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'A lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public really creepy,' said Griffin
Question Time
Question Time makes time for Moir
In a programme almost totally dominated by the presence of BNP leader Nick Griffin, last night's much-anticipated Question Time still found time for a question from the audience regarding Jan Moir's Daily Mail piece about the death of Stephen Gately.
Asked whether the Mail should have published the article, panel members Griffin, justice secretary Jack Straw, shadow minister for community cohesion Baroness Warsi, playwright Bonnie Greer and Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Chris Huhne all defended the paper's right to do so on the grounds of free speech, but condemned its content.
Straw described it as "odious", Huhne said it was "cruel homophobic prejudice" and Greer called it "nasty, cruel and inccurate". Straw alluded to Moir's claim that Gately's death "strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships", describing it as "ludicrous" and "utter nonsense".
Chairman David Dimbleby didn't ask Warsi about the article, instead stating that she had "written about the promotion of homosexuality undermining family life" and presumed that she was against the teaching of homosexuality and the scrapping of Section 28. She didn't deny any of these points and when asked if she was in favour of civil partnerships at first went back to the question about Moir's article until, pressed by Dimbleby, said: "I think that people who want to be together in the form of a civil partnership absolutely have the right to do that."
During her campaign as Conservative candidate for Dewsbury in the 2005 election Warsi distributed leaflets in Muslim areas saying that Labour was "promoting homosexuality" to schoolchildren and that equalising the age of consent allowed "schoolchildren to be propositioned for homosexual relationships".
Dimbleby said that Griffin had described homosexuals as "repulsive". Griffin replied that "a lot of people find the sight of two grown men kissing in public really creepy. I understand that homosexuals don't understand that but that's how a lot of us feel, a lot of Christians feel that way, Muslims, all sorts of people. I don't know why, it's just the way it is."
To shouts of "rubbish" from the audience, Griffin said: "I took a party ten years ago which said that homosexuality should be outlawed, people should be driven underground and persecuted. The British National Party position now is that what people do in the privacy of their own homes is absolutely up to them and the state has no right to interfere, but nor do militant homosexuals, not all of them, the militant ones, do not have the right to try and preach homosexuality to schoolchildren. That is perverse."
A lesbian audience member told Griffin that "the feeling of revulsion is mutual", at which he smiled and laughed.
