Hate Crime Kiss in and Vigil today in Parliament Square

Between 2014 and 2018 in the UK there has been a nearly 150% increase in anti-LGBT hate crime.

REPORTS have been growing of LGBT-phobic attacks all over the UK, including London and Brighton. Two thirds of LGBT+ people are wary of showing affection to their same-sex partners in public while protests against diversity in education have been seen outside schools in Birmingham, and this is spreading.

These attacks are legitimised by the attitudes and actions of some mainstream politicians.

We have an unelected prime minister who calls gay men bum-boys and appoints a cabinet including homophobes and racists.

Boris Johnson is not a lone bigot leading a nation. Trump’s first action as US president was to ban trans people from the military. Bolsonaro’s thugs murder LGBT+ people in Brazil as he declares he would rather have a dead son than a gay son. Putin’s death camps for LGBT people are an international horror.

Italy, Hungary, Turkey and Poland are also seeing rising state and street attacks on LGBT+ people.

Here in the UK, the divisions are being stoked up as Nazi sympathiser Tommy Robinson attempts to create a new far right street movement. The dangers of this cannot be underestimated.

We saw where this leads on April 30 1999 when Nazi David Copeland nail-bombed the Admiral Duncan pub in Soho, killing 3 people and wounding 70, some of whom lost eyes and limbs.

It is 50 years since the Stonewall Uprising and the birth of the Gay Liberation Front, a movement born out of rage and riots.

Todays Kiss-In and Vigil (Friday, August 16) called by QUEER POWER and LGBT Against Islamophobia is their first protest. The next event will be a larger protest on September 13.

For more details, click here:

Speakers will include:
♦ Ashley Joiner – director of ‘Are You Proud?’
♦ Sophie Robbins – trans activist
♦ Ejel Khan – co-ordinator, Muslim LGBT Network
♦ Jaroslaw Kubiak – Polish Rainbow in the UK, Polish LGBT Network
♦ Michael Dance – National Education Union LGBT+ National Organising Forum Officer (personal capacity)
♦ Sean Dewey – organising committee, Waltham Forest Pride
♦ Nicola Field – founder member, LGBT Against Islamophobia
♦ Dan Glass – Queer Power
♦ Speaker from Stand Up To Racism (TBC)