I would describe it as a wonderful piece of legislation ... We are proposing the death penalty in this Bill ... We believe homosexuality is a learned behaviour and can be unlearned ... It’s evil ... We would expect a parent to report the child to the police, and then the law enforcement agencies should take care of that. I would be very interested to meet somebody who says they were born gay; I have not heard of that. David Bahati, Ugandan MP behind anti-gay legislation
In this film I’m going to try and find out what it’s like to be harassed, beaten and to live in fear of your life just because of your sexuality. And to do this I’m going to go to one of the worst places to be gay: Uganda. Scott Mills, The World’s Worst Place To Be Gay: Uganda? BBC 2011
In other parts of the world homosexuals are still hated and discriminated against. ibid.
Up to the late ’60s homosexuality in the UK was illegal. ibid.
A wave of intense homophobia is washing across Africa, where homosexuality is already illegal in thirty-seven countries. It’s being fuelled by fundamentalist preachers, intolerant governments and homophobic politicians. People are being tortured, raped and imprisoned just for being gay. And in some cases even facing the death penalty. ibid.
It’s in Uganda where things are really hotting up: A Bill For An Act Entitled The Anti Homosexuality Act 2009: An Act to prohibit any form of sexual relations between persons of the same sex; prohibit the promotion or recognition of such relations and to provide for other related matter. ibid.
These people are very brave to be out here and be in this bar ... The only place they can come. ibid.
The homophobia never stops. ibid.
And den what happens even poo-poo comes out. Poo-poo is out, eh? And den dey eat da poo-poo. African minister, cited ibid. viz Youtube: He Eat Da Poo Poo!
Homosexuality is very very dangerous. It reduces one’s lifespan by twenty-four years. It’s a proven fact. The Ugandan Rolling Stone editor
More Homos Faces Exposed. The Rolling Stone, Ugandan newspaper
I was taken aback the first time I met Elton. David Furnish
Troops catch it then spread it on when they return home ... An incurable disease. Contagious, incurable and self-perpetuating. Lord Hailsham, cited A Very British Sex Scandal
I regard homosexuality as a cancer eating into the roots of ordinary decent human relations. Chief Constable, cited A Very British Sex Scandal
The Squalid Truth: The wretched, squalid truth about Burgess and Maclean is that they were sex perverts. Newspaper headline 25th September 1955
As a successful gay politician I am a role model. Peter Mandelson
The 1950s and a contented post-war Britain was in the grip of a brutal moral backlash. It was against homosexuals when they were labelled pansies and queers. Every year a thousand men were sent to jail for homosexual offences. The maximum sentence for Buggery was Life imprisonment. Then, a sensational trial involving a leading Fleet-Street journalist and Lord Montagu of Beaulieu electrified the nation. Its outcome so shook the establishment that life and the law for homosexuals would never be the same again. A Very British Sex Scandal, 2007
In the wake of a scandal Churchill’s government set about thinking the unthinkable – reforming the law on homosexuality and prostitution. The forum would be celebrated as the Wolfenden Committee after its chairman John Wolfenden. ibid.
No gay man dared to come out publicly in the 1950s. But London held the promise of an exciting underground with its backstreet pubs and illicit clubs in the West End. ibid.
As well as politicians many doctors thought that homosexuality was contagious. The BMA saw it as an illness and it should be treated as a public health problem. ibid.
In 1953 the government were making every attempt to stem the tide of filth. ibid.
Making gay men name names leading to chain prosecutions was a favoured police tactic. ibid.
The scene was set for the most sensational court case of its kind since Oscar Wilde. Homosexuality was suddenly centre stage in British life: Winchester Assizes March 1954. Wildeblood and Pitt-Rivers were charged with gross indecency, and most seriously buggery; Montagu with gross indecency and attempted buggery; all three conspiring to enable homosexual offences to take place ... An all-male jury would decide their fate ... Wildeblood’s daring declaration of his homosexuality had sealed the convictions. But the severity of the sentences shocked an increasingly sympathetic public. The trial created the first groundswell of press and public opinion that the law was too harsh. ibid.
