LGF reports Daily Mail's Jan Moir for incitement to hatred

As reported earlier today by many news outlets including the LGF, The Daily Mail's Jan Moir published an opinion piece today which was nothing short of a character assassination of the late Stephen Gately. We believe it incites gay hatred and encourages those who would seek to attack gay people to be even more judgmental as well as fuel existing homophobia and intolerance of the gay community in general.

We perceive that this constitutes a hate incident and as such has been reported to the Metropolitan Police.

We will of course keep people up-to-date, both here on LGF Online and through Twitter, as it unfolds but what makes us sad is that this topic has arisen in such bad taste what with Stephen Gately's funeral being tomorrow.

The Lesbian & Gay Foundation’s Chief Executive Paul Martin said: “Everyone at the Lesbian & Gay Foundation is appalled and very disappointed. The death of Stephen Gately at such a young age is a tragedy and should be treated as such. Instead, Moir’s sweeping generalisations have not only insulted the singer, his partner and his family, but the lesbian, gay, and bisexual community as a whole. This incident highlights the ongoing challenge organisations like the LGF have in combating homophobia.

“We, of course, send our deepest condolences to Stephen’s husband, family and friends.”

A response from us at the LGF

Andrew Gilliver, Communications Manager at The Lesbian & Gay Foundation says, "There is no doubt in my mind after reading the entire article that in reporting on the death of Stephen Gately the author is offering a suggestion that his lifestyle as a gay man contributed to his death.

This offensive article has been highlighted by thousands of people as inflammatory and inciting hatred to the gay community as it insults Gately and his partner as well as the validity of civil partnerships and infers that Mr Gatley (and in turn the gay community) is not possible of dying a death from natural causes at such a young age.

Since the story was made public there has been a national outcry with hundreds of complaints on the Daily Mail website plus online forums and especially Twitter. Many people have been complaining to The Press Complaints Commission and I believe this story can be perceived to incite hatred against gay people; it encourages those who would seek to attack gay people to be even more judgemental and fuel existing homophobia and intolerance of the gay community. I believe that this is a homophobic hate incident.

By definition...

A hate incident is defined as:
'Any incident,which may or may not constitute a criminal offence, which is perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by prejudice or hate.'

If anyone read the actual newspaper article on Jan Moir's opinion page the tagline says 'Are you thinking what she's thinking?'

Therefore as this is a tabloid newspaper I believe that the intention was to incite prejudice against gay people and we all know that many people already have these thoughts which can and do lead to further attacks and violence against members of the gay and lesbian community.

This is not an objection to free speech or freedom of the press. What is needed here is to encourage members of the press, opinion writers, anyone who has a public platform such as Jan Moir to think about what they are saying before they commit to something that they will have to justify, after it has upset thousands of people and caused untold damage.

It would be interesting to speculate what this opinion would look like if Stephen Gately was not gay.

We must firstly pay tribute to him and send our condolences to his partner, family and friends and we must stand up for ourselves and our own community to say that we will not tolerate articles such as this which we believe are hurtful, prejudiced and tap into part of the community that does not wish us well.

Remember - if we do not stand up for ourselves then who will?

Make your complaint heard

The Press Complaints Commission is an independent organisation monitoring British newspapers and magazines to ensure they adhere to ethical guidelines. As tweeter kenrayner says, "[Jan Moir] breaches 1, 3, 5 & 12 of the code". The online complaints form is located here.

You can also email in your complaint to: complaints@pcc.org.uk

Report it to the Metropolitan Police by clicking here.

Follow us on Twitter too by clicking here.