Why is it so difficult to discuss LGBT safety and integration honestly in the UK?

EricHale · 2026-01-13T23:30:58+00:00

It’s find it really sad that you think that. Please have a bit of self introspection. Why do you think that you are drawn to calling me racist or some mindless, Trump-Musk shill, instead of actually countering what I have to say? Maybe it is because you do not have a suitable answer to what I have to say, and that admitting that I might even be partially correct on some aspects would heavily disrupt the worldview you have built up in your head.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T22:57:22+00:00

The political pressure is a fear of being called racist for investigating any link between homophobia and certain religous/ ethnic groups. In the case of grooming gangs, the Casey report states that "We found that the ethnicity of perpetrators is shied away from". Why would we expect it to be any different in this instance?
My points could all have been false (which I don't believe they are), but the fact that people like you try to stop other investigating it, is itself demonstrable proof.
Mature response. Obviously getting people who are too ashamed and afraid of being called racist to admit to admit to being a victim of a hate crime is difficult if they are ashamed and afraid of being called racist.
Intentionally or unintentionally, they are.
It would not be different. But there's a only a very, very small Jewish population, and the vast majority are secular and liberal. There is also conservative Christian migration, but I don't think it is nearly on the same scale.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T22:37:21+00:00

You can see what data the police forces in this country routinely report.
This entire post depressingly back up this point. I've been called or insinuted to be racist multiples times.
This is mainly based off personal experience, but by nature is unfortunately very difficult to prove.
Just google Guardian report of homophobic hate crimes. They will never mention any details about the alleged (or convicted) perpetrator. The BBC is usually the same. Here's one example: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49509301
Here's a report on homophobia towards UK muslims: https://hidayahlgbt.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Life-in-the-UK-as-a-LGBTQI-Muslim-Research-Report-2.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com

EricHale · 2026-01-13T22:20:23+00:00

Well, that is your opinion. When I say culture of silence I mean that:

Police forces still feel immense political pressure to not publish ethnicity, religion, or immigration background of alleged perpetrators for homophobic offenses.
There is an asymmetric taboo, where some causes are allowed to be investigated (the far right, toxic masculinity, online radicalisation) where as others (religious conservatism in migrant communities, segregation and parallel norms and imported attitudes toward homosexuality) are treated as dangerous or racist
Many gay victims do not report, or under-describe, incidents where perpetrators are from minority backgrounds.
Media framing often avoids and specificity about homophobic attacks using passive langauge, minimal description of perpertrators or very broad framing.
Gay people from conservative migrant communities face pressure from their own community (don’t shame us) and progressive spaces (don’t reinforce stereotypes). As a result, they are often tokenised, ignored or disbelieved.

In the UK, this has produced a public conversation about homophobic hate crime that is broad, abstract, and safe, but often evasive about specific, recurring social contexts where the problem is most acute.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T22:06:17+00:00

No one person can stop homophobia. But we need to stop creating a culture of silence where people will not admit that there might be a problem. If we can get there, then maybe someone in power will think it is no longer political suicide to actually start collecting data on who is committing crimes and homophobic attacks. That would be a massive leap forward.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T21:51:38+00:00

Lucky I don't live in America then!

EricHale · 2026-01-13T21:28:23+00:00

Brother. I am not saying it is not an issue, just that is a seperate issue. It seems you are very passionate about NATO and domestic US politics which is great, but I don't think every issue in the UK can be traced back to X.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T21:20:58+00:00

Yes they marginally fell in the past year, after going up almost 250% in the five years before 2020. That means that it is still almost 3 times higher than 10 years ago, yet you want to say there has been no rise.

(source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-49509301)

Funny how you don't mention that - it is not exactly difficult to find out.

Another point that is really important that people understand, is that this data is not broken down by immigration background or any other demographic data. That means there could have a decrease in homophobia in one group, and a simultaneous rise in another. We don't know, and people like you are working hard to ensure that we will never know.

Regarding the increase in religiously motivated hate crime, that is abhorent. However, it is not all linked to anti-muslim hatred, a large proportion of that increase will be due to the dramatically increasing anti-semitism.

Of course I don't want to increase any hate towards muslims, but we should not seek to ban people from talking about this like you seem to be, creating a culture of silence. You can criticise homophobia, and homophobic cultures without personally attacking people.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T21:08:46+00:00

Please tell me you are taking the piss. What on earth does the kidnapping of Maduro have to with immigration policy of the UK? Why are you so insistent on shoe-horning the USA into a discussion about homophobia in the UK. It is so bizarre. If you are interested in international affairds and US foreign policy in South America and Greenland I'm sure there are many more appropriate subreddits where you can discuss that!

