It said that it was wrong that gays and lesbians fleeing persecution should be forced back because of the Home Office’s argument that it was “reasonably tolerable” that they ‘behave discreetly’. This, the Home Office argued, would mean they’d avoid the persecution they had fled. The two cases they were considering were from the violently anti-gay Iranian theocracy and from the African country of Cameroon, where gays are arrested and imprisoned.

Lord Roger, who passed away last week, famously wrote in his comments about gays and lesbians’ right to “live openly and freely”, comparing the example of a gay man’s right in the UK to go to a Kylie concert, drink exotically coloured cocktails and talk about boys with their female mates to the rights of straight males.

Yet one year on from this major legal shift, many working to support LGBT asylum seekers believe that the situation for them is actually getting worse.

The Supreme Court’s four new rules on how asylum claims should be judged start by asking if a claimant is gay – and it is this point on which many claims are floundering.

This is not always for lack of evidence. UK Border Agency (UKBA) rejection letters I have seen have dismissed up to twelve witness statements as well as other evidence. One woman pictured and named as lesbian in an infamous tabloid newspaper from a dangerous African country is still fighting to stay here.

Most fair-minded people would be amazed at UKBA attitudes to someone’s ‘credibility’ and the lengths some officers go to dismiss claims. The test officers are supposed to apply is “reasonable likelihood”.

Not all officers appear to have this approach. One lawyer, who has successfully won numerous LGBT asylum cases, told me it “depends of the case worker”. But others have “become hardened”, perhaps because the Supreme Court decision has led to more cases coming forward as it gave them hope of being judged fairly.

After the court decision, the UKBA said it would collect data on LGBT asylum but immigration minister Damien Green said earlier this year that this wouldn’t happen because of “disproportionate cost”. So we have no hard facts on which to judge whether the promise made 13 months ago in the coalition government’s agreement to stop removing LGBT asylum seekers “at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution” has been met.

Unfortunately, in May, Nick Clegg proudly claimed that his promise had been met. Yet all that has been done is one day’s training for border agents, new written guidance and a session for immigration judges on who lesbians and gays are.

The government has refused to take LGBT cases out of ‘detained fast track’, which is supposed to be for straightforward cases from ‘safe’ countries, despite most LGBT ones not being simple and the places they are fleeing – like Uganda – not being safe. Last week, the government lost a test case for Jamaican lesbians where the Home Office lawyer made many of the same arguments on ‘discretion’ it has been making for years.

As Jamaica is now legally not ‘safe’ for lesbians, neither should be Ghana, Nigeria and Uganda. But don’t expect Mr Green to change the rules without a fight.

Last week, Kenneth Clarke’s department announced a change in how deportation cases are handled, moving them from the High Court to the Immigration Tribunal to ‘save money’. This will, I am told, disproportionately affect LGBT people.

When the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group reviewed 50 cases last year, it found that all bar one was rejected by UKBA. This means asylum seekers are disproportionately reliant on safeguards like review by the High Court because immigration judges “make mistakes”, a lawyer told me. Cases could end up back before the same judge who previously rejected someone or judges are, essentially, to be asked to rule that their mates got it wrong. The lawyer I spoke to believes this move is another marker of how things are getting worse for LGBT asylum seekers.

When Stonewall released its ‘No Going Back’ report in May 2010, it made 21 recommendations because there are a wide range of issues which affect LGBT cases. These include being housed with homophobes or being “dispersed” to some remote town with no LGBT community. Only three have been acted on and we have no evidence – and neither does the government – that anything is actually improving.

According to the front line, the Supreme Court decision has had little impact and my feedback is that for an LGBT individual fleeing persecution, their chances of sanctuary here are more down to luck than design and, if anything, the indications are that they’re getting worse. 

The film was discovered on the mobile phones of Ayub and Mosleh, 20 and 21 years old, by agents of the Iranian regime in the Kurdistan city of Piranshahr in northwest Iran. It has been claimed that the video included them having sex with a third, 17-year-old who told religious police that the pair raped him in exchange for sparing his own life.

The pair’s full names have not been released.

Pictures of President Ahmadinejad and a headshot of Supreme Leader Khamenei pasted over a donkey were allegedly incorporated into the film.

Reports say that the young men’s stoning was immediately ordered for this Friday “to instill fear in the people of Iran”.

News of the sentence originates from a Kurdish newspaper and has been distributed by the International Committee Against Stoning, which launched the worldwide campaign against the stoning of Sakineh Ashtiani for adultery.

It has since been confirmed by other sources.

Iranian LGBT activists and human rights organisations have reported a number of other death sentences for homosexuality in the past two years. However the Iranian government maintains that “most of these individuals have been charged for forcible sodomy or rape”.

The original newspaper report claimed that the boys raped another.

Soheila Vahdati, an independent human rights defender for Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the Iranian Queer Organisation based in San Francisco, said: “They don’t differentiate between rape and homosexual acts. As well, there is a culture of shame. The families won’t defend their loved ones from this brutal punishment.”

“We are very concerned even though we haven’t got all the details,” she added. “We’ll try to save their lives but unfortunately Iran has quickly executed people in the past.”

