Orlando killings must not be used to demonise
AS people who self-identify as being from the LGBT+ community, it’s almost impossible to put into words the sadness that we feel for the predominantly Latin-American victims of the Orlando shooting, their grieving families and loved ones.
It’s a tragedy that we are still living in a world where people face violence and even death simply on the basis of who they choose to love.
Of course, systemic hatred of whole communities of people goes beyond homophobia, and let’s not forget this was a racialised community; a club night headlined by black Latina drag queens.
In the wake of this atrocity, it has been additionally distressing to see various far-right commentators attempt to equate the killings with Islam, and in doing so fan the flames of Islamophobia.
We want to emphasise that this is not happening in any way in solidarity with the LGBT+ community, and wholeheartedly reject any attempts to use the Orlando killings as a tool to demonise entire communities on the basis of the actions of one individual.
Violent, fatal attacks on people from sexual minorities have been perpetuated by people from across all religions and cultures.
To associate such violence as being inherent to Islam is not only insulting to the vast majority of people of Islamic faith who would deplore such violence, it’s also detracting much-needed attention from the real policies and legislation that are needed to ensure that the LGBT+ community are safe from such violence.
Melissa Céspedes del Sur, The London Latinxs
Phyll Opoku-Gyimah, Executive Director of UK Black Pride
Tamsila Tauqir - Co-founder of the Inclusive Mosque Initiative
Dervla Zeynab Shannahan - Co-founder of the Inclusive Mosque Initiative
Denis Fernando, Rainbow Coalition Against Racism
Hannah Berry, LGBT Foundation, Manchester
Ian Iqbal Rashid (writer/director of Touch of Pink)
Rainbow Noir - A Social & Peer Support Group For LGBTQI People Of Colour
Jac Bastian, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants
Femi Otitoju, Diversity and Inclusion Consultant
Dr Felicity Daly, Executive Director, Kaleidoscope Trust, UK
Stella Duffy, theatremaker and writer
Adam Smith, Welsh Green Pride spokesperson
Mhairi Black MP, Paisley and Renfrewshire South
Patrick Harvie, Green Party MSP
Kezia Dugdale, Leader of the Scottish Labour Party
Sabrina Qureshi, founder of Million Women Rise Movement
Nick Dearden, Global Justice Now
Clare Solomon, National People's Assembly Against Austerity
Kevin Smith, activist
Sondhya Gupta, SumOfUs
Jack Gilbert, CEO Rainbow Hamlets
Aaron Kiely, Unite London & Eastern LGBT Committee
Cllr Rokhsana Fiaz OBE, London Borough of Newham
Alessandro Commisso, #14 LGBT Future Leader 2015 (Financial Times)
Elaine Gallagher, co-convenor of the Rainbow Greens
Anna Crow, co-convenor of the Rainbow Greens
Nim Ralph, associated with QTIPOC London
Ben Collins, ReShape
Mel Evans, author
Louise C C Ryan, Artist
Lucy Ellinson, Actor
Hilary Aked, PhD candidate University of Bath
James Hillard, Horse Meat Disco
Professor Ignacio Romero, Open University
Dr Monica Moreno Figueroa, Lecturer, University of Cambridge
Rudy Loewe, illustrator
James O’Nions, Red Pepper magazine
Steph Pike, Manchester People's Assembly Against Austerity
Lerato Kathi (Lakuti), DJ
Kerstin Egert (Tama Sumo), DJ
Raisa Kabir, artist
Patrick Cash, writer'
Kat Hobbs, No Pride in War
Nim Ralph, associated with QTIPOC London
Jac Bastian, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants
James O’Nions, Red Pepper magazine
Susy Langsdale, LGBTQ youth worker at Project Indigo
David Waldock, Technical Project Leader
Colin Wilson, No To Pinkwashing
Sue Caldwell, LGBT+ Against Islamophobia
Debbie Symons, Associate Lecturer The Open University
Rowan Davis, NUS Women's Campaign Trans Place (elect)
Fernando Mariano, actor Royal Opera House and ACT UP activist
Adrian Hyyrylainen-Trett - Chair of the Independent (Community Advisory Board) CAB for Pride in London, Chair LGBT+ Liberal Democrats
Simon Edge, journalist
Catherine Hall, writer
Maryam Amjad, Chayn
Monica Santomartino, Chayn
Charlotte Seeley-Musgrave, Chayn
Mona Chammas, Chayn,
Seerat Fatima, Chayn
Philippe Cahill, Senior First Officer, British Airways
Michael Segalov, journalist
Shannon Stephens, Friends of the Earth, Scotland
Ludovic Foster, academic and artist
Kate Davison, PhD candidate and sessional tutor in History, University of Melbourne
Dr Hettie Malcomson, Associate Professor, University of Southampton
Ash Kotak, writer
Jo Tyabji, performer/director
Sanaz Raji, Activist, Justice4Sanaz & #UnisResistBorderControls
Dr Rebecca L. Jones, The Open University.
Beth Metcalf, Open University Students Association
Nirmal Sandhu, publishing
Dr Helen Bowes-Catton, lecturer, Open University
Vanessa Lee Butz, Managing Director Interchange
Mika Minio-Paluello, Platform
Rhian Chapman, Postgraduate Research Student, The Open University
Marcus Morgan, chair of The Bisexual Index
Roy C. Adkin, Post Graduate Research Student, The Open University
Dr Rohit K Dasgupta, Lecturer in Global Media, University of Southampton
Jane Wilson, University Administrator, the Open University
Dr Sue Westwood, Research Officer, Oxford University
Louise Hazan, campaigner, 350.org.
