Fighting for the right to be proud
The Castle Tavern: One of Oxford's three overtly gay bars and popular with the university's LGBT society.
Oxford is officially recognised as being the ninth gayest city in the UK. You would perhaps expect there to be an atmosphere of greater tolerance than in other British cities. In central Oxford, one gets this feeling that this is the case. Pubs and clubs are embracing the gay population and the university’s LBGT society is thriving. Two weeks ago the Union, a symbol of all that is traditional about Oxford, played host to Gene Robinson, the openly gay bishop of New Hampshire.
Based on these facts, one might question whether there is still a need to campaign for gay rights at all. Yet a recent anti-gay backlash in America has raised the question of how sure a nominally tolerant society can ever be of sustaining its achievements, and new research has shown there is a serious problem with homophobia in Oxford.
So do Queer Rights campainers need to work harder in order to raise awareness or does the problem lie outside the student community? The Homophobia Awareness Liaison Team (HALT) says, “LGBT people in Oxfordshire have experienced high levels of homophobic abuse and violence throughout their lifetimes and consider it to be normal”.
The group claims that not only do the majority of homosexuals in Oxfordshire experience violent assault and abuse, but they are too intimidated to report the crimes. After interviewing a selection of 234 LGB people in Oxford, they found that 82 per cent had experienced such abuse in their lifetimes with 53 per cent having experienced a violent assault. There have been at least 8850 incidents in the last three years.
Thames Valley Police Offi cers are generally confident about their ability to provide a professional service to LGBT people, and certain liaison groups have been set up to make reporting crime easier. There is still a serious issue, however, with intimidation both in the of reporting crimes and generally within society.
Only 27 per cent of violent homophobic incidents are reported to the police compared with the 62 per cent of regular violent incidents and only 18 per cent of LGBT people would report verbal abuse. General intimidation is also an issue as well as actual abuse. 80 per cent of LGBT people refusing to hold the hand of a same-sex partner in public out of fear of retribution. Talking to Oxford students, this is not the impression one gets of the city.
Delyth Scudmore, LGB society President in 2003, claimed, “Oxford is one of the most open-minded cities outside of London,” and this certainly does seem to be the case. Many LGBT students at Oxford say that they have never experienced any abuse and even the survey comments that focus group respondents often compared Oxford favourably to the towns where they grew up or where they had lived before. Oliver Mason, Somerville LGB rep is one of these people.
“Oxford as a university and as a town is extremely tolerant and a lot more gay than Cambridge,” he said. The university’s LGBT society was the fourth one of its kind to be set up in Britain and has expanded rapidly, organising over 25 events each term. Oxford as a town in general also seems to be entirely acceptant of LGBT people. There are three almost exclusively ‘gay’ pubs within the centre and large numbers of club nights.
There is a gay community centre on St Michael’s street and the massive Gay Pride annual event, held last year at the OxPens fi eld. HALT Regional Manager, Steven Jones, suggested that such high profi le events antagonise homophobic assaults. He claimed that incidentstended to take place on nights of the week when gay events were operating. “Homophobes know that queers will be out and about. The object of their bigotry is obvious,” he said.
Even Amy Garner, LGBT Society President saw that making too much of a statement of difference could be detrimental to the cause. “If everyone stops seeing homosexuality as abnormal then there wouldn’t be a problem at all.” Yet if events such as Gay Pride are antagonistic, it surely also proves that queer rights campaigning is still necessary. Jones himself highlighted this when he said, “As long as there is intollerance there will be a continuation of high profi le events.
Garner emphasised this. “As always the issue is more with the bigot than the campainer. Whilst things remain unequal and gays don’t have equal rights in matters such as marriage and adoption, the need for queer rights (QR) continues. We must not forget that QR was fundamental to achieving the abolition of Section 28.” Garner also questioned the validity of HALT’s findings. “I wonder how many were students”, she said.
“As far as I’m aware, there have been no homophobic incidents this academic year. The survey asked a very small margin of people when you consider that the LGBTSoc has over 1000 students on its mailing list.” One of the Castle Tavern owners claimed he did not find homophobia a problem in central Oxford: "I have lived here for six years and have never had any problems because I am gay."
Perhaps then, the serious abuse is confined to areas out of the centre of Oxford and the student population or is not even as severe as HALT’s survey would have us believe. Yet this does not mean we should become complaicent. We may have come a long way, in becoming an open and tolerant society, but a quick look around us shows that things can change very quickly indeed.
In areas of America, normally considered to be fairly liberal, there has been a recent wave of institutes to ‘cure’ people of homosexuality being set up. These institutes, such as the ‘Exodus International’ group promote the persecution of homosexuals through the usual discriminatory tactic of it being ‘unnatural’ and ‘un-Christian’.
Though they have been condemned by the American Psychological Association and the American Psychiatric Association, the institutes have continued to multiply across America with Exodus alone having over 120 ministries in the US and Canada. Whether or not there is currently a serious problm with homophobia in Oxford or not, standing up against intimidation is somthing we we must be vigilant about.
Even when queer rights appear to be so well represented in Oxford University, it is clear that there is still a need to assert them. Garner believes that QR should still act as a monitor even once total equality is reached. “Once the issues are resolved the approach of QI campaigners will need to change, but they should not stop working altogether.” Society is hyper-sensative to homophobia today, but perhaps this is a testament to the fact that it still exists.
17th Nov 2005