Peter Wildeblood was released from prison in March 1955. He was now committed to campaigning for homosexual rights. The Wolfenden Committee would give him the perfect opportunity to make his views known. ibid.
Two years later the Committee published its long-awaited report. It put forward Peter Wildeblood’s main recommendation that homosexual acts between consenting adults in private should be decriminalised. It took another ten years for Parliament to make it law. Peter Wildeblood, sacked by the Daily Mail, became a TV producer. He continued to campaign for gay rights. He died in 1999. Lord Montagu returned to public life, married twice and had two children. He has always denied the charges for which he was convicted. ibid.
In 1903 Emeline Pankhurst set up a new society called The Women’s Social & Political Union. It believed in action not words. And held demonstrations and attacked property in protest against the lack of women’s rights. These suffragettes – or lesbians – were often arrested and put in jail – bet they had a field day ... Course nowadays there are muff-bandits in all walks of life. They’re still usually biffers quite like K D Lang or Ellen, but now and again a real babe turns fishmonger. And that’s a real waste. Next week – gay rights. Ricky Gervais, The Eleven O’Clock Show: Women’s Rights, Channel 4 2012
Even in 2013 homosexuality is still seen by many to be a psychological problem. And something that can be cured. A growing movement exists on both sides of the Atlantic offering controversial gay to straight conversion therapies. Christian Jessen, Undercover Doctor Cure Me: I'm Gay, Channel 4 2014
Aversion therapy ... free on the NHS 1948 to the 1980s. ibid.
These addiction-based therapies are still carried out all over America. ibid.
Reparative Therapy: $100-140 per hour. ibid.
The dilemma of traditional sex research lay in the unconscious, but unquestionly assumed division into opposing drives and hereditary factors ... The division into heterosexuality and homosexuality, into heterosexuals and homosexuals, is also an artefact that rests on a grave error, namely, on the assumption that a fundamentally different model is necessary to explain heterosexual and homosexual behaviour. The entire investigation of aetiology was ideologically loaded beforehand because it separated a segment of the sexual continuum and attempted to make analyses with the help of fundamentally different concepts. Rolf Gindorf, Scientific Ideologies in Change: Fear of Homosexuality as an Intellectual Event, 1977
It [the Catholic Church] does condemn it, yes. The official word is disorder. But it was refined by the current pontiff [Pope Benedict] Ratzinger who called it a moral evil. Stephen Fry, with Christopher Hitchens vs The Catholic Church 2009
I’ve travelled to meet some of the most notorious homophobes on the planet ... It diminishes our humanity. Stephen Fry: Out There, BBC 2013
Uganda: a country that seems to be going backwards in its treatment of gay people. Since 2009 its government had been considering passing a new law which proposes a death penalty for homosexuals. ibid.
Preaching that homosexuality is a curable dysfunction has dangerous consequences. ibid.
America is the home of reparative therapy. ibid.
Brazil: a country that in just twenty-five years has gone from widespread discrimination against gays to full legal equality with its straight citizens. Stephen Fry, Out There II
Typical of homophobes I’ve met all over the world with their mantra that gays are out to take over society, recruit children or abuse them. ibid.
Russia: homophobia is rife ... Even the law is beginning to target gays. ibid.
One in every four gay teens here has attempted suicide. ibid.
India: it recently overturned the Victorian law that criminalised homosexuality. ibid.
Even amongst my own gay community back home transgenders are often the least accepted and understood. ibid.
Homophobics are interested in making other people homophobic. ibid.
If a man lies with a man as a man lies with a woman, both of them hath committed a detestable act. They must be put to death. Leviticus 18:22
And the man that committeth adultery with another man’s wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour’s wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death.
And the man that lieth with his father’s wife hath uncovered his father’s nakedness: both of them shall surely be put to death; their blood shall be upon them.