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New 'Gay Marriage No Thanks' group launches with 'ten good reasons' to oppose equal marriage
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Barry Cryer brands ITV's Vicious 'homophobic' television
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Lord Tebbit: I wouldn't have been surprised if Jimmy Savile was homosexual
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Archbishop of York: Would the Church of England rather bless 'sheep and trees' than gay couples?
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Lib Dems' Baroness Williams to support anti-equal marriage 'union' amendment
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Mixed martial arts fighter: 'Equal marriage could lead to incest, bestiality and child marriages'
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Maria Miller tables Public Order Act amendment protecting critics of equal marriage
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Labour MSP Elaine Smith: 'I'm against equal marriage but don't call me homophobic'
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Tory Lord Mawhinney tables 'traditional marriage' amendment for equal marriage bill
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Lord Hylton tables new wrecking amendment for the equal marriage bill
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Kafka 375
Robert in S. Kensington 361
That There Other David 314
Eddy 304
D.McCabe 285
Jock S. Trap 280
twitless 265
Rehan 242
Pavlos 224
bobbleobble 216
The only thing that would truly help bring the suicide rate among LGBT people would marraige equality and end of discrimination
I really don’t think marriage equality would change the situation whatsoever.
People don’t kill themselves because they can’t get married, and one would assume they already have a partner, so would not wish to selfishly abandon them.
I would imagine most suicides are either the very young, or the the over 50′s, due to bullying or isolation.
You don’t have much idea of the life-cycle stresses for “T”, do you.
It’s absolutely not the only thing, and its effects would be indirect. But I think that any landmark step towards greater equality will have a knock-on effect on homophobia, so it is part of the overall picture.
How will the government increase its “efforts” to reduce the number of suicides? They must surely be talking about banker’s suicides here. What the government is doing is slashing the budget for mental health for the general public, and diverting the “savings” to stressed out bankers.
What a pathetic, diversionary lefty tactic to misrepresent the government actually trying to help people.
What the fck have bankers got to do with any of this?
The vitriolic homophobic abuse from the Catholic Church isn’t helping. That’s why we need to push equal marriage forward very quickly, to ensure this is settled in 2013, same timetable as France. We can’t have another 2-3 years of this type of public denomising and their campaign of hate.
It is true that it is highlighting LGBT people more than normal, but that may be a good thing in the long term. Better we show ourselves than hide.
I appreciate it has to be tough for many, but whether we win or lose this same-sex marriage thing, we are still going to be here, and we are still going to have to face our opponents; the stronger and more unified we are, the more confident people will be and come to realise that they are not alone.
Denmark brought it about in weeks, including making the national church do marriages and have their new marriage service written and approved by the government. Weeks. Cobenhaven Pride had a lot to celebrate this year.
Good move. The coalition at its best.
You don’t need £1.5Million to find out- use the results from the surveys, talk to the people who said that they had considered suicide etc … Most LGBT people the reason why such a thing is the stigma society attaches and expectations of people to “conform”, the barrage of hatred and amount of bullying and ostracisation that occurs.
Anyone that needs £1.5Million to work that out clearly is not intelligent enough to be put in charge.
Funny they don’t mention the trans rate of suicide attempts, which is about three times higher…
Maybe that’s why they need a proper survey?
You got any ideas how to survey “T” people, Spanner? If so please share.
I would imagine the same way you survey anybody else.
Ask them the right questions.
I know for many years people such as GMFA would put questionnaires inside free gay papers, and also had online versions.
I see no reason why the same could not be done here.
@Jerry I agree 100% but the Government is very slow to understand this. How many more suicides will it take before they pull their fingers out and give full equality to the LGBT Community? I don’t understand why they are dragging their feet about this.
The Government also needs to put a gagging order on the Roman Catholic church and others of that ilk to stop persecuting and discriminating against us.
