In January, on the BBC
East Midlands television programme Inside
Out, Ray Gosling, the 70-year-old
broadcaster and gay-rights activist, who has
made hundreds of television documentaries
over several decades, admitted to ending his
lover’s life in a mercy killing:
Maybe this is the time to
share a secret that I’ve kept for a long
time. I killed someone once. He was a young
chap. He had been my lover, and he had AIDS.
Doctors said, “There’s
nothing we can do.” And he was in terrible,
terrible pain, and I said to the doctor,
“Leave me, just for a bit,” and he went
away, and I picked up the pillow and I
smothered him until he was dead.
The doctor came back and
I said, “He’s gone.” Nothing more was ever
said.
When you love someone,
it’s difficult to see them suffer. My
feelings on euthanasia are like jelly – they
wobble about.
We’d got a pact. If it
got worse, the pain, and nobody could do
anything, yes, I said I’d do it. It’s a
terrible, terrible thing to know what to do.
This is the time to share
a secret I have kept for quite a long time.
The BBC news website
spoke to Dr Peter Saunders, of a pressure
group called Care Not Killing, who called
for police to investigate.
Saunders said, “We have a
case, by Ray’s account, not of assisted
suicide but of intentional killing or
murder.”
Terrible pain
Gosling was asked by the
Inside Out presenter, Marie Ashby, if
he had any regrets. “Absolutely none,” he
said. “He was in terrible pain – I was there
and I saw it. It breaks you into pieces.”
Here is the clip from
that programme in which Ray Gosling made his
secret known to viewers in the East Midlands
– and the world.
Gosling initially
declined to name his lover but, during some
thirty hours of questioning by
Nottinghamshire Police before being released
until April, he says he felt he’d had no
choice but to give them the man’s name.
The story has been widely
reported around the world and a Facebook
group, “Support for Ray Gosling”,
has been set up. It states, “The UK NEEDS an
informed debate on assisted suicide. We have
lived for too long by draconian laws that
punish family members for showing compassion
to terminally ill loved-ones.”
Over the years, Gosling
has made hundreds of documentary films,
including his highly acclaimed three-part
documentary series, Ray Gosling Reports,
which was reshown in the UK on BBC Four last
summer. In 2007, at the Grierson Awards (for
documentary films), the third installment,
Ray Gosling OAP, beat off tough
competition from Alan Sugar’s The
Apprentice to collect the Jonathan Gili
Award for Most Entertaining Documentary.
The three documentaries –
Ray Gosling Reports: Bankrupt; Ray
Gosling Reports: Pension Crisis; and
Ray Gosling Reports: OAP – are produced
by Available Light.
Gay monitors
Gosling, along with
fellow campaigner Allan Horsfall – a founder
of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in
the UK – run Gay Monitor, which keeps tabs
on court cases concerning older gay men who
may have been wrongly accused.
Ray Gosling
(left) with Allan Horsfall
The pair say on the website:
We’ve watched, supported
and sometimes advised men caught up in
appalling prosecutions during recent and
ongoing current times in Lancashire – but
we’re certain similar is going on all over
the country and this website hopes to show
the bigger picture.
Pink Triangle Trust
The UK’s only gay
humanist charity, and publishers of G&LH,
the Pink Triangle Trust (PTT) has recently
spoken out on several issues.
Support for Leo Igwe
In January, the PTT
expressed its grave concern about the
continual harassment of the Nigerian
humanist and human-rights activist, Leo
Igwe, who has made a staunch public defence
of LGBT rights in his country.
Since 2007, Igwe and
members of his family have been subjected to
a sustained campaign of harassment by police
involving multiple arrests on
unsubstantiated charges.
Igwe is the executive
secretary of the Nigerian Humanist Movement.
In 2006, he made an impassioned appeal to
members of the Nigerian National Assembly
not to pass a Bill that would not only
criminalise gay marriage but also impose a
five-year jail sentence on anyone who has a
gay relationship or anyone who aids or
supports a gay marriage or relationship. The
Bill had the blessing of the Nigerian
Anglican Church and its leader, Archbishop
Peter Akinola, as well as the then Nigerian
President, Olusegun Obasanjo, who declared
that homosexual practice “is clearly
unbiblical, unnatural and definitely unAfrican”.
Leo Igwe
In 2008, Igwe and his
humanist colleagues were awarded the Rainbow
Humanist Award by Nordic Rainbow Humanists
“for their courageous defence of LGBT rights
and dignity in the face of ferocious attacks
from homophobic Nigerian politicians,
parliamentarians and religious leaders
calling for the imprisonment of those having
homosexual relations and those who dare to
support such relations, and for reminding
fellow countrymen and women in Nigeria of
the need to safeguard the spirit of the
United Nations Declaration of Human Rights
and the need for reason, common sense,
thoughtfulness, knowledge, love, tolerance,
solidarity and empathy, instead of hate and
homophobia”.
The PTT’s secretary,
George Broadhead, commented:
We are very concerned
about Mr Igwe. He is fearless and selfless
in fighting for justice for LGBT people.
