Brexit and Intolerance

[Nigel Gordon]

The more the whole Brexit fiasco is carrying on the more this country is getting increasingly intolerant. A few days ago I was shopping when I received a phone call. It was from the 98 year old mother of one of my Dutch friends. She was phoning to tell me that Pete, after a long battle with cancer, had died over the weekend. She does not speak very much English, so I spoke to her using my limited Dutch. As I was standing there speaking on the phone a middle-aged man came up to me and told me to 'speak fucking English and fuck off back to where you came from'.

Today, I heard another man, again middle aged, telling his friends in the supermarket car park that once Farage was in the government they would be able to get rid of all the queers and immigrants.

What is frightening is not so much that such views exist in England today, we have always known there was a section of the population who held such views, but that they now feel they can express them with impunity. 

In the 1960s gay men and women in the UK banded together. First they worked to get the law on homosexuality changed, which happened in 1967. Then they campaigned against discrimination. Not only against discrimination aimed at homosexuals, though that was an important part of the fight, but against all forms of discrimination.

It looks as if the homosexual community is going to have to gird its loins and take up the fight once more. For if we do not fight for the rights we have gained now, we will lose them. We are easy targets for the populists. They like to be able to define part of society as different, outside of the norm, not part of us. Well, let's prove Putin that he is wrong, that the liberal ideals are strongly held by many in our society and that we will fight hard to protect them and the rights and benefits that flow from them.

[Cole Parker]

Exactly right, Nigel.  The small minority of bigots has been empowered, and now that they have tyrants in power, they feel it's okay to spread their hate.  It's more than discouraging.  They had the sense to keep quiet before, realizing how unpopular their views were.  Now they act like they're in the majority.   I really, really hope in our national election next year we show them the error of their ways.  I hope other countries throw these guy out onto the trash heap too.  It's where they belong.

We are in the majority.

C