Talk:Peter Tatchell/Archive 1

message: I say that the Polytechnic of North London is now the University of NL on the History page, but it is actually now part of the London Metropolitan University. I should read the pages I link to! The UNL page gives more of the pre-history of the institution than the LMU page, so the link is acccidentally more appropriate.
Philip Cross 03:39, 11 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Till about 24 hours ago there wasn't a critics' section. I just reorganised the article and added subheadings. I'm not familiar with Ken Livingstone's essay because I don't know very much about Tatchell himself. But feel free to whack in a reference to it! It'd be absolutely super if you had a link to the paper itself too. Happy editing! Wulfilia 20:17, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Correction 

message: Tatchell has drawn great criticsm from many quarters for his advoaction
I don't like this section for 2 reasons:
1. It doesn't say who the "many quarters" are - who are these undefined people?
2. Tatchell _doesn't_ believe that anyone can have sex with 12 year olds - he believes in stepped ages of consent, which is similar to the law in the Netherlands. --Paul Moloney 01:03, 13 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for putting this in. I've now changed it, having found the 1996 OutRage! press release that Peter gave me at the time. David | Talk 22:43, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism (Underage Sex) 

message: Is on pages 124 and 129 of this pdf (warning, 38.9 MB). Don't know if it has much to do with Peter Tatchell other than that Ken Livingstone used it to attack him. David | Talk 22:24, 28 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  The Hijab quote 

