Lgbtq

What is the purpose of the police? Maybe your answer has something to do with “preventing crime” or “arresting criminals”. Or maybe you think it’s the job of officers of the law to tell us how to behave, to police our conduct, and to make sure we all speak to each other nicely. In which case, the copper for you is Deputy Chief Constable Julie Cooke of Cheshire Police. DCC Cooke has rather a big job in Cheshire, where there were more than 30,000 violent crimes in the year to August 2019 and the monthly rate of violent crime is up by more than 50 per cent in the last

Are we allowed to criticise the niqab yet? This question crossed my mind as I watched that viral clip of a niqab-clad woman hurling homophobic invective at a Pride marcher in Walthamstow in London. Surely now it will become acceptable to raise questions about this medieval garment (banned in several Muslim countries) and about the views and attitudes of those who wear it? On one level, the footage of the niqab-wearering lady spouting anti-gay hate wasn’t very surprising. Shocking, yes, but not surprising. It’s not as if someone who covers themselves from head to toe in archaic black cloth (which, as Qanta Ahmed has said, is not in the least

Anyone else sick of the Pride flag? It’s everywhere. It flutters from virtually every building in central London. Town halls across the country are emblazoned with it. Every bank, corporation, supermarket and celebrity Twitter account has had a rainbow makeover. There are Pride-themed sandwiches, beer bottles, cakes. Jon Snow has even worn Pride-coloured socks. You could be forgiven for thinking we’ve been conquered by a foreign army that has proceeded to stick its flag in every nook, cranny and orifice of the nation. It’s Pride Month, of course. And the reason it’s a whole month is because we are at the fiftieth anniversary of the New York Stonewall Riots of

‘Acceptance without exception’ is the aspirational slogan emblazoned across the website, merchandise and literature of Stonewall, the UK’s largest LGBT charity.  The problem is that there are exceptions. Those who are not accepted include those who refuse to believe that a person can change their sex simply by saying: ‘I identify as.’ The fractious nature of the LGBT alliance – and Stonewall’s intolerance for dissenting voices within the community – is becoming increasingly clear. At this year’s London Pride, a group of protestors from ‘Get the ‘L’ Out’ made their feelings known by marching to the front of the parade with banners, including one reading ‘Transactivism Erases Lesbians.’ The actions of

Even I’m a bit surprised by this and I’m writing it, but this is an article about lesbians. I’m writing about lesbians because some of them believe they are currently the subject of political failure. They believe that the people, organisations and institutions that are supposed to speak and stand up for them and their interests are not doing so. I think those concerns are reasonable and should be addressed. A political system that’s supposed to represent the views of everyone in it really isn’t working for the women I’m talking about here. This is, of course, about gender and the debate around gender and sex. Quite a lot of

There’s a curiously two-faced aspect to the British take on the Commonwealth, wouldn’t you say? On the one hand, there’s justifiable contrition about the treatment of the elderly Windrush generation and a general feeling that the Commonwealth leaders assembled for this week’s summit might be justified in taking Britain to task for its cavalier approach to postwar Caribbean immigrants. On the other, when Commonwealth countries get uppity and show signs of not conforming to the social norms of this country, why, they get very short shrift indeed. There was an ugly little interview this morning on the Today programme which expressed precisely this ambivalence. Homosexual acts are illegal in Trinidad,