Judges order execution by stoning under a 1983 law detailing offences proscribed by God, and then under the general Islamic penal code. Some senior Shia clerics have spoken out against stoning.

The International Committee Against Stoning has urged “the young people of Piranshahr to hasten to the aid of Ayub and Mosleh and declare that they will not permit this tragedy to occur”.

The Association of British Muslims, alongside an international coalition of Muslim organisations, has condemned the sentence and says it does not see anything in the Koran to justify such punishment.

The group said: “Allah says in the Holy Qur’an, ‘…if anyone slays a human being unless it be [in punishment] for murder or for spreading corruption on earth – it shall be as though he had slain all mankind; whereas, if anyone saves a life, it shall be as though he had saved the lives of all mankind…’”

Last month Human Rights Watch published a large scale report on the repression of LGBT in Iran. It said that those charged with same-sex offences stand little chance of receiving a fair trial.

There are few reliable statistics on the frequency with which stonings take place in Iran. Recent years have seen a rising number of cases reported. Some members of parliament are reportedly hoping that the Supreme Leader will pass a fatwa against stoning.

According to a report by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), the practice tests the physical reaction to heterosexual pornographic material.

It is apparently used on people who apply for asylum on the basis of suffering homophobic persecution.

According to information provided by the Czech Ministry of the Interior, ‘phallometric testing’ for asylum seekers who claim to be gay may be used “where inconsistencies appear in [an] interview”.

This procedure came to light in a German court regarding the claim of a gay Iranian man.

In principle, asylum seekers cannot be forced to undergo the test and must give written consent and be fully briefed about the technique. However, those who refuse the test may be assumed to be lying and may fear that their application will be rejected outright if they refuse.

In addition, bisexual people are unlikely to pass the test.

Hungary is also said to have been using psychiatrists to test whether asylum seekers are really gay.

The FRA says that the practice violates international human rights laws which prohibit torture and inhumane or degrading treatment. It may also violate provisions around the right to a private life.

The agency added that the use of such tests was particularly inappropriate for asylum seekers because “many of them might have suffered abuse due to their sexual orientation and are thus specifically constrained by this kind of exposure”.

The UN Refugee Agency says that “self-identification as LGBT should be taken as an indication of the individual’s sexual orientation”, and that any doubt should benefit the asylum seeker.

Paul Canning is a gay rights activist and the webmaster for LGBT Asylum News.

None of this comes as a surprise to those who’ve been following the use of the software which blocks these sites – known as ‘censorware’ – for more than a decade.

Eleven years ago I authored a report for a coalition of Australian gay groups to the Australian Senate, which was looking into a possible national filter of the internet, a way to block out all the ‘bad stuff’ which local media was sensationally reporting on. For several years before that, in fact back until 1996, activists had been documenting how censorware routinely blocked not just innocuous LGBT websites but also others. The most famous example was breast cancer information but others were blocked seemingly at random, known as ‘over blocking’.

The Australians have been trying to get this national filter going for a decade and haven’t yet won, largely because it would be one huge brake on internet speeds. Plus, paedophiles have moved onto the unblockable ‘dark’ internet. Last year, the proposed controlled list of banned sites was leaked. It contained not only gay websites but also a similarly random group to that being reported 13 years earlier.

Censorware really isn’t that sophisticated. You’re talking about certain words triggering a block, rather than a machine spotting that a flesh tone in an image is porn and not Botticelli. ‘Artificial intelligence’ it ain’t.

In a hilarious example of this unsophistication two years ago, a right-wing American news site automatically changed the name of Jamaican Olympic star sprinter Tyson Gay to ‘Tyson homosexual’.

Censorware is usually American and as with any nationally distributed product there – like school text books – it can end up adopting the values not of San Francisco but of Alabama because they’re the ‘default’. To Alabaman sensibilities a ‘sex/nudity’ category should definitely include gay websites that others, say Californians, would assume to be inoffensive. Oh sure, you can tweak it, change the settings, make it more closely match your values but how many bother? Bottom line is, that’s why LGBT sites end up being blocked by products largely produced out of one the most liberal places in the USA, Silicon Valley.

Censorware is a product and an unregulated one at that. Its key selling point to employers and parents is that its ‘technology’ will stop either time being wasted or little Janet or Johnny looking at either boobies or meeting some pervert online. In that decade-old report I noted some appalling marketing by one big company in the immediate wake of the Columbine school massacre and censorware is still playing on similar fears today.

Nowadays it’s seen and sold as insurance, though the marketers would claim otherwise. We all know that kids can get around it. Despite the best efforts of the Iranians (using Nokia Siemens software by the way) the opposition still used it to anonymously post video of Iranian thugs bashing demonstrators.

It’s almost like the software equivalent of over-the-top health and safety rules, more about protecting people from being sued than actually, y’know, protecting people.

Parents, for example, are told by government on the one hand that they should get involved with their kids’ internet use but on the other hand government pushes software stand-ins with names like Net Nanny which offer just a perception of safety.