Like the UK’s Peter Tatchell, he is never
afraid to challenge the powerful even when
he is a lone voice and knows that the
powerful may hurt him. It is up to his
fellow humanists and others concerned with
human rights to show that he does not stand
alone, and work together to ensure justice
for him.
The PTT has sent a letter
of protest to the Nigerian High Commissioner
in the UK, Dr Dalhatu Sarki Tafida, and
asked the European Parliament’s Intergroup
on LGBT Rights to issue a public
condemnation.
You can also read a story
about Leo Igwe and the Nigerian Humanist
Movement in World Watch.
POPE – People Opposing
Papal Edicts
In February, the PTT
reacted angrily to the statements made by
the Pope concerning his impending visit to
the UK.
Referring to the UK’s
commitment to equality of opportunity for
all members of society, the Pope said: “The
effect of some of the legislation designed
to achieve this goal has been to impose
unjust limitations on the freedom of
religious communities to act in accordance
with their beliefs. In some respects it
actually violates the natural law upon which
the equality of all human beings is grounded
and by which it is guaranteed.”
The PTT’s secretary,
George Broadhead, replied:
This is a thinly veiled
attack on the anti-discrimination
legislation concerning LGBT people. His
claim that our equality laws undermine
religious freedom suggests that he supports
the right of churches to discriminate in
accordance with their religious ethos. He
seems to be defending discrimination by
religious institutions and demanding that
they should be above the law.
This pope has shown
himself to be paranoid about homosexuality.
His opposition to LGBT rights knows no
bounds. He has declared that saving humanity
from homosexual behaviour was as important
as saving the rainforest from destruction.
This must be the most outrageous and bizarre
claim yet made by someone who has already
got a well-deserved reputation as one of the
most viciously homophobic world leaders on a
par with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran and
Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe.
But his entrenched
homophobia is not the only reason for
criticising the visit. The taxpayer in this
country is going to be faced with a bill of
some £20m as the visit will be paid for by
the Government, not the Vatican. We
therefore call on all freethinkers,
humanists and like-minded people to sign the
petition
launched by the National Secular Society
(NSS) whose president, Terry Sanderson,
said: “We have a petition online where
people can make clear their opposition
to the state funding of this visit. If
the Catholic Church wishes its leader to
come here, it should pay for the visit
itself.”
It is imperative that the
strongest possible protest be made when his
so-called holiness visits the UK. This is
not without precedent. During the last papal
visit to the UK, by John Paul II in 1982, a
protest called POPE (People Opposing Papal
Edicts) was instigated by the Gay Humanist
Group (GHG). It had the support of other gay
and secular organisations including the
Campaign for Homosexual Equality (CHE) and
the NSS. On the occasion of the impending
visit, we must pull out all the stops to
demonstrate our opposition.
Faith sex
Also, in February, the
PTT reacted with dismay and disgust to the news that the UK
Government had caved in to religious
pressure, especially from Roman Catholic
sources, concerning Sex and Relationships
Education (SRE).
An amendment to the
Children, Schools and Families Bill tabled
by Secretary of State Ed Balls would permit
state-funded “faith schools” to teach PSHE,
which includes Sex and Relationships
Education, “in a way that reflects the
school’s religious character”.
PTT secretary George
Broadhead said: “It is outrageous that the
Government is planning to deny young people
the right to accurate, balanced PSHE and Sex
and Relationships Education, and allow
state-funded schools to teach the subject
from a religious viewpoint. By taking this
position, it is implicitly condoning
homophobia in schools and undermining
attempts to tackle homophobic bullying. [See
“Airings”
in this issue of G&LH.] This
looks like another
Section 28.
“Once again
the government has kowtowed to religions by
allowing faith schools to tailor their sex-education lessons to their own beliefs.
“Why should
atheist and Humanist parents have to send
their children to faith schools and risk
having their minds polluted by some of the
reactionary teachings of these faiths?
“To echo the
words of the British Humanist Association,
the consequence of this bill is that it will
shift the focus of the law as it applies to
faith schools away from the needs of
children, towards the religious prejudices
of the school, as if this is what the law
should really be protecting. Who is
education supposed to benefit
– the
child or the church?
“Faith schools now make up one third of the
total number, and all three main political
parties intend to expand them further.
Unsurprisingly, a Stonewall survey revealed
that a higher proportion of anti-gay
bullying occurs in faith schools than in
others. How is this going to be tackled if
such schools are permitted to teach pupils
that gay sexual relationships are sinful?”
Pathetic
and spineless
This latest disgrace follows the UK
government’s climb-down earlier in the month
over its Equality Bill.
The PTT described
that climb-down as “pathetic and spineless”.
Its secretary, George
Broadhead, said: “This abject climb-down has
obviously been prompted by the Pope’s recent
criticism of the pro-gay clause in the bill
and is a clear indication, if any were
needed, of the continuing malign political
influence exerted by the Catholic Church.
“New
Labour has achieved a good deal in relation
to gay rights and equality, but Harriet
Harman has given way to the unelected
Anglican Bishops in the House of Lords and
Catholic pressure on the Equality Bill, and
now Ed Balls has evidently succumbed to that
same pressure on the Children, Schools and
Families Bill.”
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