Monday, June 23, 2008
Just when you think the Government has surely reached the pinnacle of offensive decisions and stupid ministerial outbursts they prove that actually, there's miles of virgin territory still to explore... Home Secretary Jacqui Smith justifies the decision to deport gay and lesbian asylum-seekers to non-gay friendly Iran on the grounds that they'll be perfectly safe as long as they are 'discreet' about their sexuality. This is offensive on many levels, just at random I'm going to go with Smith's pretence at not understanding why people claim asylum, if people could pretend to go along with the social norms of their countries they wouldn't be seeking to move away. And why should these people have to pretend to be straight? We've just about managed to get people in this country to accept that a person's sexual orientation isn't acceptable reason to attack or belittle them (no matter what that gay Chris Moyles thinks) and we would presumably be holding other countries to the same standard if we weren't following the openly racist foreign policy of News International. The Home Office now seems to be spending it's time trying to come up with arguments for sending back asylum seekers to unsafe countries where they face almost certain torture and/or death, just to try and curry favour with the Daily Hate Mail and The Sun. When a man faces the genuine danger of being sent back to a country where his boyfriend was killed then I really despair for the moral health of the country I was born in.
Labels: gay, Government, homophobia, Iran, lesbian, United Kingdom