message: From the Tribune:
The only place I could find it online was:
Human rights campaigners claiming victory after Sir lqbal Sacranie failed to speak, as advertised, at the recent trade union-sponsored Unite Against Fascism (UAF) conference in London. His no-show followed widespread protests against his participation. Sacranie has condemned gay people as immoral, harmful and diseased.
Supported by London Mayor Ken Livingstone, plus five trade unions and the South East Region of the TUC, the UAF conference theme was "Stop the BNP". Why did UAF invite a speaker whose views on homosexuality echo the bigotry of the far Right?
A coalition of Left-wingers, trade unionists, gay activists and progressive Muslims accused Sacranie of parroting the homophobia of the British National Party and argued he was unfit to attend a conference dedicated to fighting neo-Nazi hatred.
Imagine the reaction if BNP leader Nick Griffin said black people were unacceptable and spread disease. The Left would demand his arrest. But when lqbal Saeranie, leader of the Muslim Council of Britain, made similar intolerant remarks about gay people, most of the Left looked the other way.
Sacranie is a hypocrite. While demanding the right to say offensive things about homosexuals, he doesn't want anyone to have the right to say offensive things about Islam. He demands the freedom to be homophobic but is lobbying to curtail the free speech of those who criticise or satirise his religion. The man is a bigot, yet some on the Left embrace him as an ally.
Labour MPs Michael Meacher and Sadiq Khan agreed to share a platform with Sacranie. So did a number of union leaders. All oppose homophobia, but saw no contradiction in boosting the credibility of a Muslim leader who campaigns to deny human rights to gay people.
The National Assembly Against Racism was another sponsor of the UAF conference. It would never share a platform with a racist, but its leader, Lee Jasper, seemed happy to line up with a homophobe. Do some on the Left believe some victims of oppression are more worthy than others? Race and religion are, it seems, at the top of their tainted hierarchy of oppression, while queers and women are at the bottom. They would rather appease homophobes in the Muslim community than defend gay people.
The conference organisers defend their decision to invite Sacranie on the grounds that they want to create the broadest possible alliance against the BNP. But would they argue that creating a broad alliance against climate change or the Iraq war justifies embracing racists?
A broad alliance against the BNP is a good idea. Solidarity with the Muslim community against Islamophobic discrimination is important. But why does most of the Left always chose to ally with reactionary Muslim leaders and never with liberal Muslims? Why didn't the UAF invite progressive Muslim speakers, such as Ziauddin Sardar, Sheikh Dr Muhammad Yusuf or Munira Mirza?
Sacranie heads the Muslim Council of Britain. Many MCB members support Sharia law – a clerical form of fascism, where society is ruled by religious leaders and the death penalty is enforced against unchaste women and Muslims who embrace "unlslamic" ideologies such as socialism.
Unlike human rights groups such as Amnesty International and Liberty, the MCB is consulted by the Government on major policy issues. But it is a deeply reactionary organisation. Resorting to inflammatory language barely distinguishable from the homophobic tirades of the BNP, the MCB website demonises samesex relationships as "offensive", "immoral" and "repugnant".
Trade unions would not sponsor a conference with a speaker who said that Jamaicans or Hindus are offensive, immoral and repugnant. Why were they willing to host a homophobe who says these things about gays and lesbians?
Sacranie's views are not an isolated aberration. They are widely shared within the MCB. Another prominent official, Dr Abdul Maffid Katme, is quoted by the Muslim writer Anissa Helie as telling a conference in this country: "Lesbianism is spreading like fire in society. We must vaccinate our children against this curse".
Sacranie and the MCB are guilty of more than stirring homophobic hatred. Working together with their fundamentalist allies in the Evangelical Alliance and the Christian Institute, they actively campaign in favour of legal discrimination against gays.
The MCB opposed an equal age of consent, same-sex civil partnerships and the outlawing of homophobic discrimination in the workplace. It backed the retention of Section 28 and a ban on gay couples fostering or adopting children.
Sacranie has led the MCB's homophobic attacks on the lesbian and gay community. He put his name to an MCB news release condemning the repeal of Section 28 as "giving legitimacy to so-called 'gay families' and 'gay marriage' through the back door", and paving the way for councils to "spend public money on homosexual youth groups, homosexual youth workers and homosexual festivals".
One reason why the MCB refuses to participate in Holocaust Memorial Day is because it objects to the ceremony including a commemoration of what it dismisses as "the so-called gay genocide". The MCB regards the murder of gay people in Nazi death camps as unworthy of remembrance.
This year's Festival of Muslim Cultures is being funded by the Home Office and the British Council. Its aim is to showcase the "diversity and plurality" of Muslim communities. Nevertheless, the festival has banned gay Muslim events from its programme; allegedly at the insistence of the MCB.
Despite nearly 40 years of Leftwing activism, I am now persona non grata among the pro-Islamist Left, especially the Socialist Workers' Party, Respect and the Stop The War Coalition. This is partly because 1 have challenged the MCB's homophobia and misogyny and defended liberal Muslims against authoritarian Islamists.
Ken Livingstone and his friends in Socialist Action have condemned me as an Islamophobe. His allies run the Islamophobia Watch website. [Which will no doubt come as a surprise to Eddie Truman! – MS]
They denounce me as anti-Muslim. My crime is exposing Right-wing Islamists like the cleric, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi, who endorses female genital mutilation and the execution of apostates and gay people. Most of my hate mail used to come from supporters of the far Right. These days, much of it comes from people on the far Left and their Islamist friends.
By failing to tackle the prejudiced politics of Right-wing Muslim leaders, the Left is leaving the field wide open to the BNP. Islamophobic demagogues could easily exploit the vacuum created by the Left's ambivalence towards Islamist intolerance. Most of the Left ignores the homophobic, sexist and anti-humanitarian agenda of the Muslim Right.
If socialists continue to remain silent, the fear is that the BNP will fill the void with a generalised, irresponsible and unjust anti-Muslim hate.
—Preceding unsigned comment added by Irishpunktom (talk • contribs) 
:OK, that seems reasonable. David | Talk 10:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tribune

