The last frontier…?

by Devil’s Food Cake

I was watching Boys Don’t Cry the other night with a friend of mine, and to be honest, I hate watching that film. It scares the crap out of me, worse than any horror movie, worse than any ghost story, more cutting than anything I’ve heard or seen or read. I used to make myself feel better by saying, well, that happened more than a decade ago – surely the youth of today are better educated or at least somewhat more tolerant.

Apparently, considering the events of the past month, not.

Some of you will have heard, and others perhaps not, but last week a man died after being beaten horrendously by three youths, for being – you guessed it – gay. Where did this happen? You may be surprised to learn that this wasn’t in fact in some Saudi Arabian market, nor was it in some backwater Bible Belt town. This was in Trafalgar Square, steps away from Soho and in fact just around the corner from a police station. On September 25th, Ian Baynham had been out celebrating getting a new job. He was with a friend. He suffered such extensive brain damage that it was not thought he would ever wake up. And on October 16th his life-support machine was switched off. He was 62.

It really irritates me when you hear people saying that homophobia doesn’t really exist anymore. You have musicians singing about burning, drowning and stoning gay men to death, people throwing the word ‘faggot’ around like it’s the absolute worst thing you could be and, like, little-to no representation on television or in movies (unless the ratings suck and you need something to rake in a viewer or two) and then you have idiots going around saying that homophobia isn’t a problem anymore, because us gays have the right to marry so why the fuck don’t we just shut up now?

The problem, really, seems to be in the little things. Friends of mine have described being spat at on the tube for holding hands, someone once flicked a lit cigarette at me when I said that I wouldn’t go out with her friend because I was gay, you get drunk perverts leering at you as you walk down the street, asking whether you’re a lesbiaannnn. And when you have little seeds of homophobia sown, little bits of hatred that are allowed to let go, they bloom into a much bigger problem. The solutions? Better sex education, for one. Policies that foster more tolerant social behaviour – for example, a unified Equality Bill is being examined and put together, which would make every form of discrimination and harassment equally bad in the eyes of the law. And maybe it can also be the little things that we all do, as gay people, to teach those not of our persuasion that we’re not part of some exotic new species, not from some separate but strangely similar race – that we’re just the same and deserve the same respect and treatment.

Read more about the case here and here.

What do you think about homophobia nowadays? Have you ever had to deal with it? And how could we make it better?

FYI in case anyone is interested, there is a candlelight vigil being held for Mr. Baynham on the 30^th of October in Trafalgar Square, from 8 pm – 10 pm. More details here.