A young Tory party member sure does have a fucked up sense of humor.
22-year old Fergus Bowman created and maintained a Face Book page called “Homos Burn in Hell”. On this page, which featured a frightful picture of a KKK member, Bowman wrote, “Everyone knows homosexuality is against God’s wishes.” Bowman also showed a picture of a man’s penis and snarked, “And people wonder why I’m anti-semitic”. What a mensch.*
The young activist also took on our sissie semantics, “By calling them gays, we are destroying a word from the English language.”
Bowman worked as a student activist for Britain’s Tory party, but got the boot after the hateful page came to light. A Tory spokesman told The Mirror:
How about we take this to the next level?
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Fergus Bowman’s comments are appalling and we condemn them absolutely. He has been expelled from the Conservative party. There’s no place for homophobia in today’s Britain. The Conservative party actively supports gay rights.
Bowman’s also been suspended from university. And, we imagine, lost millions of future votes.
* A reader informs us that Bowman didn’t show an actual penis, but a pinky finger. Maybe he’s afraid of the real thing.
Heather_L_James
Fergus Bowman: Coming soon to a bathroom stall near you.
Craig Browning
Well, many years ago during the wonderful Linden LaRoache “Brown Shirt” attitudes in L.A. I and a friend awoke to the glowing light of a burning cross in our yard… not exactly the kind of thing one readily forgets.
I believe Mr. Fergus has some seriously deep issues, starting with his own sexual guilts, be it due to experience or fantasy. Then again, I’ve felt that the bible has been a suppository for far too long for babbling idiots of this sort who refuse to study fact over fiction. Yet, here we are in the early 21st century still dealing with a 4th and 5th century mentality on things.
dfrw
What a terrible person. However, I sneered at this final line: “The Conservative party actively supports gay rights.” Yeah, right.
Ash
Well, dfrw, remember that this is Britain’s conservative party, not the U.S.’s.
Jon
I don’t get it. As bad as his ideas are, he has a right to say them. I don’t understand why he should be penalized for his thoughts.
Andy
Exactly, Ash. The British Conservative Party, know as “Tories”, are relative gay-friendly – though by comparison with American Conservatives, the Tories here go around hugging us queers! But the funny thing about the affair is that young Master “Homos Burn in Hell” Bowman is said to live and was at university in the North West of England where a million conservative votes is such wishful thinking. Colour the political map of UK red for that part of the country … and just to further confuse you “ex-golonials”, red is the colour of the Labour party (as in Blair – and now Brown) while the Tories are blue.
Bill Perdue
The Conservative Party is more ‘gay friendly’ than our Republican Party, but then so was Mussolini.
Their ‘friendlinees’ doesn’t mean they’re not infested with bigots – they are. I just means they want to win the next election and have to follow the lead of the Labour Party. The LP passed laws that we only dream about, and without the backstabbing treachery so typical of the Democrats. The Labour Party is currently working a law that will criminalize hate speech that leads to violece and would put homobigoted rap and reggae pigs in jail.
Bill Perdue
Jon, what’s not to get. Hate speech is the direct cause of harassment, beatings and lynchings. Each year in the US sees about 20 of us lynched, over 2000 beaten and most GLBT children and high schoolers are harassed, some to the point of suicide.
Hate speech is criminal speech. It’s an incitement to violence, whether it comes from Der Pope, Phelps, George Bush, or Buju Banton.
Gay student groups like GLSEN and even the arch conservative US Department of Justice (sic) understand that. Kevin Jennings, GLSEN founder said “This study clearly illustrates the prevalence of bullying and harassment in America’s schools…â€
The US Department of Justice, whose report Hate Crimes on Campus (DOJ Publication NJC187249) “students report hearing degrading language about women, gays and lesbians on a daily basis…†and that “the use of such language creates an atmosphere that permits conduct to escalate from mere words to stronger words, to threats, and ultimately to violence.â€
It concludes that hate crimes and harassment have a devastating effect on the lives of their victims, often decisively damaging their ability to get an education. They quit school and get a job as a dishwasher to escape it.
Dave Rattigan
The Tories are much more gay-friendly these days. Not every individual MP, of course, but certainly the party line is pretty much gay-friendly. But it’s fair to say they’d never be that way if the Labour Government hadn’t paved the way over the past decade. And that’s about the only positive thing you’ll ever hear me say about Labour!
Jon
Bill, you cannot legislate thoughts. This is not “1984”. That is a seriously slippery slope that we are on if we take away freedom of speech. The minute we take away free speech we are done as a society. I would much rather know who is my enemy than have someone smile in my face and then call me a “fag” behind my back. Has there ever been proof that hate speech has been the direct cause of harassment, beatings, and lynchings? I think that that is more of an assumption than a fact. I haven’t heard of someone reading this man’s Facebook page and going out and burning a cross. That’s the same idea as kids killing themselves because they listened to Judas Priest. It’s bullshit.
Bill Perdue
Jon, Everybody, all the experts, all the studies, even the Republican DOJ says you’re dead wrong. For your sake I hope you don’t have to find out the hard way about how hate speech causes violence like so many of our brothers and sisters did.
If you want proof you’re going to have to do your homework. Visit the sites of the Southern Poverty Law Center, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs, the ACLU, Amnesty International, the FBI, the International Association of Chiefs of Police, the (London) Metropolitan Police and the Gardai in Dublin. There are dozens of other sites and they all say you theories reek.
No one plans on legislating thoughts. It can’t be done. Criminal law is all about penalizing behavior. Go to English sites and read the details. They plan on criminalizing the ACT of inciting to violence, or more precisely to ADD us to the list of protected groups. That’s a behavioral question, not a free speech question. Every bigot who incites to violence ought to be harshly punished. Nobody’s free speech trumps our right not to be lynched, beaten or subjected to harassment.
If the Germans had muzzled the Nazis they could have saved us all the trouble of World War II and the death camps. Nazi hate speech = war = 50 million dead. If we’d gagged the Klan our national history wouldn’t bear the stench of decades of lynchings. KKK hate speech = lynch mobs = 50,000 dead. You do the math.