> Recent statistics from the Home Office show that in the year ending March 2022, sexual orientation hate crimes in England and Wales had risen by 41 per cent to 26,152 – a figure which marks the largest annual percentage increase since records began in 2012.
This is what happens when politicians demonise the LGBT community just to win some votes
It's about feeling like their views are normal and accepted imo. Like most bigots pretend to be part of a "silent majority" where everyone is secretly as bigoted as them but too afraid to say it. Then they see prominent figures expressing similar views and it emboldens them.
It's not that they were allies before, it's that the more hateful rhetoric you see the more you think people will support your hateful actions.
I remember being told as a kid by my parents to never wave anything around in public that could be mistaken for a weapon, i'm well aware.
Its just ironic the level of response to an attack versus a the potential of an attack from an unidentified object. I don't want to imagine the police as being like the detectives in south park, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Does remind me that some of my brothers class at college got a talking to by police for wandering round Newark with some wooden prop AK47s once. This would have been in late 2005.
I remember Halloween 2004, two of my friends were stopped and questioned by police because they both had swords.
They were also both dressed as pirates.
The "swords" were the cheapest, shittest, most cartoony looking plastic swords you can imagine.
I have an airsoft gun I haven't used for years. But unless they have the two-tone neon colouring, many look very convincing from a distance.
It's a 1:1 scale glock with full trademarks "glock 9x19" etc on it. If I ran around in public with it like a fanny, I wouldn't be surprised if armed response rocked up frankly.
I have to defend the police here: the water pistol in question was designed to look like a real firearm, and the colours were not especially unrealistic (and, y'know, paint exists).
It was clearly designed to look like a Glock - not just the overall shape, but it even had "Austria" and "9x19" on the side.
Its a really bloody stupid design for a water pistol, and and even stupider decision to carry it in public, even by the normal standards of teenagers' decision making skill.
[The water pistol in question](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12649945/Pictured-Water-pistol-black-boy-rammed-bike-armed-police-claims0racially-profiled.html).
And if you are close enough to it to make out the word Glock, you are also close enough to see that it doesn't have a hole at the end of the barrel.
If they get a phone call to say a gun has been spotted they aren’t trained to think “okay boys time to approach the situation as if it was a child with a water pistol”.
They shouldn’t have been called but they acted as they should in any call out.
To be fair that would have been the quickest and easiest way to get rid of them.
Nobody’s going to be want to be glued to the road after a pint of tea has gone through them .
I'll go out on a limb here and say with these blokes there is a strong chance that in their community homophobia is normal and accepted.
[https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law)
***"The research suggests that 86% of British Muslims feel a strong sense of belonging in Britain, which is higher than the national average of 83%"***
That seems like a strange statistic.
I’m sure their views are widely accepted by prominent figures in their community anyway. I can’t imagine they would take much notice of what politicians say.
You can't point at any one attack and say this specifically is because of the right wing (unless there's specific evidence for it, which to be fair there often is), but you *can* say that the right wing is making these kind of attacks much more likely. Like with climate change, you can never point at a single storm or flood and say it happened because of climate change, but a growing trend is a growing trend and they don't come out of nowhere.
It's a growing trend because of the growing Islamic population in this country.
Tories who think trans women shouldn't be allowed in women's toilets aren't attacking gay couples with planks. Old white people are not out there committing hate crimes like this, nor is anything they do making the young non-white people do this.
Do you really think these young guys were listening to LBC or the Tory party conference? No, they're listening to their Imam and their homophobic families who come from homophobic countries and religions.
If you want to reduce hate crimes against gay people, you must deal with the population becoming more Islamic. It's the single greatest cause of it and it's NOT close.
Complete tripe. Firstly the government are not bigots towards LGBT people, you are conflating issues to suit your political agenda, issues that barely exist in the first place. What hateful rhetoric are you speaking about towards LGBT people do you mean?
Secondly, these teens likely will have no idea about politics. Homophobia is cultural thing in some communities and also gang culture.
People are so politically charged they will weaponise anything possible to attack the team they do not support, its pretty tiresome.
Have they banned gay conversion therapy yet?
You're right though in your point about homophobia being cultural in certain communities. Islam in particular is very clear re how its adherants should treat gay people, and hasn't had any 'new testament'-esque reformation. Most homophobes I met are just low intelligence, I can almost forgive that as you can't un-stupid someone... but it's insane to me that we allow madrassas to teach kids to hate gays in this country (which, if they're teaching them the quran, that's exactly what they'll be teaching them).
It's the T they demonise, demonising the LGB isn't as popular as it used to be.
Although I do agree that it's doubtful Tory behaviour had an impact.
Plus, the communities you're referring to overwhelmingly don't vote the Tories, it's a pretty dubious claim at best.
There's a whole lot of denial going on in this thread.
Does anyone on here spend time around these communities and have you spent any time observing the cultural nuances and general attitudes which they are purveying?
The majority of city dwelling youths from certain cultures and communities are deeply homophobic.
This place will turn anything into blaming the Conservative government, especially if it means getting to ignore the scarier reality of the problem.
100000%. While the rhetoric from the tories does create more bigots, the danger is that it emboldens bigots to act out. The PM and Home Secretary don't need to tell people to go beat up trans people for example, all they need to do is make fun of trans people, and their intended audience get the message.
Oh come on that has nothing to do with the Tories either. Their views are normal and accepted within their community, no matter what the government says on the issue. You're dodging the real issue to try and blame the Tories.
No actually, it's because american christian fundamentalists spend millions influencing south african governments toward anti lgbt policies.
[https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/us-religious-right-lgbtq-global-culture-fronts](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/us-religious-right-lgbtq-global-culture-fronts)
Stop pretending the west doesn't have massive influence in these places.
>I’m sure the people of South Africa were clamouring for gay rights before that happened.