message: The problem with including "self-described" is that it could be put on almost anyone. After all, Her Majesty describes herself as Queen, and many others do not recognise the title. I think, within the bounds of reason, people should be allowed to keep the descriptions they choose for themselves, especially with something as wide-ranging as "human rights" about which there is a very wide range of views about what it encompasses.
And was Adam Yosef being a modern day Juvenal, satirically taking on the taboos of a society, or was he just being a ranting homophobic bigot? Terribly difficult to tell the difference in the abstract, but I think the issue is whether he claimed they were satirical, and I can't find any place where he did. David | Talk 10:20, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Regarding the first point, I've tried to compromise, citing his organisation.  Regarding Adam, it was a "Piss-take", it was far from serious, as is his style.  You say you have read the piece, have you read it all? --Irishpunktom\talk 11:57, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't want to get all tu quoque about this, but I could quite envisage that some of the BNP's islamophobic rants might be defended as "far from serious" and "satire" because they try to put jokes into them. A criticism is a criticism, whether intended as satire or not. David | Talk 12:07, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  So thats a No then - What, exactly, are ytou basing your opinion of the article on then? - The carefully edited version presented by Tatchell and co?--Irishpunktom\talk 12:31, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think I did read the whole thing at one stage, but it's not really relevant. Criticism is criticism whether undertaken through the medium of satire or not. David | Talk 17:25, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: "Self-described" and satire

message: Adding each individual little element of the dispute relating to the Qaradawi visit is leaving this article seriously unbalanced as this one incident, long-running though it has been, is not the most important in Peter Tatchell's career. Unless the rest of the article is similarly expanded I will go through and prune it all back. David | Talk 17:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Expand the other stuff rather than removing other peoples work. --Irishpunktom\talk 22:56, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unbalanced article 

message: Can we just condense this down to "gay rights activist", or is there a reason you're using such a strangulated construction, Irishpunktom?
--Paul Moloney 22:46, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: There is indeed a reason. Irishpunktom wants to have it as "gay rights activist" but can't make that edit for a while because it's a 3RR violation. I have pointed out that Peter Tatchell has ceased to be merely a gay rights activist, and is now referred to and defines himself as a "human rights activist". See Irishpunktom's talk page for the cites justifying my edit. David | Talk 22:50, 23 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: An interesting sidebar to this debate: I went back and looked at the very first edit to the article and lo and behold look what I saw. It also reminds me that 1 AM tomorrow will be the second anniversary of my first edit to this article! I must have written most of it, too. No, Irishpunktom, you are most definitely not invited to the party. David | Talk 01:16, 26 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  "an activist based in Britain who became famous for his role is publicising Gay rights" 

message: If the  tag is not to be removed swiftly, it's time for Irishpunktom to list precisely the areas he objects to. I've set out a template below for this. David | Talk 22:32, 25 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time for Irishpunktom to list his objections 

message: Don't like this heading. Why not just 'other campaigns'? Are we saying that criticising Eminem is more controversial than his OutRage! work was at the time? Dogville 11:23, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Controversies

message: Subject has just disputed the claim that his greatest mistake was the 10 Bishops in 1994. The source is The Independent of October 15, 2003, pages 2-4 of the supplement (an article where many celebrities have been asked about their greatest mistakes). Subject said:
:"I knew when Outrage outed 10 Anglican bishops in 1994 it was going to be controversial, but I totally underestimated the way it would be misrepresented. Most of the media portrayed outing as a vindictive and cruel exposure of innocent, harmless churchmen. The truth was that we outed the bishops because they were publicly condemning homosexuals and opposing gay human rights while privately having gay affairs. They were outed because they were hypocrites and homophobes. The bishops' two-faced double standards were never reported, let alone criticised. Instead, we were denounced as 'homosexual terrorists'. My miscalculation derailed what was a very important and still relevant campaign against Anglican homophobia."
Hope this clears it up for the few people listening to Little Atoms. David | Talk 16:26, 14 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: So you admit now that you lied when you said he had never outed anyone? Or are Christians not really people in your eyes? --Irishpunktom\talk 11:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greatest mistake 