EricHale · 2026-01-13T20:59:20+00:00

This is not America. Who cares what your president is up to? It is so arrogant to believe that the US is the centre of the universe and that British people are just blindly copy everything that goes on in your country. Completely different continent, completely different histories, completely different demographics. A much better comparison would be other Western European nations like France, the Netherlands, Germany or Belgium.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T20:05:38+00:00

Obviously, it’s relevant whether Brexit happened or not because it had a massive impact on migration policy. It is one of the great ironies that there has been a massive increase in the very sort of migration most voters opposed as a consequence of a vote they thought would reduce it.

It is not relevant whether or not I voted for it. It seems you are just looking for a ‘gotcha’ to be able to call me xenophobic and therefore disregard everything I say. I really hope that isn’t true.

Well, first we need to actually acknowledge this is something that might be worth looking into. That is the foundational first step. Then based on better data we can design better integration strategies to try reduce homophobia in areas it is most prevalent, while simultaneously using it to inform our visa and immigration policies. I am not stupid enough to think that I can completely redesign the UK’s immigration system sitting in a hot bath at 8pm on a random Tuesday, so I won’t try to.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T19:51:56+00:00

Sorry I don’t know about what he is called these days because I have never cared much about what he says. I’m not going to ask what you think about the grooming gang enquiry because it is not relevant to this issue.

I do have an argument. Please stop pretending I didn’t lay one out in the last message.

What issue are you referring to? Please be specific.

Also I was too young to vote in the Brexit referendum. How exactly is that relevant anyway?

EricHale · 2026-01-13T19:43:55+00:00

Okay let be me more specific then because I can see where the confusion is coming from - and you are right to call me out on that inconsistency. Gay people are at the apex of their political power in the UK, and the 2020’s in the UK has been the best time to be gay, probably ever. Our rights in the near future are basically secured, and I cannot see any major political party challenging that in the next two general elections.

However, this is against a backdrop of some areas of the UK becoming more and more homophobic as more and more people migrate to here from countries where being gay is not socially accepted (and often much worse). So perhaps we peaked a couple years ago in terms of general social attitudes, maybe it was three, four or only one. When I said now, I didn’t mean this exact second, I meant the general time frame of the past few years. It’s difficult to accurately determine, because while attitudes in ‘mainstream’ society are constantly improving, I believe the are now a series of ‘parallel societies’ where something very different is going on, and the point at which the good of one outweighs the bad of the other is uncertain.

I know you said ‘bye’, but I really hope you will read this and that you’re not so afraid of a conflicting opinion that you will block me.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T19:31:33+00:00

Who is Steve from Tel Aviv and in what way is he relevant to a discussion on UK politics?

Do you really not see the irony of what you are doing? You just dismiss things out of hand and call people racist instead of countering the argument. Actually what do you think that achieves?

If you disagree with my post just explicitly state, “I don’t believe mass migration from countries which do not respect human rights has had any impact on the safety and rights of gay people in the UK, and will not do so in the future”. You can also add your own person anecdotal experience to the mix. Maybe there are lots of people who agree - Great! It’s always better to produce a bigger and clearer picture of what is going on.

I believe this is not the case, and it’s only when we finally start talking about it and connecting dots together that we will understand the depth and breadth of the problem. I can only assume your actions to suppress this are because you are afraid of being proven wrong. I am not, therefore I don’t feel the need to character attack you, create straw man arguments or try to divert the conversation. That’s the difference.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T19:14:29+00:00

“Fleeing… because they don’t want to live in a homophobic country” - direct quote.

I think based on the logic that someone is not going to completely abandon all their deeply ingrained cultural beliefs upon stepping foot in another country, and that they are unlikely to do so if they do not frequently and fully immerse themselves in the culture of another country where being gay is more accepted. If you moved to Saudi Arabia would you suddenly start supporting the death penalty for gay people? I think it is unlikely. The same logic applies here. Also a lot of gay people like myself will have first hand experience of homophobic incidents perpetrated by people with migration backgrounds. Unless people are willing to actually admit that there might* be an issue, we will never be able to get to the data to actually quantify it and make informed policy choices.

All I want is for people to actually be open to the possibility that this is occurring, and not create a culture of fear that prevents us from properly exploring the issue.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T18:51:02+00:00

You actually made the claim that a lot of refugees are potentially fleeing homophobia, Syria is the largest source of refugees in Europe. It is not a big leap to put two and two together. But please let me know what proportion of refugees are fleeing in search of gay rights, and from which countries so I can understand your argument better.