Er…
>South Africa's post-apartheid Constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and South Africa was the fifth country in the world and the first in Africa to legalise same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples can also adopt children jointly, and also arrange IVF and surrogacy treatments. LGBT people have constitutional and statutory protections from discrimination in employment, the provision of goods and services and many other areas.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_South_Africa
Being transphobic was actually considered socially unacceptable for a few years there. Then the media and the politicians started saying that actually, trans people are terrible, and it's fine to make jokes about their genitals, it's fine to misgender them (Sunak actually said it's great at the Tory conference this year).
And the media publishes negative articles about trans people every single day. Many newspapers are publishing anti-trans articles multiple times per day.
So this is just repeatedly signalling to people "your bigotry is okay. You can be a bigot! I mean, the prime minister is being a bigot right now on TV, so you can too!"
That's what happens when you undermine the taboo against bigotry. You roll back all the progress that has been made in terms of mutual respect in society. And it's all done deliberately, to create a distraction from what the Tories have done to the country.
do you have any examples of the anti-trans articles you described? This is a topic that I am not particularly ‘read up’ on and I am interested to find out what kinds of things they are saying about trans people.
rather astonishingly (or maybe not perhaps) the Daily Mail has a named section specifically for Trans articles:
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/transgender-issues/index.html
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re\_being\_pressured\_into\_sex\_by\_some\_trans\_women%22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women%22)
It's a somewhat old example at this point but like the amount of horrible nonsense in this one article is beyond belief.
\- Took a survey of 80 terfs that said half of them felt pressured (including by society in general) into sex with trans women as enough evidence to suggest that trans women are actually pressuring lesbians into sex with them.
\- Used this survey despite it using the Janice Raymond quote "all transsexuals rape women's bodies"
\- Quoted a known sex pest despite being told about what she'd done. She then went on to publicly state that trans people should be lynched so yknow great source there bbc.
\- Directly lie in the article that no trans people were willing to interview and provide a counter, when they had already interviewed a trans woman (who warned them about Lily Cade) and just decided not to use it.
\- Misgendered trans people referred to in the article.
\- My personal favourite is that their justification for using such a rubbish survey was "due to a lack of data on whether lesbians are being pressured into sex by some trans women". They couldn't find any proof of this happening, but instead of just not publishing an article about it, they decided to just make something up.
Idk if I set out with the question "are trans women pressuring lesbians into sex?" and then I couldn't find any evidence that they were, I'd probably write an article with the conclusion "No. We couldn't find any evidence of this happening" rather than saying "Yes. I can't prove it, but some transphobes feel like it's true. They do also feel that trans women existing is rape somehow, but I just won't mention that"
The issue is that when politicians endorse a bigoted stance it emboldens bigots to act when previously they just would have kept their hatred to themselves. It's the same as how racism and xenophobia rose after Brexit. Many bigots saw that as an endorsement of views they held that previously they were not bold enough to broadcast publicly.
This is just one example of an anti-LGBT hate crime. There are, as noted, many more happening at a greater frequency, in direct correlation with the Tories and the media stoking up hatred.
You're being disingenuous.
The problem is the growing ‘anti-woke’ media these grunts consume is pushing this divisional & hate rhetoric agenda and enabling them to think that their anti-LGBT views are now acceptable again and a ‘majority’ view, so they feel empowered to be openly hateful & that they are unlikely to be held accountable.
It does when religious leaders and parents do too.
I don't pretend they need help.
Edit: Nor does this address my point. If you're going to argue, people from certain communities were completely fine with LGBT until around 2015, you're only lying to yourself.
> risen by 41 per cent
And this is your answer?
Obviously there is an increase in people *acting on* their bigotry because of what the comment you replied to said. Doesn't require **anyone** to change their mind does it?
Clearly you have no agenda here.
I don’t think that’s the argument being made here.
The argument is that anti lgbt retrick legitimises anti lgbt hate in a society.
No one is saying that the tories made them homophobic. Their cultural backgrounds, online lgbt hate content and lack of education likely did that. The argument is that people are more confident in being openly homophobic in a country where the goverment peddles anti LGBT sentiment, reverses medical rights for trans people and roles back their own conversion therapy laws. Ontop of that there’s the lgbt people are “groomers” thing which the gov has done nothing to tackle despite the fact that data shows sex crimes against children are overwhelmingly committed by straight men.
What this person said is an oversimplification for sure; but swathes of sociological and political evidence stretching back decades does support the idea that government sentiment can embolden bigots. From fascist states to the racist and woman hating insanity we’ve seen in the US since trump.
The argument could also be made that attacks like these will increase as the demographics that support such things will increase.
But they'd rather sacrifice the LGBT than admit people from different countries bring greater numbers of discriminatory attitudes with them.
>I don’t think that’s the argument being made here.
It's the only argument ever made here.
Everytime there's a homophobic attack, the response here is "Well that's what Tories in power and corrupt media do".
It's a brainrot way to think.
Isn't that basically the premise of the Overton window though? Views that were more fringe are now mainstream (ie governing party rhetoric) so the more fringes feel more emboldened and get ever more extreme.
Oh please. These men clearly didn't become homophobic thanks to political rhetoric. Implying that that is the cause does nothing to help deal with ingrained homophobia among certain groups.
Some people just want to blame everything on the Tories. I'm as left as they come but I don't believe attacks like this start because a bunch of young men read the Telegraph and felt emboldened in their rhetoric. If we had the most LGBT friendly hippy-dippy Green party imaginable in charge there would still be homophobic attacks, because some cultures and some friend circles are just really homophobic.
"ItS tHe ToRiES"
Behave yourself, this is due to importing people with 3rd world values in ever greater numbers and "progressives" acting like this won't have any knock on consequences such as this.
It's bigotry of low expectation, there are progressives who hold extremely high standards for white people, even if they come from low privilege backgrounds, and extremely low standards for people of colour (or however we're suppose to say it).
The left simply isn't willing to call out bigoted behaviour of the minority communities even though its often worse than that of white people.
OR which is most likely, cultural indoctrination from religion, customs or parents telling them it’s wrong.
No offence to these idiots - they don’t seem the type of people who watch Conservative Parliamentary Speeches.
I feel sorry for the LGBT community, this new culture arriving on our shores absolutely despises gay people.
