Jim Davidson was axed from Celebrity Hell's Kitchen for branding Brian Dowling a 'shirt-lifter'
Posted on 10/08/2007 11:16:26 AM PDT by Stoat
The Government is to make it a crime to incite hatred against gay people, Justice Secretary Jack Straw announced tonight.
The move to outlaw inciting homophobic hatred comes after ministers moved to criminalise such activity on religious grounds earlier this year.
Today's announcement could cause a row over free speech, as the Government experienced over the religious hate crime measures.
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Jim Davidson was axed from Celebrity Hell's Kitchen for branding Brian Dowling a 'shirt-lifter'
Mr Straw said: "It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last 10 years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality.
"It is time for the law to recognise this."
He said it would cover gay men, lesbians and bisexual people.
The move comes a month after Comedian Jim Davidson was axed from ITV's celebrity cooking show Hell's Kitchen for insulting homosexuals.
The 53-year-old controversial entertainer was asked to leave by programme-makers for homophobic comments, which saw him brand gay men "shirtlifters".
Davidson left the nightly reality show after a series of rows with former Big Brother winner Brian Dowling, who is openly gay.
And earlier this week a group of firemen who shone their torches at four men engaged in illegal 'dogging' were demoted and fined £1,000 by their bosses after being accused of being homophobic.
Today Jack Straw said he would listen to views on whether the incitement offence should be further extended to cover hatred against disabled and transgendered people, and would proceed "if a case can be made".
Jack Straw: It is a measure of how far we have come as a society
A Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "The presumption will be that the authorities will disclose information if they consider that an offender presents a risk of serious harm to a child."
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said: "We are committed to protecting children from sexual predators and the proposals being laid out today will strengthen that protection.
"The UK already has the strongest restrictions on child sex offenders and these proposals which follow on from the publication of the Child Sex Offenders Review earlier this year will help us to continue doing all we can to protect them."
Mr Straw told MPs the moves would be made as amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill.
In a further amendment, criminals on the sex offenders register will be required to provide extra information to the police, including information about email addresses, about new relationships with any woman who has children, and whether they are living in the same house as anyone under 18.
The law against inciting religious hatred came into force at the start of this month.
It closed a gap in race legislation that meant only Jews and Sikhs, who were deemed by the courts to be racial groups, were protected.
Other groups like Muslims and Christians were considered to be religious rather than racial so were thought not to have the same protection under the law.
Anyone convicted of the offence, which follows the introduction of the Racial and Religious Hatred Act, faces up to seven years in jail.
The penalties for inciting sexual hatred are likely to be the same.
When first proposed the religious hate crime legislation was heavily criticised by some groups who believed it could outlaw people such as comedians making jokes at religion's expense.
Blackadder and Mr Bean star Rowan Atkinson was among those who warned that such measures risked undermining the freedom of satirists, comedians and writers, and legitimate discussion about religion and religious practices.
There were two attempts by the Government to introduce it, first in 2001 and then later with the Serious Organised Crime and Police Act. They faltered because of the concerns.
But ministers pressed for the law a third time because it was seen as an important counter-balance to anti-terror laws which can be seen to disproportionately target Britain's Muslim population.
On the new anti-homophobia move, a Ministry of Justice spokeswoman said: "The new law would not prohibit criticism of gay, lesbian and bisexual people, but it would protect them from incitement to hatred against them because of their sexual orientation."
Gay equality group Stonewall welcomed the news.
The organisation's chief executive, Ben Summerskill, said: "We're delighted.
"We've worked tirelessly over the last six months, seeking to persuade Ministers to match existing race incitement laws with identical protections for sexual orientation.
"A new offence will help deter extremists who stir up hatred against lesbian and gay people.
"These protections aren't about preventing people expressing their religious views in a temperate way.
"However, we refuse to accept any longer that there's no connection between extreme rap lyrics calling for gay people to be attacked or fundamentalist claims that all gay people are paedophiles, and the epidemic of anti-gay violence disfiguring Britain's streets.
"We anticipate, as always, a tough battle with our traditional opponents in the House of Lords but remain determined to secure complete equality in the criminal law."
Huh. Great Britain’s buggery lobby is as pushy as ours here in America.
More like 150.
By the way, that must be the look he gave Walt Whitman.
Amazing, the muzzies are taking England over and this is the garbage they worry about.
“How much truth there is to it I don’t know, but I also don’t know how much truth there is to the contention that Leonardo and Abraham Lincoln were homosexuals either.”
Didn’t you know that all the great people in history were really gay. Only the evil and incompetent were straight.
/vomit
BUMP
Hillarious!!!!You should be a scriptwriter for SNL! Seeing that they don’t really have one......................
A lesson worth learning for all Judeo-Christian nations!
“Great Britan is no longer Great. It is now a whining, moaning, liberal slime hole. No longer the great nation it was. It will soon be totally run by the Islamics, and Jack Snow will be a boot licking lackey of the Ismo murderers.”
When I go online and read letters to the editor, it seems that a lot of the British have lots of common sense. This seems to apply less to those in government, however.
We seem to suffer the same here in this country. Between the liberals and fagots in congress and those in the country, our country is doomed. If God is truly watching all this mess on earth, He has to have lost all patience with man kind and is about ready to pull the cord.
I'm glad that you liked it, but I regret that I didn't write it....it was originally published in National Review and is now available free at the link that I included in my post.
I agree about SNL....I haven't found them to be funny for many, many years.
I have relatives in England. One, a middle aged lady in her late 50s and an example of what some would call "white trash" in the US, got into a heated argument with a gentleman who lives nearby on her "council estate" in Manchester. I forget the issue. Anyway, my relative has a delightful vocabulary that would make a drunken sailor blush and in the heat of the moment she called the gentleman, who is homosexual, "a gay c*#t".
Fast forward to the next morning. There is a knock on the door from PC Plod who reads my relative her rights then asks her to accompany him to the local "nick" as they say in those parts. She's being charged with using "hate language". After a few hours in the lock-up she is bailed, to await her day in court which is still pending.
As a first offender I anticipate a modest fine and/or probation.
Britain is entering the latter stages of that long walk to oblivion.
What a terrible and sad story; it’s so sad to see a culture that was so glorious that it once ruled the waves decline into such embarrassing, infantile idiocy.
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