This all has a very serious outcome for those kids who use the internet to get answers not just to ‘am I gay?’ but also ‘my uncle’s touching me, what should I do?’ or ‘I think I have an STI’. This unsophisticated and totally unregulated software can block their access to help or peer support and advice.

LGBT youth forums contain numerous postings about help sites being blocked in schools. The industry’s answer – in much the same way as T-Mobile – tells users they can be unblocked on request, but this isn’t going to happen with closeted teenagers who simply aren’t going to ask. There are also legitimate worries with the monitoring which it is often packaged with.

The internet is now by far the prime source of information for young people and we should ask why we have no control over its gatekeepers in the case of censorware and what control we have over those tasked with using it to monitor internet use.

In particular I wonder where the European Union is at with censorware. It has shown several times that it can bend giant American companies to its will, with both Google and Microsoft being forced to take costly action. It has gone at them hammer and tong over privacy and taken a great interest in games.

But not this.

Readers have been wondering whether equalities legislation is relevant here. One would think it would be. If anyone else was flogging a product where no serious attempt had been made to remove its inherent discrimination against LGBT people, there would be a justified outcry.

So why is a product which stops gay kids talking to their peers online not only allowed to get away with it but is actually being promoted as a necessary purchase in order to ‘protect our kids’? And why are these companies continually asking their customers to report blocked websites rather than making sure that they don’t ‘over block’ in the first place?

He said: “Under Labour the UK will continue to be a beacon of hope for LGBT people.”

This delusion sounded a lot like Home Office minister Phil Woolas’ article last year, when he wrote that he was proud of the attendees of the London Pride march who’d found sanctuary in the UK – never mind that his office would have refused them and fought tooth-and-nail to remove them.

The pair should form a double act.

An Amnesty International report released today said that gays in Iraq have no protection from the state and are allegedly even being targeted by some security forces. Yet Miliband’s ‘beacon’ government would tell those seeking our sanctuary they could safely return and be “discreet”.

Recent research from the UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group on 50 refused asylum cases found that many were told to go home and not act gay.

Laugh? Cry? There is no “discreet” in Iraq – they will come and they will find you and they will torture you and display your body. For women “discreet” means you must marry and suffer rape for the rest of your life.

Furthermore, Labour’s gay group LGBT Labour has nothing to say on asylum, despite the group passing a resolution at its AGM last year that it would “explore with the Home Office and Borders and Immigration agency” such items as no longer telling people to “go home and be discreet”.

Labour’s gay manifesto has nothing to say on the matter, presumably because the “explorations” came to nowt.

Elsewhere, the document says that the UK has “campaigned in the UN for the decriminalisation of homosexuality”.

Now this has been part of a shopping list of Labour’s great deeds for LGBT for some time. Previously, LGBT Labour’s website claimed that the party “launched” the campaign but this has now mysteriously disappeared.

It certainly didn’t lead. The origins of the UN resolution lie in the work of Louis George Tin, the French International Day Against Homophobia (IDAHO) founder who launched a worldwide campaign to end the criminalisation of same-sex relationships in 2006. He worked with then French foreign and human rights minister Rama Yade to get it to the UN. The British tagged on later. Google it.

I’ve exchanged emails with Louis George on the Labour claim. Shall we just say he’s “bemused”?

It’s also de rigeur here for them to say “only Labour” will continue to support UN work. I guess it was written before the rise of the LibDems who appear to be a good decade ahead of Labour on LGBT issues.

Having knocked it there’s one good thing to say about Labour’s gay manifesto. It does promise to “always raise matters of LGBT rights in countries where there is systematic violence or harassment”, naming Russia, Uganda, Iran and Jamaica.

Of course we won’t offer asylum or accept refugees but this is progress. It’s certainly progress on Miliband’s own Foreign Office human rights report, issued in February, which barely mentions LGBT issues anywhere outside Europe. It also somehow misses their sterling work in the Commonwealth, but, in future, sez the manifesto, they’ll be a “relentless champion”.

One country is missing in that list: Iraq.

Let’s be clear, Labour created this modern-day pogrom. Saddam wasn’t systematically hunting people down because they were lesbian, gay or transgender. That started after the invasion.

Since then, none of the governments responsible have done anything about it bar a few diplomatic words. Right now there is a pogrom going on in southern Iraq, the area formerly controlled by Britain: the legacy of the Labour government’s rule there.

Perhaps I shouldn’t pick out just Labour LGBT for pretending that this isn’t happening, hoping the stench in the corner will be quietly ignored. The Labour government may be legally responsible but they’re not the only ones ignoring it (so, given realpolitik, Labour LGBT’s hope may be quite justified). The LGBT ‘community’ internationally has a case to answer.

Neither is it the responsibility of LGBT alone to help rescue Iraqi gays, but for those who claim to care about our brothers and sisters in other countries (including those who seek votes on that basis) it is shameful how they are turning their backs on Iraqis.

They are focusing, like the American Jews of the 1930s and 40s, solely on our own selfish interests.

LGBT Ugandans have been discussing what to do should the ‘kill-the-gays’ bill pass, where to flee. Some Americans have talked about pressuring the US State Department to help rescue them.