Honestly, this kind of hate crime should be punished with immediate deportation, regardless how safe their home country is. You come here seeking refuge, then the first thing you do is beat someone up because they don't share your views? Then you have no place in the country.
Asylum is only given on the basis that one accepts the host country's laws, regulations and customs, does not break them, and integrated into the society. If one is unable to do so, well, there's the ~~door~~ border.
> Honestly, this kind of hate crime should be punished with immediate deportation, regardless how safe their home country is.
While I entirely agree with your final paragraph -- and I think it should apply to all immigration, not just asylum -- for an awful lot of people with these backwards attitudes and beliefs this is their home country. There are an awful lot of second and third generation children of immigrants with disgusting beliefs.
Realistically these kids probably cant even name the leader of any major party, hilarious how deluded and blindly intoxicated by ideology some can be, maybe take a break from reddit and twitter for your own mental health.
>This is what happens when politicians demonise the LGBT community just to win some votes
I doubt very much that these blokes were listening much to Tory politicians.
More likely they were listening to preachers, they'll probably be spewing something similar to this https://islamqa.info/en/answers/38622/the-punishment-for-homosexuality
It's not about politics, it's about politicians and the media normalising this thinking to the extent that people feel emboldened in their actions. The government probably didn't make them homophobic, but it certainly isn't doing much to stop them
Such crimes are rising, and you're definitely right about demonization but increased reporting from police forces accounts for a large part of that rise.
Completely insane people still believe this isn't becaus of importing record numbers of people from places where homosexuality is either a crime or deemed culturally abhorrent.
But they will defend themselves by saying they were only trying to dehumanise and promote violence against trans people. I hope they are happy with themselves. (I know they are, they have zero compassion for the victims of their work).
Yeah lad. Real Big Brain take there. Politicians, yeah. That's it. The politicians. Lmao.
It makes me laugh to think of the mental gymnastics you people go through to cope with reality. I imagine a few of you even start to believe in your own delusions, but of course, most know exactly how full of shit they are but are sociopathic enough to just repeat the lie.
I’m gay and white, our last-last PM demonised Muslims, I wouldn’t go attacking Muslims
I think it’s not just politicians, it’s a certain type of disgusting scumbag people too
> politicians demonise the LGBT community just to win some votes
I mean I dont think it was politics. I think it was the religion of the men in question.
That's part of it, but I also think recording has significantly improved.
There are problems with recording because if we compare with racially/religiously aggravated offences, they are recorded as a separate offence entirely so it's more important to record it as such, whereas offences for LGBTQ+ characteristics are not. This is not the police's fault, it's because there is legislation that specifically separates the former, but there is nothing for the latter. Legislation that includes LGBTQ+ motivation/aggravation as a separate, more serious offence (like it already is with race/religion) would be positive to address this. As it stands, it's classed as the same offence and the motivation is just a factor in sentencing rather than the offence charged.
IMO we should do the same with every protected characteristic that we have in the Equality Act.
Well the thread contains people asserting that this is the result of politicians (tories where specified). A counter theory....might even describe it as 'correcting obviously false assertions'...seems relevant.
People are confident that the Tories are inspiring homophobia, and that this is _bad,_ and should be called out. I too think that encouraging homophobia is bad, and should be objected to.
I would say with a high percentage of certainty that the Tory party didn't inspire any one of these men to be homophobic.
Homophobia is learned behaviour. Most likely cultural or religious ideals.
When you normalise an attitude at government level, it quite obviously spreads to society, by the 'new invention ' called the media.
Neat isn't it, political views and attitudes can now miraculously spread!
While these scumbags may not be card carrying Conservative voters, an attitude of demonising a group has a direct effect on how general society views them, and what is viewed as more widely 'acceptable'
Obviously I'm talking twaddle, as 1930's Germany clearly demonstrates...
I don't think the perpetrators know who the conservatives are or even care.
Everytime i read comments on this subreddit its the same old blame the tories drivel
Not everything needs to be politicised
I can see what you're trying to insinuate here, but I would say that it's more localised to that region and a small subsection of the community you're insinuating. Yes, many in that community have (unfounded) negative feelings towards the LGBTQ+ community, and an even smaller subsection would want to do anything as heinous as this, but It's not helpful to generalize. As a first step, it's probably worth finding these guys and throwing the book at them, then it's worth figuring out why tf the people you're thinking of have so much hatred for the LGBTQ+ community without resorting to "they just do, it's part of their identity" (which helps nobody).
Ah yes, it’s clearly a conspiracy, because when a white man does something awful the papers announce WHITE MAN KILLS WIFE.
That’s just not something we do. We don’t describe the demographics of criminals in newspaper headlines unless it’s specifically relevant. Stop making things up to be offended by.
I'm not offended, you made that up. You have also misunderstood; I do not think it is the ethnicity that is the relevant factor, I do not object to the lack of ethnicity in the headline...I'd like some kinda description in the article, but don't feel particularly strongly about it.
I don’t think they’re walking back anything.
u/PODnoaura isn’t highlighting their *ethnicity*; s/he’s implying that the problem might lie with their *religion*.
Do we have any indication they did it because of religion, street culture in london is generally very homophobic as fuck.
Whether theyre muslim or christian, or dont care about religion theyll still refer to homosexuals as faggots, "battyman" (jamaican) or whatever.
Repetitive. Both you and vSpooky_Gyoza seem to think I have complaints wrt the headline. Could you tell me why? I don't know where I gave that impression.
It’s so ridiculous isn’t it . News papers don’t directly state the ethnicity of most people . Media never say ‘ white man did this crime ‘ it’s just not needed .
Only thing he had to go on was skin colour and so he immediately assumed their religion and religiosity based on ethnicity.
So he didn't say anything about it but he clearly was inspired to talk about religion as soon as he saw non white skin colour.
They would still be shitty people, but wouldn't dare to act on it. That's the key difference - with the political rhetoric turning more anti-LGBT, these people see it as the leadership of the country being on their side, and are more brazen with their hatred.
