Gay Humanists Back Trafalgar Square Vigil and Demand Wider Action

London 28th October

“Defeating violence and intimidation is not enough. We need to challenge the culture that nurtured them.”

David Christmas, GALHA Secretary

The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) will be taking part in the  Candle-lit Vigil Against All Hate-Crime, being held in Trafalgar Square 8pm to 10pm Friday 30th October 2009. This follows the recent brutal murder of Ian Baynham in Trafalgar Square, and the serious injuries inflicted on James Park in Liverpool; just the latest in a litany of vicious attacks on gay people across Britain.

GALHA has spent more than 30 years campaigning for freedom and equality for LGBT people. As GALHA Secretary David Christmas commented. “There are few more basic rights than the freedom to walk about openly and without fear in Britain’s major cities. These attacks are a vicious assault not just against gay people, but against Britain’s reputation as a decent, peaceful and hospitable country.”

While GALHA agrees that the first priority must be to bring perpetrators of hate crimes to justice, it believes that the search for answers need to run much deeper.

David Christmas:

“The last 30 years have seen huge advances in freedom for gay people, most of it accomplished peacefully. At the same time these vile attacks are clearly the tip of an iceberg of hostility towards the gay community flowing from a minority who do not accept that gay people have a right to exist, let alone to equal treatment.”

“GALHA believes passionately in free speech, including the right of people to say things that are sometimes offensive to the gay community.”

“However those people, be they religious leaders, politicians or journalists, who consistently go out of their way to depict a crudely stereotyped and often quite false view gay people and our way of life as somehow inferior, immoral, or even a threat to wider society, have to ask themselves if they are, perhaps unintentionally, encouraging acts of actual violence.”

“In particular, it is outrageous that that some religiously maintained schools, funded by the state, should be fighting to include an anti-gay agenda as part of their core teaching curriculum. What more effective way of giving bullies, thugs and even would be murderers the sense of “permission” that they crave?”

“Those who believe in full equality for gay people also need to be more vigorous and persistent in standing up for our beliefs, and in exposing the fallacies and inconsistencies that often underlie the “anti-gay” agenda.

“GALHA believes that Friday’s vigil will show that gay people, and our friends in the wider community are united in our resolve  not be bullied or intimidated by a handful of murderous thugs. We also believe that it will show Londoners, and people from other towns and cities, standing together to defend our reputation as a peaceful and tolerant country.”

Further information on the vigil is available at:

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=152586453159&ref=share