At least your government is trying !!! When i come from you cant talk about LGBT rights not only in public but also in private even though we are one of the least religious places in the world.To be honest with you i am straight and if it wasn’t for my brothers schoolfriend who is gay and terribly bullied i would have been in same postion as those homophobes unfortunatly because of TOTAL LACK OF INFORMATION that exist here where i live
No internet access there then?
Anybody whom is considered different from the ‘norm’, is a cause for being bullied at school and in the workplace, unfortunately stereotyping and indoctrination begins at an early age, until LGBT and Transgendered people are shown more visibly in the public domain, suicides will continue to rise. The Council in our area does not even portray Civil Partnerships in their magazine, nor any mention that LGBT people live within their boundaries so, until visibility is achieved by these Councils we will remain deviant to society!
I think “deviant” may be too strong a word.
More a matter of not being mentioned rather than highlighted.
You pay your council taxes, so ask them why you aren’t being represented.
We have complained, unfortunately, there are many stages a complaint to a Council has to pass through, the final stage an appeal to the Ombudsman, and this may take many months.
Oh, I am well aware of the sluggish nature of local authorities.
I wish you well in your endeavours to shake them out of their complacency.
A simple revision to the proposed Standards of Care for English trans folk would reduce the risk of suicide.
In order to get hormones, a trans person is expected to change gender role completely and this leads to enormous pressure on the trans person who may wish to take things at a slower pace. Indeed, some trans folk may decide that hormones are a sufficient treatment and the person can continue family and professional life without going through the (potentially) life destroying consequences of transition. Others may decide, following hormones, that they are not transsexual.
The lack of patient-centered treatment for trans people is making life impossible for many and has a major impact on mental health and risk of suicide. The NHS is supposed to save lives and not put folk in a situation that could possibly result in self harm.
Scotland has adopted much better treatment protocols that those proposed in England.
Well done Scotland!
The current situation in England and Wales is diverse and there will hopefully never be a single standard as the worst practitioners have been trying to impose for years now. Most people start themselves on hormones and do fine that way; avoiding those problems. Greater issues are the delayed start of interventions ruining young people’s chances of a decent life, and poor long-term prescribing, not based on optimum life for the patient, causing depression and despair. I doubt Scotland is any better on those, but it would be nice to be wrong.
It would be interesting to know whether the suicide rate is higher in gay people who come from a religious backgroud/education. I’m guessing that it’s the Christian/religious charities who wil say that they work closely with prevention of suicide yet as far as I can see they only aggravate it.
It’s appaling their attitude towards homosexuality and it is particulary made more and more evident in the marriage equlaity debate. If the govt is serious about making life less vitrolic for gay people then I suggest they stop the aggresive arguments against gay marriage and bring it in sooner than later.
First off – get rid of all discriminatory laws disadvantaging GLBT people.
Here’s a radical idea: maybe the government could require schools to cover LGBT issues in social and personal education lessons (or whatever they are called this month) regardless of the “deeply-held religious convictions” (a lovely euphemism) of the adults in charge.
You gotta love them !!!
”Because of my deeply-held religious convictions” and it continues with ”insert bigotry,racism,misogyny here”
One has to tread lightly here, before you know it you will have the bigots complaining that schools are “promoting homosexuality” and indoctrinating children.
Yes, but how? We already have the government denying that equal marriage will lead to roman cult schools having to teach that married couples can be the same sex, since apparently the truth would cause too much offense!
I think the first thing they should do is to adopt policies in schools which not only tackle homophobia and bullying, but which actively support LGBT students. This would include comprehensive sex education, as well as confidential, safe, individual support made available for anyone who thinks they may be LGBT.
And if they’re really interested in lowering overall suicide rates, they could try looking at other areas, such as the high suicide rate amongst people with disabilities. I have a medical condition (physiological) so devastating that 20% of people with it kill themselves, at an average age of 39. The Samaritans, incidentally, are useless. These problems are reflecting massive systemic issues within the UK.