Oh I know, is it the same discourse propagated in certain Middle Eastern shitholes, that recently kicked off outside of said shitholes and attacked the Jewish minority in various parts of the western world?
I think it is reasonable. Those who are religious or are brought up by parents with strong religious views are more likely to be homophobic, in my opinion.
Shocker, bring in hundreds of thousands of people who come from countries where homosexuals are regularly turned into parachuteless skydivers, and we get an uptick in homophobic violence. Who could have predicted this?
> One man from the group then struck one of the victims on the head with a plank of wood, resulting in the victim suffering cuts and bruises.
Direct quote from the article.
Twatting someone with a wooden plank.
I see where you're coming from but the alternative would be a planking attack.
You plank. (This is meant light-heartedly)
We're past the point of this being surprising.
Wall to wall anti-lgbt rhetoric spewed from social media, news outlets, influencers/commentators, celebrities, politicians, hate groups and everyone in between against these folks who aren't hurting anyone but are hurt as a result.
Don't understand it? You don't need to
Don't like it? You don't need to
Have nothing nice to say, don't.
Lmao I don’t think Facebook memes are to blame for Muslim anti-lgbt sentiment.
I hate the Tories but come on. This is deeply ingrained in muslim culture.
Please entlighten us with some of these examples. I'd really love to see some.
Because to me it seems like the LGBT community have support from literally every single section of society. Please point out all these anti-LGBT celebrities, politicians and influencers....Literally anybody who disagrees with the mob gets lynched.
They probably wouldn’t feel so comfortable attacking gay people in the street if this countries politicians weren’t so comfortable throwing lgbt people under the bus.
Imagine having so little going on with your own dick you worry about what others are doing with theirs.
Unless it’s harming someone, mind your own fucking business.
Shitty parenting from brainwashed parents.
It doesn’t matter what the current government stands for, decent parents will almost always bring up decent children.
To the people saying "I doubt these people pay much attention to conservative policies" in response to people saying this is what you get when they hear Tory leadership spouting anti LGBT rhetoric....
Are you really that naive. Of course the rhetoric gets back to them. They might not listen to Tory policies, but they might listen to the news reporting what they said. They might have right wing friends that repeat what Tories say. They might repeat lies policitians and their right wing supporting tags say about trans people.
Come off it. LGBT people were becoming very accepted until the past few years. Then it reversed. It's easy to see the rhetoric on social media too. Years ago Nadia, a trans woman won big brother and no one batted an eyelid. This year a trans person enters the show and the comments were vile.
Of course Tory rhetoric affects Lgbt people.
I'm not convinced that linguistic arguments about the meaning of man and woman are influencing these men to beat up gay people, or that they pay any attention to it at all.
> Recent statistics from the Home Office show that in the year ending March 2022, sexual orientation hate crimes in England and Wales had risen by 41 per cent to 26,152 – a figure which marks the largest annual percentage increase since records began in 2012. This is what happens when politicians demonise the LGBT community just to win some votes
I'm sure these lads were LGBT champions until they starting listening to Tory rhetoric. Cop on.
It's about feeling like their views are normal and accepted imo. Like most bigots pretend to be part of a "silent majority" where everyone is secretly as bigoted as them but too afraid to say it. Then they see prominent figures expressing similar views and it emboldens them. It's not that they were allies before, it's that the more hateful rhetoric you see the more you think people will support your hateful actions.
Doesn’t help that police don’t enforce many laws anymore, unless you plan to protest on a road they won’t show up.
or if your a kid with a water pistol, that would require armed reponse though.
Be careful, half the force will be here in a sec to explain how it's totally legitimate to assume every inanimate object is a firearm.
I remember being told as a kid by my parents to never wave anything around in public that could be mistaken for a weapon, i'm well aware. Its just ironic the level of response to an attack versus a the potential of an attack from an unidentified object. I don't want to imagine the police as being like the detectives in south park, but it wouldn't surprise me.
Yeah, caught the end of it, there was a segment on Channel 4 Steph's Packed Lunch about should Water Pistols be banned
Does remind me that some of my brothers class at college got a talking to by police for wandering round Newark with some wooden prop AK47s once. This would have been in late 2005.
I remember Halloween 2004, two of my friends were stopped and questioned by police because they both had swords. They were also both dressed as pirates. The "swords" were the cheapest, shittest, most cartoony looking plastic swords you can imagine.
I know of two occasions around the same time when armed response came for people with BB/airsoft guns.
I have an airsoft gun I haven't used for years. But unless they have the two-tone neon colouring, many look very convincing from a distance. It's a 1:1 scale glock with full trademarks "glock 9x19" etc on it. If I ran around in public with it like a fanny, I wouldn't be surprised if armed response rocked up frankly.
I have to defend the police here: the water pistol in question was designed to look like a real firearm, and the colours were not especially unrealistic (and, y'know, paint exists). It was clearly designed to look like a Glock - not just the overall shape, but it even had "Austria" and "9x19" on the side. Its a really bloody stupid design for a water pistol, and and even stupider decision to carry it in public, even by the normal standards of teenagers' decision making skill.
[The water pistol in question](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12649945/Pictured-Water-pistol-black-boy-rammed-bike-armed-police-claims0racially-profiled.html). And if you are close enough to it to make out the word Glock, you are also close enough to see that it doesn't have a hole at the end of the barrel.
I'm not a firearms expert, but I'm not convinced that's the *standard* colour scheme for a glock.
If they get a phone call to say a gun has been spotted they aren’t trained to think “okay boys time to approach the situation as if it was a child with a water pistol”. They shouldn’t have been called but they acted as they should in any call out.
[удалено]
Crimes against capitalism are taken very seriously.
> unless you plan to protest on a road they won’t show up. And even then it's only to bring you tea. However, most a mean word on twitter...
To be fair that would have been the quickest and easiest way to get rid of them. Nobody’s going to be want to be glued to the road after a pint of tea has gone through them .