Dr Mel Bunce, City University London
Dan Glass, ACT UP London
Dr Marian Messih, general parctitioner
Eduardo Frias, PHD student, Open University
Hannah Chutzpah, Writer/Performer & Activist
Jen O’Leary, queer feminist activist
Jill Wilkens, Teacher and Research Student
Geoff Hardy and Peter Roscoe
Stuart B. Cameron , founder Sticks & Stones
Professor Julie Fish, Director, Centre for LGBT Research, De Montfort University
Dr Alberica Bazzoni, Lecturer Oxford University
Dr Paul Simpson, lecturer, Edge Hill University
Dr Alison Rooke, Senior Lecturer, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Dr. Kathryn Clark, postdoctoral researcher, the University of Pennsylvania
Zoé Vincent-Mistiaen, PhD candidate, The Francis Crick Institute
J. Daniel Luther, Doctoral Researcher (SOAS, University of London), Organising Committee 'Queer' Asia 2016
Graham R Coult, Writer, Information Governance Advisor
Dr. Thomas Hilder, Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Bergen
Stephen Pelton, choreographer
Symon Hill, bisexual Christian author".
Jane Traies, University of Sussex.
Dr Chloe Alaghband-Zadeh, Research Fellow, University of Cambridge
Libby Baxter-Williams, editor, This Is Biscuit
Helen Gao, Oxford University
Anna Carlqvist, Oxford University
Sal Campbell
Dr Bob Cant
Yas Necati
Lou Dear, LGBT Unity
Elena Silvestrini, Chayn
Asiem Sanyal, Imperial College London
Emma Frankland, None of Us is Yet a Robot
Jo Clifford, playwright and performer
Hannah Dee author of The Red in the Rainbow
Tam Dean Burn, actor
Patrick Morselli
Mary Bond
Fred Langridge
Regine Hampel, Professor, The Open University
Nicholas Coomber
Susanna Gibson
Kyle Lee-Crossett, PhD student, UCL
Kelly Minio-Paluello, LGBT Health and Wellbeing
THE appalling destruction of innocent human life in Florida has shocked Scotland and indeed the world. What ought not to be done, however, is to apply motives to the killer, Omar Mateen. The more extreme elements in the US press are putting the tragedy down to “imperialist homophobia” and our own incorrigible Willie Rennie is suggesting all could be sorted out by altering the social agenda in Scottish schools.
Willie really ought to stick to the things he is really good at, such as sliding down weans’ slides in fairgrounds.
The Palm Beach Post reported that Mateen was in a closet homosexual who was acting out of deeply-felt personal grievance rather than from psychopathic homophobia. Jumping to conclusions will do nothing for the memory of the innocent dead or for their loved ones in particular.
Alan Clayton
Westfield, Strachur
IT appears that you cannot have any discussion about the EU referendum without the subject of immigration raising its ugly head. On one hand we are being told that we are better, that we are being held back by the rest of Europe, that we are “greater” than them and their pesky foreign ways. On the other that they come here steal our jobs, houses and hospital beds. If we cannot cope with the competitive threat of immigrants in our own country then how can we be expect to go out into the world and better them in their own lands.
The reason that this country is in the state that we now find it is because that is how the ruling class wish it to be – the lower class kept in check by poor pay and conditions, a middle class kept in check by the debts of mortgages, credit cards and tuition fees, and the elite too busy finding absurd ways of spending their money. Why is nothing done about it? Because, as we can now all see, the lunatics are running the asylum and the last thing they want is for us to open our eyes and see through their xenophobic propaganda and notice what is actually happening. They are creaming off the wealth of this nation for themselves and leaving us to fight over the poorly paid zero hour contract jobs that are the true blight of the mighty Blighty.
Neil Morison
Kyle of Lochalsh
ECONOMIC migration is not new. It has happened for generations, before there was any benefit system.We had the Irish in the 19th century, Italians, Polish and many more in the 20th century. They worked for less than the locals! It’s common sense. If today you can earn £7 per hour here and only £2 per hour at home, many of us would do the same in their shoes.
If the current so-called migrant crisis is due to the differential in wages between European states why not introduce a minimum wage across the EU? The EU talks about a “level playing field” and that one measure would go a long way towards that goal. The need to migrate would be hugely reduced. People would still move around EU for education, culture, holidays and interesting job prospects. I haven’t heard either trade unions or government advocating this policy. I would love to hear their views.
Catherine Gilchrist
Bowmore
LEADING the cliff-top charge for a swift Brexit (and keenly observed by a power-fuelled Putin) we have Barmy Boris, Goggle-eyed Gove, Dim-witted Duncan-Smith and Fascist-Farage – a Rogues Gallery to set alarm-bells ringing!
James Stevenson
Auchterarder
WITH a drop in GPs by around 100 and those that remain facing, in the words of the BMA’s Dr Alan McDevitt, “an increasingly unmanageable workload”, it’s going to take a more serious prescription than a Scottish Government injection of £2 million to solve. It’s ironic that many who look after our health often suffer from terrible work-related stress.We need to support young doctors to build practices where the wellbeing of staff is not an added extra but an example to us all.
Cathy Palmer
Rutherglen
YESTERDAY’S editorial in The Herald said about GPs that: “those outside the medical profession struggle to work out why doctors seem so reluctant to enter and stay in general practice.” It would be interesting to examine the numbers of students who apply to enter medicine and those who are accepted. I have met and heard of many young people with excellent qualifications who have been turned down. The only conclusion I can draw from talking to would-be students and working doctors is that this there is not enough money allocated to train doctors or/and the BMA is continuing to be elitist.
Jessma Carter
Lindores, Fife
'Don't use Orlando shootings to demonise Islamic communities', say prominent LGBTI Scots
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