When a U-Turn is highly worthwhile

Just seen the news that the Home Office has granted assylum to the young gay Iranian they were threatening to deport back to Iran. This is highly welcome news and this decision should have been made a long time ago.

We are getting more tolerant

Today I saw something that makes me really hopeful about society and how tolerant we are getting. I was wandering along by Trafalgar Square and out of the corner of my eye I saw a couple of guys chatting. Nothing strange about that you may say. However upon the conclusion of their conversation they kissed in the way only couples do, in full view of everyone and not a soul batted an eyelid. It was extremely uplifting and said a lot about how tolerant we are becoming.

Home Office - Gay people not routinely persecuted in Iran

The Home Office sometimes makes you want to scream, it is involved in a case involving an Iranian teenager who professes to be homosexual. Now I don’t know the entire details of the case so will refrain from commenting on that however if what CNN is claiming as being a statement from the Home Office is accurate then it is a pretty breathtaking assertion. Basically CNN states that:-

“Britain’s Home Office said that even though homosexuality is illegal in Iran and homosexuals do experience discrimination, it does not believe that homosexuals are routinely persecuted purely on the basis of their sexuality”

I would say that that statement is ludicrous considering the number of reports of homosexuals being killed in Iran. To say in effect that the situation in Iran is ‘not that bad’ is ridiculous. It is that bad!

Sexuality Politics

Well sometimes you have a conversation that make you fume with anger. This conversation was with a friend of mine regarding the London Mayoral elections, and choices of candidates. I don’t live in London so don’t get a vote but no prizes for guessing I’m a pro-Boris person. This friend of mine is gay and said he was planning to vote Lib Dem. Now I always like to know the rationale behind a persons vote and so as usual I asked for the reasoning. The response was that ‘us Gays should stick together’, now I took exception to this to vote for someone on no other basis than their sexuality is to me as bad as declining to vote for them on those grounds. I pointed this out, and he admitted that he would vote for Boris if Boris wasn’t a Conservative because ‘Gays can’t be Conservatives, Conservatives are anti-gay’. At this point I was seething, to me this is the worst type of sexuality politics, I have never believed that my sexuality should define me. I also find it frankly a problem that for years campaigners have argued that sexuality shouldn’t be used to define someone and stereotype them and yet they are happy to define and stereotype in their turn. I have to admit that the views above are quite widespread amongst my gay friends, most of them are otherwise sensible but seem to develop a pink mist when it comes to politics. It is frankly bizarre.