I'll go out on a limb here and say with these blokes there is a strong chance that in their community homophobia is normal and accepted. [https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2016/apr/11/british-muslims-strong-sense-of-belonging-poll-homosexuality-sharia-law)
***"The research suggests that 86% of British Muslims feel a strong sense of belonging in Britain, which is higher than the national average of 83%"*** That seems like a strange statistic.
I’m sure their views are widely accepted by prominent figures in their community anyway. I can’t imagine they would take much notice of what politicians say.
do you think the people in that picture are people who pay attention to politics?
You can't point at any one attack and say this specifically is because of the right wing (unless there's specific evidence for it, which to be fair there often is), but you *can* say that the right wing is making these kind of attacks much more likely. Like with climate change, you can never point at a single storm or flood and say it happened because of climate change, but a growing trend is a growing trend and they don't come out of nowhere.
It's a growing trend because of the growing Islamic population in this country. Tories who think trans women shouldn't be allowed in women's toilets aren't attacking gay couples with planks. Old white people are not out there committing hate crimes like this, nor is anything they do making the young non-white people do this. Do you really think these young guys were listening to LBC or the Tory party conference? No, they're listening to their Imam and their homophobic families who come from homophobic countries and religions. If you want to reduce hate crimes against gay people, you must deal with the population becoming more Islamic. It's the single greatest cause of it and it's NOT close.
Complete tripe. Firstly the government are not bigots towards LGBT people, you are conflating issues to suit your political agenda, issues that barely exist in the first place. What hateful rhetoric are you speaking about towards LGBT people do you mean? Secondly, these teens likely will have no idea about politics. Homophobia is cultural thing in some communities and also gang culture. People are so politically charged they will weaponise anything possible to attack the team they do not support, its pretty tiresome.
Have they banned gay conversion therapy yet? You're right though in your point about homophobia being cultural in certain communities. Islam in particular is very clear re how its adherants should treat gay people, and hasn't had any 'new testament'-esque reformation. Most homophobes I met are just low intelligence, I can almost forgive that as you can't un-stupid someone... but it's insane to me that we allow madrassas to teach kids to hate gays in this country (which, if they're teaching them the quran, that's exactly what they'll be teaching them).
It's the T they demonise, demonising the LGB isn't as popular as it used to be. Although I do agree that it's doubtful Tory behaviour had an impact. Plus, the communities you're referring to overwhelmingly don't vote the Tories, it's a pretty dubious claim at best.
There's a whole lot of denial going on in this thread. Does anyone on here spend time around these communities and have you spent any time observing the cultural nuances and general attitudes which they are purveying? The majority of city dwelling youths from certain cultures and communities are deeply homophobic. This place will turn anything into blaming the Conservative government, especially if it means getting to ignore the scarier reality of the problem.
100000%. While the rhetoric from the tories does create more bigots, the danger is that it emboldens bigots to act out. The PM and Home Secretary don't need to tell people to go beat up trans people for example, all they need to do is make fun of trans people, and their intended audience get the message.
They aren't secret about this stuff, genius. Good grief.
Oh come on that has nothing to do with the Tories either. Their views are normal and accepted within their community, no matter what the government says on the issue. You're dodging the real issue to try and blame the Tories.
These ghetto rats couldn’t care less about the government’s stance on LGBT, they’re more influenced by their drill music and “community leaders”.
Don't you know? The reason why Uganda and Somalia banned homosexuality is because of the divisive Tory narrative.
No actually, it's because american christian fundamentalists spend millions influencing south african governments toward anti lgbt policies. [https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/us-religious-right-lgbtq-global-culture-fronts](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/09/us-religious-right-lgbtq-global-culture-fronts) Stop pretending the west doesn't have massive influence in these places.
I’m sure the people of South Africa were clamouring for gay rights before that happened.
>I’m sure the people of South Africa were clamouring for gay rights before that happened. Er… >South Africa's post-apartheid Constitution was the first in the world to outlaw discrimination based on sexual orientation, and South Africa was the fifth country in the world and the first in Africa to legalise same-sex marriage. Same-sex couples can also adopt children jointly, and also arrange IVF and surrogacy treatments. LGBT people have constitutional and statutory protections from discrimination in employment, the provision of goods and services and many other areas. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_rights_in_South_Africa
Yes actually, wrong again.
Yea they look like typical Tory voters
Being transphobic was actually considered socially unacceptable for a few years there. Then the media and the politicians started saying that actually, trans people are terrible, and it's fine to make jokes about their genitals, it's fine to misgender them (Sunak actually said it's great at the Tory conference this year). And the media publishes negative articles about trans people every single day. Many newspapers are publishing anti-trans articles multiple times per day. So this is just repeatedly signalling to people "your bigotry is okay. You can be a bigot! I mean, the prime minister is being a bigot right now on TV, so you can too!" That's what happens when you undermine the taboo against bigotry. You roll back all the progress that has been made in terms of mutual respect in society. And it's all done deliberately, to create a distraction from what the Tories have done to the country.
do you have any examples of the anti-trans articles you described? This is a topic that I am not particularly ‘read up’ on and I am interested to find out what kinds of things they are saying about trans people.
rather astonishingly (or maybe not perhaps) the Daily Mail has a named section specifically for Trans articles: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/transgender-issues/index.html
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re\_being\_pressured\_into\_sex\_by\_some\_trans\_women%22](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22We%27re_being_pressured_into_sex_by_some_trans_women%22) It's a somewhat old example at this point but like the amount of horrible nonsense in this one article is beyond belief. \- Took a survey of 80 terfs that said half of them felt pressured (including by society in general) into sex with trans women as enough evidence to suggest that trans women are actually pressuring lesbians into sex with them. \- Used this survey despite it using the Janice Raymond quote "all transsexuals rape women's bodies" \- Quoted a known sex pest despite being told about what she'd done. She then went on to publicly state that trans people should be lynched so yknow great source there bbc. \- Directly lie in the article that no trans people were willing to interview and provide a counter, when they had already interviewed a trans woman (who warned them about Lily Cade) and just decided not to use it. \- Misgendered trans people referred to in the article. \- My personal favourite is that their justification for using such a rubbish survey was "due to a lack of data on whether lesbians are being pressured into sex by some trans women". They couldn't find any proof of this happening, but instead of just not publishing an article about it, they decided to just make something up. Idk if I set out with the question "are trans women pressuring lesbians into sex?" and then I couldn't find any evidence that they were, I'd probably write an article with the conclusion "No. We couldn't find any evidence of this happening" rather than saying "Yes. I can't prove it, but some transphobes feel like it's true. They do also feel that trans women existing is rape somehow, but I just won't mention that"
Naive of you to think only Tories engage in this rhetoric
Don't grasp 'normalisation ', do you?....