And the UK? How would we help those from our former colony, to whom we bequeathed sodomy laws? Referring back to that list of countries this manifesto says are experiencing “systematic violence or harassment”, how has the Labour government helped fleeing Jamaicans? Or Iranians?

Jewish people know all about rescue. We could learn something from their history. They have a litany called an Al Chet which they use during Yom Kippur. Rabbi Joseph Soloveitchik wrote this one about how Jews escaping Germany weren’t helped by fellow Jews who looked firstly after their own interests:

“Al chet shechatanu lefanecha bera’inu tzoras nafshoseihem shel acheinu bais yisroel shehischananu eileinu v’lo shamanu” [for the sin that we have sinned before you by seeing the suffering of our Jewish brethren who called to us and we did not listen].

They are calling, and we need to start listening.

Paul Canning is a gay rights activist and the webmaster for LGBT Asylum News.

Baghdad played the role that Beirut does now as a sanctuary for Middle Eastern gay life with clubs which men from the Gulf and Saudi Arabia flocked to.

In sharp contrast, for the past six years Iraq has been the worst place in the entire world to be gay. Far, far worse than Uganda or even Iran. Hundreds of gays, lesbians and trans people have been hunted down and killed in the most vile ways imaginable – and imagination is the right word. Doctors have confirmed reports of men have had their anuses glued shut by militia forces and others have accused the government of being involved.

No one has been prosecuted and the Iraqi government has failed to do anything to stop it. So Iraqi gays have helped themselves. They have created safe houses, although many have been discovered and become a new killing field.

Many have fled but they have faced a cold wall of indifference and they have needed friends and luck to actually make it to sanctuary.

Our government, the British government, has turned its back on those who have arrived here. All have initially been refused asylum. The system instead has told them that Iraq is safe and they should go home.

I am not making this up. Faceless bureaucrats in Alan Johnson’s department (and Jacqui Smith’s and John Reid’s before him) have had the front to write “Iraq is safe” on gay asylum letters.

Why? How? Because they can. Because no one, no gay MP, no LGBT group, no one has pressured them, forced them, to do otherwise.

It gets worse. Because of an “unfit for purpose” system, their claims take years to resolve, wasting untold amounts of taxpayers’ money as other bureaucrats and Johnson’s hired gun lawyers fight them to the bitter end despite the mountain of evidence that Iraq is a deathzone for gays.

In the meantime they survive on handouts as they’re not allowed to work. They are stressed out in ways those of us lucky enough to be born in the ‘west’ cannot begin to imagine, fearing that Johnson’s agents will pick them up and put them on a plane to Baghdad.

Of course there are people helping Iraqi gays who make it here, though they are few. Most of all Iraqi gays are helping themselves.

Chief amongst them is Ali Hili, the leader of organised group Iraqi LGBT. It is he who first brought the world’s attention to the pogrom against gays in Iraq. He has had the balls to be the public face and has paid the price in death threats and a fatwa against him.

But he is stuck in what John Reid described as an “unfit” system. This incredibly brave gay leader is just another number and the failure to grant him asylum is affecting the ability of Iraqi gays to draw the world’s attention to their plight.

He cannot go visit the US Congress. He cannot visit the European parliament. In both places there are Very Important People, those who can practically help, who want to hear firsthand of the situation.

He has already told the Foreign Office. This other branch of the same government, whose gay minister Chris Bryant proudly touts its work on supporting gays around the world. The Foreign Office is extremely keen to take Ali’s evidence, write it up in their Human Rights Report and use that to sell the caring-and-sharing face of the UK government, especially to gay voters.

So when you read the letter from some minion in the UK Border Agency saying that his case is not “compelling”, that his case cannot be expedited so he can go visit Washington and New York and Brussels, what do you think? Does it make you angry?

Yes? Do something. Ask your MP – you can find them on this website theyworkforyou.com/ – to ask the Home Secretary Alan Johnson to intervene.

Johnson can do it. Remember Mehdi Kazemi? The young gay Iranian who Jacqui Smith insisted could be safely sent back despite all the evidence including the execution of Mehdi’s teenage boyfriend? Well, she intervened and Mehdi is now safe. But it took an enormous effort to make that happen so – please – don’t just read this and be angry. Write your MP, write Johnson and the Prime Minister. Tell everyone you know what’s going on and ask them to do something as well.

The Ali campaign can be found here http://bit.ly/alihili

Paul Canning is a gay rights activist and the webmaster for LGBT Asylum News.

Practically nothing written in the article matches the actual experience of LGBT asylum seekers at the hands of the Home Office and the UK Border Agency (UKBA).

Woolas claims that his department does not tell people to ‘be discreet’ and send them home – that’s the Court of Appeal.

He writes: “From time to time we are accused of expecting gay men and lesbians to be discreet, effectively to suppress their sexuality in order to avoid persecution. This is not an accurate representation. The Court of Appeal has found, in line with our policy that whether a gay claimant can reasonably be expected to tolerate behaving discreetly is something that must be considered on the individual merits of the case.”

This is so barefaced it takes my breath away.

Following an eight year ordeal the Ugandan gay asylum seeker John ‘Bosco’ Nyombi has finally won asylum in the UK.