message: The idea that Tatchell is a HUman Rights campaigner is POV. he is a self decribed one, but is actually a Gay Rights or anti-Muslim campaigner. --Irishpunktom\talk 11:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: No, that's just your POV. Not good enough. Tag coming off. David | Talk 13:42, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  No, its his POV that he is ahuman rights campaigner, and not a Gay rights one. --Irishpunktom\talk 13:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Let me explain. Gay rights is a subset of human rights, so even if Peter Tatchell had done no other campaigning than gay rights, it would still be correct to describe him as a human rights campaigner. As it is, he has done substantially more campaigning on areas which do not touch gay rights. David | Talk 14:07, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  "substantially more" - SOurce that! --Irishpunktom\talk 14:13, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: It's not in the article so I don't need to source it. I merely need to point to Zimbabwe, to Australia and the aborigines, to the Vietnam war, to Malawi, to Iraq, to the Ahwazi people of Iran, and to the persecuted Danish people over the cartoons. None of these were gay rights issues. David | Talk 14:16, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  So its unsourced speculation on your part, a lot of speculation. The fact is he is a gay rights campainger who has engaged in breaching the Human rights of others. --Irishpunktom\talk 14:30, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Tag

message: David, which claims do you want verified or sourced?--Irishpunktom\talk 13:40, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I want a source, other than your own calculation, stating that Tatchell has deliberately concentrated on muslim homophobia and remained silent on other sources. David | Talk 13:43, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I never said "deliberately concentrated" I just wrote down cited fact, and a quote by him. Where did I say he remained silent? --Irishpunktom\talk 13:50, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You can't prove the contention you are seeking to assert merely by that sort of calculation anyway. The calculation means nothing. You need a source making the assertion which I detailed above, and then it would have to be written in as an assertion made about Peter Tatchell rather than as a fact. David | Talk 14:08, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The statement is cited and is fact.  The fact is that in the religion section of his website 10 of the 13 articles refer to Islam and Muslims. This is fact, and is cited from the website.  Further, of the Guardian Comment is Free, 5 of his seven pieces thus far relate to islam.  Again fact, again cited. This is verified by sources linking directly to the places the claims refer to. --Irishpunktom\talk 14:12, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: other tag

message: Given the flurry of edits today I've protected this. All editors (yes, that includes me) must agree on the talk page. Protection is not an endorsement of the current version. David | Talk 14:19, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Revert it to the previous version and then say its not an endorsement.  You've removed valid sourced info you dislike and then prevented others from editing it. That is utterly ridiculous.--Irishpunktom\talk 14:29, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm reviewing the protection as an uninvolved admin, because of the complaint. I was going to protect it on the version that didn't involve a 3RR violation, but as you both seem to have violated it, that won't work, so I'm going to judge by content, which we're normally not meant to do, but there's no other criterion in this case. I'm going to protect it on the current version, because what Tom is doing is borderline OR. On the one hand, it's like saying 2 + 2 = 4, because anyone with access to the source can count how often Tatchell has written about Muslims. On the other hand, if no published source has made the same point, it's arguably an example of adding an unpublished analysis or novel synthesis in order to advance a position, which is a violation of OR. So Tom, I'm going to protect on the other version. Sorry. If you want to make the point, try to find a source who has said the same thing. SlimVirgin (talk) 14:49, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Incidentally I wouldn't want it thought that the reason I protected this version was that it was my preferred version - it certainly isn't. There are many more problems which Irishpunktom has introduced which I would like to tackle during the period of protection. As a matter of fact I only decided on protection after removing the original research paragraph. Had Irishpunktom reverted again, that would have been the protected version. David | Talk 14:53, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  The source was Islamophobia watch , which Tatchell himself has condemned (Which surely would make it notable in this context at least?) originally reported it, but David decided it was "not acceptable", so he removed it. --Irishpunktom\talk 14:55, 11 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protected