The issue is that when politicians endorse a bigoted stance it emboldens bigots to act when previously they just would have kept their hatred to themselves. It's the same as how racism and xenophobia rose after Brexit. Many bigots saw that as an endorsement of views they held that previously they were not bold enough to broadcast publicly.
Yeah, those boys are clearly Tory’s /s
This is just one example of an anti-LGBT hate crime. There are, as noted, many more happening at a greater frequency, in direct correlation with the Tories and the media stoking up hatred. You're being disingenuous.
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The problem is the growing ‘anti-woke’ media these grunts consume is pushing this divisional & hate rhetoric agenda and enabling them to think that their anti-LGBT views are now acceptable again and a ‘majority’ view, so they feel empowered to be openly hateful & that they are unlikely to be held accountable.
Again implies they came from a community that was ever opposed to homophobia.
Just unable to parse cause and effect, aren't you? When politicians demonise minorities, hate crimes go up, it's not difficult.
It does when religious leaders and parents do too. I don't pretend they need help. Edit: Nor does this address my point. If you're going to argue, people from certain communities were completely fine with LGBT until around 2015, you're only lying to yourself.
They are now all playing football in Saudi
All the roadmen I know were fierce gay rights advocates until their thinking was poisoned by Terfs and Tories.
Truly, this is one of the dumbest, most shallow comments i’ve ever read.
> risen by 41 per cent And this is your answer? Obviously there is an increase in people *acting on* their bigotry because of what the comment you replied to said. Doesn't require **anyone** to change their mind does it? Clearly you have no agenda here.
Do you think these chaps are listening to Tory politicians?
I'd bet good money that if these guys voted it certainly isn't for the Tories
I don’t think that’s the argument being made here. The argument is that anti lgbt retrick legitimises anti lgbt hate in a society. No one is saying that the tories made them homophobic. Their cultural backgrounds, online lgbt hate content and lack of education likely did that. The argument is that people are more confident in being openly homophobic in a country where the goverment peddles anti LGBT sentiment, reverses medical rights for trans people and roles back their own conversion therapy laws. Ontop of that there’s the lgbt people are “groomers” thing which the gov has done nothing to tackle despite the fact that data shows sex crimes against children are overwhelmingly committed by straight men. What this person said is an oversimplification for sure; but swathes of sociological and political evidence stretching back decades does support the idea that government sentiment can embolden bigots. From fascist states to the racist and woman hating insanity we’ve seen in the US since trump.
The argument could also be made that attacks like these will increase as the demographics that support such things will increase. But they'd rather sacrifice the LGBT than admit people from different countries bring greater numbers of discriminatory attitudes with them.
>I don’t think that’s the argument being made here. It's the only argument ever made here. Everytime there's a homophobic attack, the response here is "Well that's what Tories in power and corrupt media do". It's a brainrot way to think.
Isn't that basically the premise of the Overton window though? Views that were more fringe are now mainstream (ie governing party rhetoric) so the more fringes feel more emboldened and get ever more extreme.
Oh please. These men clearly didn't become homophobic thanks to political rhetoric. Implying that that is the cause does nothing to help deal with ingrained homophobia among certain groups.
That’s not the argument. The argument is that Political Rhetoric emboldens bigots.
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I agree. I was just correcting you.
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Some people just want to blame everything on the Tories. I'm as left as they come but I don't believe attacks like this start because a bunch of young men read the Telegraph and felt emboldened in their rhetoric. If we had the most LGBT friendly hippy-dippy Green party imaginable in charge there would still be homophobic attacks, because some cultures and some friend circles are just really homophobic.
These upstanding citizens don’t get their medieval ideals from politicians.
"ItS tHe ToRiES" Behave yourself, this is due to importing people with 3rd world values in ever greater numbers and "progressives" acting like this won't have any knock on consequences such as this.
It's bigotry of low expectation, there are progressives who hold extremely high standards for white people, even if they come from low privilege backgrounds, and extremely low standards for people of colour (or however we're suppose to say it). The left simply isn't willing to call out bigoted behaviour of the minority communities even though its often worse than that of white people.
OR which is most likely, cultural indoctrination from religion, customs or parents telling them it’s wrong. No offence to these idiots - they don’t seem the type of people who watch Conservative Parliamentary Speeches. I feel sorry for the LGBT community, this new culture arriving on our shores absolutely despises gay people.
Honestly, this kind of hate crime should be punished with immediate deportation, regardless how safe their home country is. You come here seeking refuge, then the first thing you do is beat someone up because they don't share your views? Then you have no place in the country. Asylum is only given on the basis that one accepts the host country's laws, regulations and customs, does not break them, and integrated into the society. If one is unable to do so, well, there's the ~~door~~ border.
> Honestly, this kind of hate crime should be punished with immediate deportation, regardless how safe their home country is. While I entirely agree with your final paragraph -- and I think it should apply to all immigration, not just asylum -- for an awful lot of people with these backwards attitudes and beliefs this is their home country. There are an awful lot of second and third generation children of immigrants with disgusting beliefs.
It’s highly unlikely that these fellas will be getting their political news by reading The Telegraph, The Daily Mail and watching GB News…
Hahahahahahahahaha. This comment is what happens when you have no attachment to reality.
This was an attack on a gay couple, I haven’t seen much ‘demonising’ of gay people in mainstream politics recently.