Despite a well-documented media and government anti-gay campaign in Uganda, which has included articles and photos of Bosco, he was deported in September last year. The UKBA made its usual claim that LGBT people can be safe in such countries if they are ‘discreet’. However the method of his deportation, which involved deception, violence and rule-breaking, led to a historic decision by a British court following which the Home Office was forced to return him to the UK in March, where he was immediately put into a detention centre due to an ‘error’. John finally got leave to remain a few weeks ago.

It took a major international campaign to secure leave (which was exceptional and outside the department’s strictures) for Mehdi Kazemi, the 19-year-old Iranian whose boyfriend had been executed.

A spokesperson for the Iraqi LGBT group told me that Home Office evidence submitted in all cases of Iraqis in the UK says they can return and “be discreet”. This in a country where death squads are actively seeking out and torturing and executing gays in large numbers.

The UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group (UKLGIG) wrote in a letter responding to Woolas’ article:

It stated: “The UKBA (and judiciary) often argue something along the lines of ‘if you kept quiet about it before, you can go back and do so again’. Such argumentation does not acknowledge that fears for repercussions along with internalised homophobia and shame usually are the – very damaging – reasons for such ‘keeping quiet’ or ‘staying in the closet’.

“Also worrying is the consideration given to the ‘social norms and religious beliefs of their country of origin’ as a factor in assessing whether an LGBT person could be required to be (more) discreet. Even the Indian Delhi High Court recently stated that arguments of cultural relativism – or indeed the views of a majority of the population – can not ‘hold captive’ principles of equality and non-discrimination.

“Phil Woolas claims that ‘a degree of discretion can be required in all sexual relationships, heterosexual as well as homosexual’, which implies that the measure of discretion required would be applied equally. This is clearly not the case and in practice LGBT persons would be forced to have to live a lie.

“Moreover, this reference to discretion does not reflect the realities of most LGBT asylum claims: applicants simply want a life in which they can be who they are and/or have a relationship with their partner, without fearing death, violence, rape, prosecution, forced marriage or losing their livelihood or homes. Their claims are not about seeking the right to commit ‘public indecencies’. However, within the legal, social, cultural or religious framework in many of their home countries, an (open or secret) LGBT identity or same sex relationship is often, in and of itself, considered ‘indecent’.”

These are policy decisions – not court ones – and nothing to do with the ‘merits of the case’, unless Woolas seriously believes Iraqi gays should just ‘be discreet’.

Woolas claims that there are “clear instructions” to caseworkers that homophobic and transphobic persecution are legitimate grounds for granting asylum. But the UKLGIG reports that currently there is no Asylum Policy Instruction (API) on LGBT issues, despite repeated requests.

Woolas says country information used to make decisions is accurate and up to date. Well, in the case of Iraq the UNHCR “advises favourable consideration” for persecuted the LGBT minority two months ago. Human Rights Watch and others have been reporting the pogrom of Iraqi gays for several years. Woolas claims country information comes from such sources and “does not contain any Home Office policy or opinion”. If that was the case why are his lawyers’ opinions saying gays can be safely sent back to Iraq?

Here’s why – the independent governmental Advisory Panel on Country Information recently (October 2008) published a very critical review of the quality and quantity of information on LGBT issues within the country of origin information (COI). UKLGIG say they are hopeful that new COI reports “will show a significant improvement”.

LGBT asylum seekers are not safe in the care of Woolas’ department, in accommodation provided for them or in detention centers as a recently published groundbreaking report found out. They suffer high levels of homelessness, discrimination and exploitation. Cases of rape are described in the report.

Asylum staff and adjudicators receive race and gender awareness training but, again contrary to Woolas’ claims, have only just started extremely limited training for a few caseworkers on sexual orientation issues. Lack of training results in them often making stereotyped assumptions: that a feminine woman can’t be a lesbian or that a masculine man cannot be gay. They sometimes rule that someone who has been married must be faking their homosexuality.

Cuts in the funding of legal aid for asylum claims means that most asylum applicants – gay and straight – are unable to prepare an adequate submission at their asylum hearing. Most solicitors don’t get paid enough to procure the necessary witness statements, medical reports and other vital corroborative evidence.

It is left to groups such as UK Lesbian and Gay Immigration Group and campaigners and hard-working solicitors. They are the people responsible for those asylum seekers on the Pride march – not Woolas.

For him to claim otherwise is nothing short of outrageous and not to be believed, and isn’t by many, including many members of his own party.

LGBT Labour passed a motion at its recent AGM which said that “the experience of LGBT people in the system does not often match the up to the high standards of treatment we would expect from the UK”. It added: “The UK government should not return people on the pretext that they will have to ‘hide’ their sexuality on return to their home country.” It mandated its executive to question the Home Office.

And amongst those who signed a petition on this issue to Gordon Brown were Labour MEPs Eluned Morgan, Claude Moraes and Glenys Kinnock, Mick Houghton, secretary of the Greater London Association of Trade Union Councils, Labour MP Celia Barlow and former minister Stephen Twigg.

