HOMOPHOBIA: THE VIOLENCE OF INTOLERANCE

[Butterfly]

HOMOPHOBIA: THE VIOLENCE OF INTOLERANCE
25 October, 2010


http://www.modernghana.com/news/301809/1/homophobia-the-violence-of-intolerance.html


Seth Walsh was thirteen years old when he walked into the garden of the home he shared with his family in Tehachapi, California last month and hanged himself. Before taking the tragic decision to end his life, he had endured years of homophobic taunting and abuse from his peers at school and in the neighbourhood. He is one of six teenage boys in the United States known to have committed suicide in September alone after suffering at the hands of homophobic bullies.

In the past few weeks we have seen a spate of attacks directed against people perceived as gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender. In Belgrade on 10 October, a group of protesters shouting abuse hurled Molotov cocktails and stun grenades into a peaceful gay pride parade, injuring 150 people. In New York on 3 October, three young men, believed to be gay, were kidnapped, taken to a vacant apartment in the Bronx and subjected to appalling torture and physical abuse. In South Africa, a large-scale march in Soweto brought attention to the widespread rape of lesbians in the townships, which perpetrators often try to justify as an attempt to "correct" the victims' sexuality.