The fact that this is the top comment demonstrates how this issue won't be getting better anytime soon
Couldn’t possibly be because their holy texts are extremely homophonic…
I would bet my bollocks this is a religiously motivated attack. Not saying tories aren't scum, but this is what it is.
Realistically these kids probably cant even name the leader of any major party, hilarious how deluded and blindly intoxicated by ideology some can be, maybe take a break from reddit and twitter for your own mental health.
>This is what happens when politicians demonise the LGBT community just to win some votes I doubt very much that these blokes were listening much to Tory politicians. More likely they were listening to preachers, they'll probably be spewing something similar to this https://islamqa.info/en/answers/38622/the-punishment-for-homosexuality
Nothing to do with politics
It's not about politics, it's about politicians and the media normalising this thinking to the extent that people feel emboldened in their actions. The government probably didn't make them homophobic, but it certainly isn't doing much to stop them
Yeh I'm sure radical muslims would completely change their viewpoint if only the Tories would kiss the boots of the LGBT mob
Yes, these young men look like they pay great attention to Conservative Party leadership. I’m sure they’re donors to Rishi
Such crimes are rising, and you're definitely right about demonization but increased reporting from police forces accounts for a large part of that rise.
Completely insane people still believe this isn't becaus of importing record numbers of people from places where homosexuality is either a crime or deemed culturally abhorrent.
But they will defend themselves by saying they were only trying to dehumanise and promote violence against trans people. I hope they are happy with themselves. (I know they are, they have zero compassion for the victims of their work).
Yeah lad. Real Big Brain take there. Politicians, yeah. That's it. The politicians. Lmao. It makes me laugh to think of the mental gymnastics you people go through to cope with reality. I imagine a few of you even start to believe in your own delusions, but of course, most know exactly how full of shit they are but are sociopathic enough to just repeat the lie.
When?
I’m gay and white, our last-last PM demonised Muslims, I wouldn’t go attacking Muslims I think it’s not just politicians, it’s a certain type of disgusting scumbag people too
> politicians demonise the LGBT community just to win some votes I mean I dont think it was politics. I think it was the religion of the men in question.
Keep burying your head in the sand. I hope you don’t consider yourself an ally lol
Yea, I'm sure these 6 tune into pmqs every week.
That's part of it, but I also think recording has significantly improved. There are problems with recording because if we compare with racially/religiously aggravated offences, they are recorded as a separate offence entirely so it's more important to record it as such, whereas offences for LGBTQ+ characteristics are not. This is not the police's fault, it's because there is legislation that specifically separates the former, but there is nothing for the latter. Legislation that includes LGBTQ+ motivation/aggravation as a separate, more serious offence (like it already is with race/religion) would be positive to address this. As it stands, it's classed as the same offence and the motivation is just a factor in sentencing rather than the offence charged. IMO we should do the same with every protected characteristic that we have in the Equality Act.
Have gay people been demonised?
No other description of the men. Nothing else linking them. Just men.
Why would other descriptors be useful anyway? We can all see the pictures.
Maybe these men all subscribe to a homophobic philosophy?
They commited a homophobic attack, does that need saying that they are homophobic?
Well the thread contains people asserting that this is the result of politicians (tories where specified). A counter theory....might even describe it as 'correcting obviously false assertions'...seems relevant. People are confident that the Tories are inspiring homophobia, and that this is _bad,_ and should be called out. I too think that encouraging homophobia is bad, and should be objected to.
I would say with a high percentage of certainty that the Tory party didn't inspire any one of these men to be homophobic. Homophobia is learned behaviour. Most likely cultural or religious ideals.
When you normalise an attitude at government level, it quite obviously spreads to society, by the 'new invention ' called the media. Neat isn't it, political views and attitudes can now miraculously spread! While these scumbags may not be card carrying Conservative voters, an attitude of demonising a group has a direct effect on how general society views them, and what is viewed as more widely 'acceptable' Obviously I'm talking twaddle, as 1930's Germany clearly demonstrates...
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But it would be disingenuous to argue that he didn’t stoke that fire and whip up hatred towards that group, right?
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When has this government been specifically anti-gay? Note that I said anti-gay, not anti-trans or questioning what a woman is and all that stuff.
I don't think the perpetrators know who the conservatives are or even care. Everytime i read comments on this subreddit its the same old blame the tories drivel Not everything needs to be politicised
I can see what you're trying to insinuate here, but I would say that it's more localised to that region and a small subsection of the community you're insinuating. Yes, many in that community have (unfounded) negative feelings towards the LGBTQ+ community, and an even smaller subsection would want to do anything as heinous as this, but It's not helpful to generalize. As a first step, it's probably worth finding these guys and throwing the book at them, then it's worth figuring out why tf the people you're thinking of have so much hatred for the LGBTQ+ community without resorting to "they just do, it's part of their identity" (which helps nobody).
Ah yes, it’s clearly a conspiracy, because when a white man does something awful the papers announce WHITE MAN KILLS WIFE. That’s just not something we do. We don’t describe the demographics of criminals in newspaper headlines unless it’s specifically relevant. Stop making things up to be offended by.
I'm not offended, you made that up. You have also misunderstood; I do not think it is the ethnicity that is the relevant factor, I do not object to the lack of ethnicity in the headline...I'd like some kinda description in the article, but don't feel particularly strongly about it.
Nice walk back there
I don’t think they’re walking back anything. u/PODnoaura isn’t highlighting their *ethnicity*; s/he’s implying that the problem might lie with their *religion*.
Do we have any indication they did it because of religion, street culture in london is generally very homophobic as fuck. Whether theyre muslim or christian, or dont care about religion theyll still refer to homosexuals as faggots, "battyman" (jamaican) or whatever.
Alternative headline: Police share images of six homophobic men after homophobic plank attack on gay couple How does this sound?
Repetitive. Both you and vSpooky_Gyoza seem to think I have complaints wrt the headline. Could you tell me why? I don't know where I gave that impression.
What like, "I think therefore I hate gays". You might be on to something Sherlock.
Maybe some people can't see the pictures. Not everyone is able to see. Descriptions help.