It is great that Labour members are finally waking up to this issue. Perhaps Woolas’ brazenness will finally provide the push for the changes in LGBT asylum which are so desperately needed for those that I know most right-thinking people believe deserve our protection.

Paul Canning has been an gay activist in two continents for more years than he cares to remember. He is the webmaster for madikazemi.blogspot.com.

Labour MPs Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant have claimed ‘homophobia’ as a defence against the recent expose of their expenses claims.

Bryant says he had to ‘flip’ homes due to nasty smears (presumably emanating from the infamous ‘underpants’ episode) being daubed on his Rhondda constituency home.

Bradshaw thinks the Daily Telegraph is homophobic because it called his partner his “boyfriend”.

Neither of these claims are being accepted by readers of PinkNews.co.uk, or at least those who have responded by leaving comments.

Nor should they accept such spurious arguments. The comment which most sums up my feelings is “What a pair of fantastic role models for young gay people to look up to – not”.

Another reader wrote: “Targeted because he’s gay? So Hazel Blears [is] a lesbian then, is she? John Prescott a great big homo?”

Bradshaw in particular seems to be resorting to a diversionary tactic which reminds me of “is it because I is black?” In addition, he tries to argue that gay MPs in general are being singled out saying: “It is very interesting that gay Tory MPs have also been smeared” – because the Telegraph once referred to Nick Herbert’s “boyfriend” rather than using the word “partner”.

Bradshaw ignores the fact that his government kow-towed to religious interests and refused to introduce gay marriage – something he has never, to my knowledge, done anything but defend.

Instead, the Labour government has resorted to the sexual apartheid of civil partnerships, which are literally ‘different but equal’. They also refused to introduce a similar ‘non-religious’ status for heterosexuals. So what the hell is Bradshaw’s partner’s ‘official’ title? If anything it’s ‘civil partner’!

‘Boyfriend’ is only homophobic if you read it as such. I understand fully that some use it with that intent but you have to see it in context. The rest of the Telegraph’s coverage on Bradshaw’s expenses is perfectly fair.

Bryant, defending his ‘double flipping’ and claiming a total of £92,415 in second home expenses since 2004 plus a £77,000 profit made when he moved again, puts it all down to having to “escape homophobic thugs who daubed lewd messages” on his main constituency property.

As readers of this website point out, if he was a real role model he would have pursued them and made sure the South Wales police did their job – he wouldn’t have been driven out or taken the police’s advice to move.

Can you imagine the reaction from the black community if he was black and shied away from defending himself from racist messages?

Plus there’s the small matter – as another commentator points out – that if one of his constituents were subject to homophobic attacks (and they weren’t living in social housing) they’d have to re-house themselves at their own cost.

Now that we have a great number and fair spread of openly gay public figures in the UK (although sadly not enough footballers) I think these comments display a bit of maturity in the gay community, like I think has happened in the black community. It’s no longer ‘my gay role model, right or wrong’.

There is a overwhelming myth about gays and lesbians which is tied to their public profile, particularly that of well-known people, that gay people are better off.

But this idea of gay equals better off has been deliberately fanned by gay commercial businesses – because it’s in their interests.

DINK (double income no kids) equates with Will & Grace stereotype equates with yuppie equates with a lucrative market.

When I worked for the Sydney Star Observer, we used some of the earliest marketing data about the so-called ‘Pink Dollar’ to attract then reluctant advertisers. Of course we did and, shamefully, we also bought into the myth.

We did it because I’d read some early marketing studies which sampled gay magazine readers – and showed what they thought advertisers would want to hear: there was a well-off market being ignored.

I’ve learnt since that gays and lesbians come in the most rainbow of varieties and most are not very visible.

They are the ones affected by factors like poor educational outcomes due to harassment at school, and vulnerability to employee discrimination. They are the ones represented disproportionately in the ranks of the homeless.

I’d also suggest that a certain ‘ghettoisation’ into accepting jobs – such as lower paid social work or working in service industries – plays a role.

Of course it’s even worse for transgender people who often struggle with employment.

Unfortunately this DINK information has been used by our enemies to suggest that LGBT are not a group that needs protection, precisely because we’re supposedly already wealthy. Handed to them on a plate by gays-after-a-buck have been powerful political arguments to use against their fellow gays.

I’m not blaming them, I’m just pointing this out.

The myth found its way into US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in the 1996 Romer v Evans case that overturned an anti-gay initiative in Colorado.

A new survey about LGBT poverty by the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law, which was funded by gay philanthropists and presented to the US Congress last Friday, has hopefully put the issue of reality of LGBT poverty – not affluence – onto the agenda.

Although the unfortunate UCLA publicity described it the first of its kind, there have been similar studies, though very few, going back years, which have shown the same issues which this one apparently does.

The study, which used three data sources, including the 2000 US census, shows that LGBT families – particularly those of some subgroups are more likely to be poor than their heterosexual counterparts.

It shows that there are a social and political factors that may lead to higher rates of LGB poverty, including vulnerability to employee discrimination, inability to marry and higher numbers of those who are uninsured.

The survey studied coupled Americans but PinkNews.co.uk has reported previously that around 20 per cent of Brighton and Hove’s homeless people are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender and that they receive a negative experiences of local authority homelessness services.

