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Afraid To Be Gay?
23 May 2010
"Former Wales rugby union captain Gareth Thomas uses hidden-camera
footage to investigate attitudes to homosexuality, and explores why,
despite all the legislation, homophobic attacks are on the rise."
This programme aired on Thursday May 13th 2010. Watch the programme in 3 parts here. Of most interest to our campaign is the section where they asked two gay men to walk hand in hand down a busy high street in Britain (first with cameras and then without). There was little reaction apart from a couple of stares with cameras, in tow, and then a few comments from louts when they were secretly filming. During Vox Pops, on the whole most people seemed positive at the idea of same-sex hand holding, and the rest didn't seem to like any public displays to begin with. I think the comments seemed a bit condensed in the edit and really there was no
actual threat of violence from anybody towards the gay couple. You also have to look at the angle the programme
took which was hyping up the idea of LGBT's as victims, which is what
the press usually do. Gareth has done an incredibly brave thing by coming out in sport and the section where he engages a small group of school boys about their opinions on homosexuality was really well done. Gareth even posed for a photo for our campaign as part of International Same-Sex Hand Holding Week.
It's great to see homophobia issues gaining prime time coverage on TV, but don't let the ITV recorded homophobic comments of a couple of hooligans, put you off same-sex hand holding. We'd like to take the issues seriously but we want you to step outside of the victim box the media all too often put us in. At the very least, this programme shouldn't discourage you from holding hands.
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