love is a human right - Amnesty blog

Amnesty is in the midst of an ongoing almighty battle against homophobia around the world, and especially in Eastern Europe. With the furore surrounding the gay pride parades in Riga and Jerusalem this summer, among others, this season has already proved to be an intense one for all those involved…..





At the beginning of June a group from Amnesty in the UK joined Gay Pride marchers on Latvia’s 3rd ever Pride march, in the capital city Riga. The city authorities had tried to ban the march, but the courts overturned this decision and it went ahead:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6716287.stm
The key organisers were the inspiring Latvian gay rights group Mozaika:
http://www.mozaika.lv/index .php?lng=en
whose founder Linda is interviewed here:
http://web.amnesty.org/pages/lva-030507-background-eng

The march couldn’t have been more different from the party atmosphere of the well established Pride marches here in London or Manchester. The group was joined by 300+ seriously-well-armoured police who were there to keep the baying anti-gay counter-demonstrators at bay. One activist documented the march on his blog: http://blog.amnesty.org/rigapride/



It’s not enough to assume prejudice against LGBT people is only a problem elsewhere. A really worrying recent survey made by Stonewall shows that there is still serious homophobia in the UK: http://www.stonewall.org.uk/education_for_all/news/current_news/1794.asp
and 40 years since the law was changed here, decriminalising homosexuality (July 1967), there is clearly still a long way to go.



Pride in London staged a mock Eurovision song contest and awarded “nil points” to certain countries… Blogged about on this blog: http://acediscovery.blogspot.com/search/label/eurovision

If you want to take action online, you can click on:http://www.amnesty.org.uk/content.asp?CategoryID=876

there's 0 between the 'n'-word and the 'p'-word

I don’t really want my blog to turn into a Big Brother commentary for the next 2 months, or however long it’s going to be on for, but it’s no good; I just can’t ignore what Laura said to Gerry about Liam on Wednesday night’s episode!! In reference to the gimp outfit BB made him wear for this week’s task, Laura told Gerry that Liam looked like a p**f. Now, admittedly BB called Laura into the diary room for a reprimand. And she apologised… to BB, not to Liam or to Gerry. But last month Emily was unceremoniously thrown out of Big Brother for calling Charley the ‘n’-word.



I’m not going to start a debate about whether this was the right course of action in the first place – since I’m divided on it. But what frustrates me more than anything is the double standards, and the inequality and inconsistency within semantic laws and social rules. Why is it considered so much worse to be attacked on the basis of your race or colour than on the basis of your sexuality or gender? If BB is going to be consistently politically correct then they should have also thrown out Laura for using a derogatory and disrespectful term for homosexuals.



In fact, by the same token, derogatory terminology about women should also be outlawed. Yes, that would make general conversation a linguistic minefield, because – would you believe it?? – there is a seemingly endless stream of potentially abusive language about women. Racism in language is perhaps easier to recognise and police because the words stand out, but words like c**t, t**t, w***e, s**t and s**g pass through conversation as if they were nothing more than a bit of verbal punctuation. I am, of course, in complete support of any anti-racism measures, but I am fed up with its unequal position as the ‘favourite’ social injustice. No one should ever face abuse directed at any aspect of an identity that they have no control over. We have no control over our race or colour. But we also have no control over our biological sex, or our sexuality and sexual preferences. So there is no justification for condemning one, whilst merely mildly frowning at the other.



If BB can kick Emily out for making a racist comment to Charley, then BB should show some consistency in Big Brother Land’s Judicial Legislation and kick Laura out for making a homophobic comment to Gerry.

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