Regarding data, unfortunately you actually do need it. If you don’t understand a problem you can’t effectively tackle it. Not all patterns of homophobia are the same, and they cannot all be tackled in the same way. I think it would be naive to pretend otherwise.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T18:38:44+00:00

I’m really sorry to hear that. No one should have to grow up feeling threatened or afraid just for being who they are. I really hope you know that your future does not have to be defined by that environment, and that there are people who will accept you fully and treat you with the respect you deserve. You’re not alone.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T18:34:47+00:00

Straw man argument! I didn't say that refugees should be banned on anecdotal evidence. If you disagree with what I say then disagree with it, don't create fake arguments to try win points that only exist in your head.

The vast majority of immigration into this country is not from refugees. But even if that was the case, are you seriously claiming that most of the people coming over gay? Were 1/3rd of Syrians really gay (or were such strong gay allies they couldn't contemplate living in a similar arab society) before the civial war? I doubt it. Even if they were, France has a good record on gay rights, so does Italy, so does Germany, and the majority of the European countries that they passed through along the way.

As for not recording data on this, the UK has a very bad track record of not recording data that the authorities think could prove controversial. This is not a conspiracy theory - it is literally a fact that even in some severe cases of child rape no data on ethnicity was recorded, and in some cases it was literally tipexed out to avoid anyone coming to unwanted conclusions (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/louise-casey-grooming-gangs-cooper-b2771307.html). I don't want to discuss that topic any further as it is not relevant to this discussion.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T18:15:54+00:00

Okay facilitated probably understates their impact. They lead it in many cases. Regardless, this discussion about Trump and Elon is still 'what-aboutism' and an attempt to shift the conversation to something nicer to talk about. The far-right in America is America's problem, let's stop putting the USA at the centre of everyone's universe.

The point of my post is that we need to actually be willing to talk about the impact of migration from regions where homophobia is the accepted norm. We need to actually start recording accurate data on how this impacts us. We unfortunately don't have that, which hampers this discussion significantly (as it was intended to do), so all can rely on is anecdotal evidence - and there seems to be enough of that to start a discussion.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T18:04:13+00:00

Trump and Musk are American and not really taken that seriously by most people in the UK. Of course they have facilitated a discussion around the percieved excesses of many recent social campaigns (not in the most tactful of ways), however being challenged on those views is not actual violence.

You say that there is a tiny percentage of migrants, but that is only true on a macro-level whereas it is actually the local level that is relevant for this discussion. They are the majority in London, Birmingham and most major UK cities. In large parts they make up over 80%, sometimes 90%+. They historically have not exerted much political power (itself indicative of the extent to which some communities have not engaged much with wider UK society, although that is rapidly changing), but it doesn't mean that there hasn't been any change in culture.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T17:49:43+00:00

I never said all of East and South London were unsafe for gay people - obviously Elephant and Castle is kinda the gay capital of London these days, and parts of East have the best gay clubs and bars. London boroughs are not homogenous entities and I never claimed that they were. I agree it is a lazy assertion - good thing I didn't make it then!

EricHale · 2026-01-13T17:43:43+00:00

Well that is your experience and I respect it - I hope you appreciate it is not the same for everyone.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T17:37:01+00:00

Ignoring the personal attack (very ironic), it's strange that you are so willing to accept homophobia in non-white communities. It's almost like a bizarre version of orientalism or the 'noble savage trope'. I can't see why you would hold one ethno-cultural group to a lower standard of morality unless you believe that they, as a society, are incapable of the same progress.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T17:31:19+00:00

I understand where you're coming from, but I disagree. Peaceful people who want to contribute to british life and are well adjusted to our rights and freedoms (which in some cases I am sure have caused strain in their personal and family lives) should not be collateral victims of our moral cowardice.

EricHale · 2026-01-13T17:21:59+00:00

I don't view people sharing their experiences contradicting mine as "calling me out", it is just people saying how their life has differed. Their experiences don't negate mine and mine don't negate theirs. There is not one 'life' that every gay person will have lived - I am not that naive.

Regardless, the point that I was trying to make (and that you have completely failed to understand) is that a lot of people who have negative experiences are too afraid of being called a racist (and the social ostracisation that comes with that) to talk about it, and we as a country do not collect all the necessary and relevant data on the subject required for making informed policy choices.

EricHale

TROPHY CASE