Stonewall denies preferential gay treatment

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Gay charity Stonewall has rubbished a report which claims that special interest groups such as the gay community are turning the United Kingdom into a nation of victims and undermining legal equality.

The book We’re (Nearly) All Victims Now! published by the Civitas think tank estimates that around 73% of the population now make up victim groups which undermines equality before the law.

The author, David Green, blames political correctness for shifting the police’s role from protecting the “reasonable person” and instead becoming “the playthings of political activists.”

He claims that people seek victimhood as a political status to gain preferential treatment in the workplace, the possibility of using police power to silence unwelcome critics, and financial compensation

But Stonewall’s director of public and parliamentary affairs called the book “utter nonsense.” He told PinkNews.co.uk: “The idea of counting the number of people who are protected by anti-discrimination legislation is ridiculous.

“What these laws do is protect people from discrimination and that’s a good thing.”

Mr Green’s work comes amid the establishment of a new Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) that will protect six groups, women, ethnic groups and disabled people, plus those defined by sexual orientation, age, and religion or belief.

He writes, “By pandering to the desires of victim groups with an axe to grind, the police have stopped being the representatives of the ‘reasonable person’ and become the playthings of political activists or petty-minded members of the public.”

He describes the fact that homophobic murders have resulted in harsher sentences than others as one example of inequality, “The murderers of Jody Dobrowski on Clapham Common were given 28 years when, according to the judge, if they had voiced no hostility towards the victim’s sexuality, the sentence would have been halved.

“Was it really worse than the murder of medical student, Daniel Pollen, in Romford, Essex in July 2005-a killing that was captured on CCTV and appeared to be without obvious motive? The judge thought so in June 2006, and the ‘starting point’ for calculating the sentence of Daniel Pollen’s killer will be only 15 years,” Mr Green said.

He goes on to accuse minority groups of deciding what is offensive and often changing their mind to suit themselves, he claims that the Welsh branch of Stonewall opposes the use of the phrase “openly gay” while Stonewall in London has no problem with the terminology.

However, Stonewall chief executive Ben Summerskill says this is out of context. He explains that the Stonewall Cymru guidance refers to use of the word “openly gay” when journalists are reporting hate crimes.

Mr Wardle said there is no discrepancy between the groups, he said: “What we are concerned about is people doing the right thing, we don’t get bogged down in language.”

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