Homelessness means rough sleeping or part of the hidden homeless population (sleeping in temporary accommodation, squats, or relying upon friends, family or acquaintances).

A study by Brenda Roche for the homeless charity Crisis said that estimates on the prevalence of LGBT persons amongst the wider homeless youth population have shown considerable variation.

In the United States, national studies suggest that as many as 50 per cent of all homeless youth may be gay or lesbian with estimates in the UK running as high as 30 per cent in urban centres, whereas current broader estimates of population-wide figures of homosexuality in the UK are roughly between five and seven per cent.

Roche cited under-reporting and a lack of monitoring as reasons for a possible underestimation of the figures.

Roche also says that workers in the area know that sexual identity can play a key role in the onset of homelessness.

She suggested that those who migrate to city centres may do so in the hope of finding a more visible gay community or at least one that is more tolerant. However, this can expose individuals to new situations of risk and potential exploitation

LGBT people then find it hard to disclose within services, because it might open them up to greater scrutiny and harassment – so they are assumed to be heterosexual.

Roche says that very little research is put into the needs of LGBT young homeless and virtually none into those of older LGBT people.

These findings sit against a background of educational underachievement because of systemic discrimination in schools.

Surveys have shown that half of gay men and a third of lesbians reporting being bullied physically at school, compared with 47 per cent of heterosexual men and 20 per cent of heterosexual women.

Stonewall’s The School Report said that they are less likely than pupils in other schools to report it. 17 per cent, according to this report, had received death threats

Why would all the well-documented barriers which other minorities have experienced (eg glass ceiling barriers for women or institutionalised racism) not also result in greater poverty for LGBT?

A 1995 study conducted by the Combat Poverty Agency in Dublin found 21 per cent of LGBT respondents living in poverty, while over half (57 per cent) said they found it difficult to make ends meet.

Their findings also outlined clearly the range of effects of harassment and discrimination, and the extent of social exclusion experienced by lesbians and gay men.

Everything about this should ring true with the lived experience of LGBT – most LGBT are far from well-off.

But it says something for the power of the DINK myth that as a organised community, we have ignored those who have failed to get over the economic barriers, despite their numbers. In the wake of the recession, the vulnerability of LGBT people must be considered.

I would argue that the myth has similar power to thwart policy and cultural gains in the UK as it has been seen to have in the US, especially in this economic climate.

It is time for a properly-funded UK-wide study to bust the DINK myth once and for all. Are you listening, Stonewall? 

Yet despite this lack of upfront support, as well as the hangover from her husband’s support for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and ‘Defence of Marriage’, it is Clinton, not Obama, who ended the campaign with the Washington gay establishment in her pocket (Obama’s early gay support was mainly black or Chicagoan).

It was Clinton in whom much of the gay community had invested itself: to the point that some of her supporters are now saying they’ll join the small minority of gays who’ll vote for John McCain (the gay community is the most loyally Democrat after African-Americans and Jewish-Americans).

From Jon Stewart’s Daily Show, Aasif Mandvi found one of the fanatical gay supporters who refuse to do Hillary’s bidding and ‘not go there’ (support McCain):

To fear what you are and to have to act with care 24 hours a day, lest your family finds out and perhaps takes your life in a so-called ‘honour killing,’ or the state discovers you and tortures you.

So trying to understand the sheer torture of your boyfriend being discovered and executed, seeking safety from what you know is your certain, similar fate, in what you’d always thought was the ‘civilised’ West – and being disbelieved and rejected – is beyond most of us.

Imagine how much harder this would be when you are still a teenager. Most of us couldn’t begin to.

But this has been the life experience of Mehdi Kazemi, still only 19 years old.

We all know the story – PinkNews.co.uk has been one of the few news outlets which has been keeping us informed of the case’s twists and turns.

But there are many other ‘cases’ who have already been kicked out of Britain to unknown fates, who have committed suicide rather than be sent ‘home’ or shiver in fear today because this ‘civilised’ country leaves them ‘hanging’ for years before they learn their final fate.

In Holland their policy is to automatically grant ‘leave to remain’ to LGBT asylum seekers.

If they commit no crimes, after five years they can claim Dutch nationality.

Sweden has something similar — many other countries, including the United States, treat LGBT asylum seekers better than the UK.

For the UK, ‘leave to remain’ – what Mehdi has – doesn’t necessarily mean that people can stay permanently.

As gay rights activist Peter Tatchell told CNN: “At the end of five years [Mehdi] will have to go through the whole appeal process again.”

The Dutch Liberal MP Boris van der Ham, who led parliamentary efforts to secure asylum in that country for Mehdi, made a point of finding out just how many gay people are ‘flooding’ into Holland under their policy.

He did this because the debate there, echoing what some say in the UK, had included that familiar right-wing claim: ‘we’ll be flooded’.

Six LGBT asylum seekers are expected over the next year and 38 to 40 in total since 2006.

In the UK the ukgayasylum group has about 25 people currently on its books.

These are tiny numbers and both the Dutch and Swedish experience proves that adopting a civilised policy doesn’t result in so-called ‘flooding’.

