his social media account. When officers further investigated his activity they discovered he was using various methods to spread hate, including offensive stickers on street furniture and what can only be described as prolific activity on social media. They also discovered he had possession of a manual of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism.
On 31 August 2016 he was charged with a terrorism offence and public order offences and appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court the following morning where he was remanded in custody to await trial.
Commander Dean Haydon, of the Counter Terrorism Command, said,
“We are as committed to apprehending and prosecuting far right extremists who commit terrorist offences and promote hatred as we are those who support and promote ISIS. Both are intent on destroying communities and pose a real risk if they are allowed to continue.”
Homosexuality is illegal in the African country with offenders facing up to 30 years in prison and this new policy is aimed at people who promote same-sex sexual activity online. Tanzania’s deputy health minister Hamisi Kigwangalla said the country had boundaries when it came to sexuality and told critics of the proposed plans to “respect our culture” and called homosexuality “unnatural”.
That's evolution from science/innovation. Do we innovate our biology? Homosexuality is unnatural and there is nothing innovative about it! https://t.co/nan1F4grbb
As a country, unfortunately, we do not pride ourselves being 'homophilic'. We see things from different angles. Respect each other's views https://t.co/1Hh1cVvW3u
Highlighting the problems of homophobia in sport has never been so clear, as today the Premier League used Rainbow Laces to show solidarity with the LGBT+ community – making some people very very very angry.
CREDIT: TheGayUK
A number of football clubs have decided to use rainbow laces to shed light on homophobia in sports. It is a Stonewall and Premier League collaboration and it’s seemingly triggered some fans spectacularly. Homophobic fans have been showing off their inability to be accepting left, right and centre.
One of the worst threads on social media was from Manchester United’s Twitter and Facebook feeds. The club, which is supporting the campaign, tweeted that they were proud to show their support of the rainbow laces campaign and said that sport was for everyone.
They also changed their Facebook profile picture to include the rainbow laces and it made over 8,600 people use the angry emoji. Thankfully 177,000 people managed to find their “like” button.
Some fans on Twitter and Facebook were having none of it with at least one suggesting that all gay should be killed.
Homes Under The Hammer star Martin Roberts has been targetted by homophobes on Twitter since his appearance on I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.
ITV
Since his entry into the Jungle, Martin Roberts has both delighted and annoyed fans of the show with his outrageous behaviour, however, some viewers have taken to social media to homophobically abuse the presenter, despite the fact that he’s not gay.
The flamboyant star, who normally presents the BBC’s Home Under The Hammer, has been the victim of anti-gay abuse and slurs and has even had one death threat with his perceived sexuality being a feature in the Tweets written.
One user started a poll, which asked, “Who’s the biggest faggot in the @ImACelebrity jungle” and listed only Martin’s name
Martin Roberts is actually married to Kirsty Roberts. They got married in 2010 and together they have two children. They now live in Bath, Somerset with their two children. Before he went into the jungle he said that he was determined to make his two children proud of him.
However, it does seem as though Martin does have a man crush.
Before entering the jungle, Martin said that he’d most like to share his jungle experience with Eddie Izzard who he said would be a “riot” to hang around with and be the perfect campmate.
Statistics provided by NoHomophobes.com show that online homophobia spiked the day after the US election on the 8th and 9th of November.
CREDIT: NoHomophobes.com
Trans’ hotline report that their call volume tripled during the period.
Alleged abusers cite Donald Trump’s victory during their reported attacks.
Homophobia on Twitter reaches levels not seen since January 2014.
Bucking the downward trend of homophobia on Twitter, the Twitter homophobia monitor NoHomophobes.com recorded a staggering increase of homophobic tweets on the 8th and the 9th of November.
The monitoring service checks every tweet sent on the social network for one of four terms “faggot”, “no homo”, “so gay” and “dyke”. The website was created by the Institute for Sexual Minority Studies and Services, at the University of Alberta,to “show the prevalence of casual homophobia in our society.”
Since January 2014 the use of those terms has actually decreased to around 45,000 uses of the word “faggot” per week, however, on the 10th November, the term “faggot” was Tweeted over 32,000 times in just one day.
Doctor Kris Wells, pulled the data for the use of the word “Faggot” for us and it’s pretty grim reading,
• March 5 – 6,509 (times the word was used)
• April 3 – 11,406
• July 24 – 6,963
• August 14 – 7,209
• Sept 11 – 7,089
• Oct. 16 – 5,598
• Oct. 21 – 3,344
• Nov. 4 – 5,869
• Nov. 7 – 6,407
• Nov. 9 – 10,225
Commenting on the finds Dr Wells commented, “So we definitely see the reality of a Trump presidency kick in on Nov 10th, two days after the election”.
Donald Trump Cited
In fact, the spike of homophobic language on the two days around the US Election returned to levels found in April 2014. The Guardian noted that there was a spike in reports of hate crimes in the aftermath of the result. Many victims claimed that their alleged abusers cited Donald Trump’s victory as their reasoning for their attacks.
The national trans’ hotline, The Trans Lifeline, told the Guardian that call volume had tripled on the Tuesday into Wednesday morning.
There were numerous reports of death threats, physical assaults and anti-gay and anti-trans graffiti sprayed onto cars. One car had a note left on it which noted,
“Can’t wait until your ‘marriage’ is overturned by a real president,” read a sign left on a car in North Carolina. Gay families = burn in hell. Trump 2016.”