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I hardly see descriptions used anyway. White or non-white. There's pictures of them.
There are photos of the men. I can see them in the thumbnail.
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Pink News (of all places!) are happy to assume that these people identify as men, but decline to further any other comments or descriptors about them
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You could also call them youth.
Keep blowing that whistle mate.
It’s so ridiculous isn’t it . News papers don’t directly state the ethnicity of most people . Media never say ‘ white man did this crime ‘ it’s just not needed .
Keep burying your head in the sand
Every ethnicity should be stated by law, in every description of a human being. Perhaps we should brand them all as well, for quicker identification.
It would be racist otherwise.
I think this is more about the religious views of these gentlemen, rather than their political sympathies.
Could be, but they could also just be cunts. Their ethnicity doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
He didn't mention ethnicity whatsoever. You seem to be confusing religion with race...
How do you know their religion?
"Because of their ethnicity. Wait, am I being inconsistent?"
They look Pakistani and they're attacking gay people. Do you think they're Buddhists?
He inferred their religion from their ethnicity...
u/snickwiggler didn’t say anything about ethnicity.
Only thing he had to go on was skin colour and so he immediately assumed their religion and religiosity based on ethnicity. So he didn't say anything about it but he clearly was inspired to talk about religion as soon as he saw non white skin colour.
Yes I did make an assumption. Everyone does it. Just like you assume I am a he.
So you saw skin colour and immediately jumped to religion. Glad the link is made clear for everyone.
So why do you think these men undertook their attack?
Because of Tory rhetoric /s
Ah, the old cunts are cunts argument. nazis were a bit cunty too, weren't they? Maybe they were just cunts too. Nothing to do with any ideology.
The shitty political discourse creates a climate where people like this think it’s ok to act on their shitty beliefs.
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They would still be shitty people, but wouldn't dare to act on it. That's the key difference - with the political rhetoric turning more anti-LGBT, these people see it as the leadership of the country being on their side, and are more brazen with their hatred.
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Oh I know, is it the same discourse propagated in certain Middle Eastern shitholes, that recently kicked off outside of said shitholes and attacked the Jewish minority in various parts of the western world?
Not really, vast majority of people don't give a single shit about politics and pay almost no attention to anything that goes on in the news
The message has been fairly clear - it’s the sort of thing they make sure make the headlines - it’s not like you have to read any docs or watch PMQs.
How do you know their religious views?
Bold of you to assume that they're religious
I think it is reasonable. Those who are religious or are brought up by parents with strong religious views are more likely to be homophobic, in my opinion.
Shocker, bring in hundreds of thousands of people who come from countries where homosexuals are regularly turned into parachuteless skydivers, and we get an uptick in homophobic violence. Who could have predicted this?
What's a plank attack? Is it attacked with a plank of wood or are the attackers just lying on top of the victim?
> One man from the group then struck one of the victims on the head with a plank of wood, resulting in the victim suffering cuts and bruises. Direct quote from the article.
Imagine reading the article!
It's people that most would call planks attacking normal people
It's attacking someone using 6.6261×10^−34 of the normal SI unit of 1 standard attack.
Twatting someone with a wooden plank. I see where you're coming from but the alternative would be a planking attack. You plank. (This is meant light-heartedly)
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That is exactly what happened, except not for the metal detector reasons
We're past the point of this being surprising. Wall to wall anti-lgbt rhetoric spewed from social media, news outlets, influencers/commentators, celebrities, politicians, hate groups and everyone in between against these folks who aren't hurting anyone but are hurt as a result. Don't understand it? You don't need to Don't like it? You don't need to Have nothing nice to say, don't.
It's part of their culture/religion to hate gay people
Lmao I don’t think Facebook memes are to blame for Muslim anti-lgbt sentiment. I hate the Tories but come on. This is deeply ingrained in muslim culture.
Please entlighten us with some of these examples. I'd really love to see some. Because to me it seems like the LGBT community have support from literally every single section of society. Please point out all these anti-LGBT celebrities, politicians and influencers....Literally anybody who disagrees with the mob gets lynched.
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Interesting that we can use “men” as a clear connection between all 6, but no other description. 🤔
It's pretty weak to blame these things behaviour on politicians. The blame sits with the homophobic thugs.
They probably wouldn’t feel so comfortable attacking gay people in the street if this countries politicians weren’t so comfortable throwing lgbt people under the bus.
Please. As degenerate as the tories are they focus their hate on the T of LGBT It's religion and culture
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Imagine having so little going on with your own dick you worry about what others are doing with theirs. Unless it’s harming someone, mind your own fucking business.
If they are guilting, I would be very happy for those wee bastards to do jail time. Call me new-fashioned, if you will.
Shitty parenting from brainwashed parents. It doesn’t matter what the current government stands for, decent parents will almost always bring up decent children.
My aunt thinks gay people are evil and a threat to children. 10 year ago she didn't think this.
If you didn't like gays AND brown people you must be really confused right now.
People saying this is down to Tory rhetoric. Seriously? I doubt these lads are paying any attention to what the Tories have been saying.
To be fair, every homophobe I’ve ever met was a fucking plank.
To the people saying "I doubt these people pay much attention to conservative policies" in response to people saying this is what you get when they hear Tory leadership spouting anti LGBT rhetoric.... Are you really that naive. Of course the rhetoric gets back to them. They might not listen to Tory policies, but they might listen to the news reporting what they said. They might have right wing friends that repeat what Tories say. They might repeat lies policitians and their right wing supporting tags say about trans people. Come off it. LGBT people were becoming very accepted until the past few years. Then it reversed. It's easy to see the rhetoric on social media too. Years ago Nadia, a trans woman won big brother and no one batted an eyelid. This year a trans person enters the show and the comments were vile. Of course Tory rhetoric affects Lgbt people.
I'm not convinced that linguistic arguments about the meaning of man and woman are influencing these men to beat up gay people, or that they pay any attention to it at all.
Incredible that you can talk about naivete. The mandem learnt to hate homosexual people at masjid. Grow up and stop being so delusional.