But it is clear from my information through back channels that the Home Office has dug in its heels, remains extremely keen to ‘not set a precedent’ and is influenced by such reactionary ideas.

In a statement issued to CNN the Home Office said:

“We keep cases under review where circumstances have changed and it has been decided that Mr. Kazemi should be granted leave to remain in the UK based on the particular facts of this case.”

The truth is that the only circumstance which has changed is the publicity and that cannot be the actual reason otherwise many others, like the gay Syrian JoJo Yakob, who The Scotsman is backing, cannot be kicked out.

The normal sort of statement is such cases is one like this from another gay Iranian’s case about ‘living discreetly’(my emphasis):

“On the evidence we find the appellant can reasonably be expected to tolerate the position on any return … For the reasons given the appellant’s appeal remains dismissed.”

This reflects the attitude shamelessly outlined by Home Office Minister Lord Spithead in the Lords at the height of the interest in Mehdi’s case:

“We are not aware of any individual who has been executed in Iran in recent years solely on the grounds of homosexuality, and we do not consider that there is systematic persecution of gay men in Iran.”

As the Mehdi campaign dragged on, as The Independent newspaper gave it front page coverage, as numerous Labour and other Members of Parliament lobbied, as the European Parliament passed a resolution, as US networks carried it on their evening news, the fear that he would indeed be deported regardless was very real. They have done it before.

As gayasylumuk’s Omar Kuddas explains:

“He was almost deported at Christmas. They came for him at precisely the time when they thought it would be hardest to get lawyers and others out to defend him. This is how the Home Office behaves.”

There have been others before Mehdi.

Last year the Italian Prime Minister contacted Gordon Brown to argue the case for Iranian lesbian Pegah Emambakash – all to no avail as she slipped from news coverage and is now on her last legal legs to save herself from deportation back to Tehran.

JoJo Yakob in Scotland has just suffered through the blatant homophobia of the Home Office on display at a tribunal and will only be safe if a judge is sympathetic and rejects that homophobic policy and practice for which Jacqui Smith and, ultimately, Gordon Brown are responsible.

Kuddas is one of the many unsung heroes – gay and straight and from many countries – who have helped save Mehdi.

As you read the many claims of responsibility for ‘Jacqui’s u-turn’ from politicians and some showboating organisations over the next few days bear that in mind.

The only reason that the government shifted in Mehdi’s case was because it was all getting just too embarrassing for Gordon Brown.

Him, not Smith. And they hope that by granting leave to remain just to Mehdi, and by twisting their ‘rules’ in order to do it, that we’ll all shut up.

They don’t want a policy change and there is no doubt in my mind that the real reason is because they fear the Daily Mail and other agenda-setters and their ‘hardline’ against asylum seekers more than they fear a backlash from us, the LGBT community.

Tony Blair and David Blunkett set the ‘quotas to fill’ ball rolling, and Jacqui Smith is the latest to be carrying it through and damn the consequences.

They present one face to us citizens and another face – ‘discretion’ and blatant homophobia – to persecuted foreign LGBT who dare to claim asylum.

Worse, another government department – the Foreign Office – is out there preaching to other countries about human rights, including LGBT rights. The hypocrisy couldn’t smell any stronger.

What I think has been their major political miscalculation is precisely their perception of the attitude of Middle England.

When publicity about Mehdi was at it’s height you had to search for hardline opinion saying ‘throw him out anyway’ and even those saying this had a guilty tinge to their tone.

Comments left with the Daily Mail and – yes – even those of The Sun’s readers recognised this country’s historic attitude to accepting genuinely persecuted people as refugees – it goes back centuries, it’s part of who we are.

It was clear from reading those comments, and many of those on the 7,000 strong petition, that ordinary British people well understood this and accepted that this meant accepting persecuted gays and lesbians from countries like Iran.

It was also clear from the horrified overseas media coverage – ‘this is Britain!?’

But this political miscalculation only seriously holds true if, now he has ‘asylum’, Mehdi’s case isn’t seen as a one-off and, particularly, if gays and lesbians hold Labour to account for their unchanged homophobic policies towards these members of our community. I fear we won’t. So prove me wrong.

For us, I think the government’s attitude to the pitifully few LGBT asylum seekers we have in Britain shows them up as hypocrites over LGBT rights.

I honestly think that they think these people are so powerless, that their cases so rarely provoke protest and news coverage, they can safely ignore protest; that they will not face any consequences.

They just don’t expect a voter backlash.

For us, I think we need to be collectively saying ‘enough is enough’ to Labour on LGBT asylum seekers and behave as one community.

I, for one, could not be happier for Mehdi but I am not ‘grateful’ to Jacqui Smith or her boss for this crack in the asylum edifice.

It will take a lot to get me voting Labour again (after a lifetime of support) precisely because of how I have seen how they treat these weakest members of our community.

I hope you feel the same and I hope you tell Labour why you feel it. Until they change their shameful policy on LGBT asylum seekers they don’t deserve anyone’s vote.

Paul Canning has been an gay activist in two continents for more years than he cares to remember. He is the webmaster for http://madikazemi.blogspot.com.