Another gay man was assaulted in an alley in Santa Monica who was told, “We got a new President you f***ing f****ts”.
Two men have been jailed after they were found guilty of robbery and wounding with intent, which left a man in his fifties fearing for his life.
Nottingham Police Force
Two men have been jailed after a court in Nottingham found them guilty of robbery and two counts of wounding with intent. Ryan Leverton of no fixed abode was served an eight-year prison sentence and Ashley Deavin of Melford Road, Nottingham was handed down a 15-year jail term.
The duo attacked and robbed a man in his fifties, shouting homophobic abuse at him in his Nottinghamshire home. The sustained attack took place in May, in which the victim said he felt he had to “fight for his life” and that he “thought he was going to die”.
The victim was left with slash marks on his body, hands and head after Deavin “waved knife at him during the assault” according to a statement released by Nottingham Police.
The court also heard how the victim was threatened with having his fingers cut off unless he handed over money. Once they were inside the victim’s home, the court heard how Deavin started punching the victim to the face, causing him to fall to the floor. Deavin and Leverton frogmarched him around the flat as they continued to demand money from him.
In a witness statement, the victim said Deavin threatened to cut his fingers off unless he gave him the money. His little finger was cut but he managed to wrestle out of Deavin’s and Leverton’s grip.
Deavin and Leverton were sentenced at Nottingham Crown Court on Friday 4 November after being found guilty of the charges.
The victim, whose wounds needed stitching and glueing at the Queen’s Medical Centre, said it was a totally unprovoked attack which he believed was due to his sexual orientation.
Temporary Detective Sergeant Sharon Powar, the officer in the case, said,
“We’re pleased with these sentences which show just how committed we are to taking hate crimes seriously.
“The victim in this case showed immense bravery in coming forward and we’d encourage anyone affected by hate crime to contact us without hesitation.”
Two men were subjected to sustained homophobic verbal abuse as they held hands walking across the Jubilee footbridge towards Lambeth.
Supplied
Detectives from Westminster Borough have released footage of a man they would like to speak to in connection with a homophobic incident in Charing Cross close to the Heaven nightclub. The incident took place on August 13th and footage from the rant has just been made available to the public with cops asking the public for information to find the suspect after no arrests have been made.
Police were called at 02.00am on August 13th after the two men were subjected to anti-gay slurs.
The two men -aged 28 and 26- walked down the street holding hands they were approached by a man who shouted homophobic abuse at them. The man continued to shout at the victims as they walked west along Jubilee footbridge towards Lambeth.
One of the victims was able to record the suspect on his mobile phone.
The suspect is described as white, slim and in his early 30s. He was wearing a black top, dark hooded jumper, jeans and trainers.
Police Constable Emma Rogers, from Westminster CID, said,
“This is a shocking incident that has left both victims very distressed. We are keen to identify the man in the footage so we can speak to them about the incident. We would also urge anyone who witnessed the incident to contact us.”
Anyone with information or any witnesses are urged to call police on 101 or Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.
A gay couple has received a number of death threats after their boyfriend video went viral in their home country of Poland.
The video of Jacob and David singing along to Some Other Summer by Roxette went viral after it was first shared by THEGAYUK. However it wasn’t until the story was picked up in their native Poland that the negative comments started to flood in.
The pair has been told that their throats should be slit and that they should be sent to the gas chamber. The comments have left the boyfriends “devastated” especially after the reception from the UK and US had been so positive.
Writing to THEGAYUK David and Jacob said,
“Everything changed when (the) Polish media found the story. It appeared on several Polish sites and people reaction was totally different.
“We knew that Polish society is very Catholic and conservative but we still expected that they would be proud of us and our job.
“We were wrong”.
The boyfriends were subjected to a slew of negative and homophobic comments. In the video, the couple is seen dancing with each other and playing around the sea’s surf.
There were some positive comments, but most of them were very homophobic and aggressive.
“We read comments like: “‘You should be ashamed of you(rself)’, ‘I’ll cut your throats if I ever meet you’ and ‘You should be send to a gas chamber’, we were really devastated.”
The video has now surpassed over 200,000 videos on YouTube.
The Jakub and David revealed that they had considered taking the video down but decided to face down their bullies saying,
“In UK I learned to be proud of being gay and didn’t want to change it so we finally came to the conclusion that if we did it we would have let them win so we decided not to give up and spread our story all around.”
The band behind the song, Roxette have also lent their support to the video telling their fans that “Love is Love”.
A gay man had his ear BITTEN off after his neighbour attacked him in a violence homophobic assault, which left him fearing for his life.
Ryan Kilgariff jailed for brutal homophobic attack | Kent Police
Kent man, Ryan Kilgariff, 21, has been handed a 12 year jail sentence for a violence homophobic attack which left his neighbour Colin Duncan brutalised and needing serious medical care in Folkestone.
Mr. Duncan had invited Mr. Kilgariff for a drink – where the pair consumed copious amounts of alcohol. When Mr. Duncan said he was going to bed, Mr. Kilgariff launched a violent attack on Mr. Duncan using his fists, feet and a bottle. He bit off the victim’s ear. The attack was so brutal Mr. Duncan feared for his life.
Mr Duncan required 20 stitches and doctors were able to reattach a part of Mr. Duncan’s ear.
During the “sustained” attack Mr. Duncan was called “queer” and “gay”.
Mr Duncan told the police,
“All I was trying to do was be kind and neighbourly to a man who had just been released from prison. I thought I was going to be murdered.”
