Video of men holding hands in UK town goes viral
AN online video showing two straight male radio presenters holding hands has gone viral, depicting homophobic harassment in a UK street.
Radio presenters Iain Lee and Justin Dealey were filmed conducting a social experiment by acting as a gay couple.
The British radio hosts held hands and walked through the streets of Luton, located north of London.
The experiment was brought on by a 23-year-old gay listener who called the radio station and said that he and his boyfriend frequently received insults from strangers on the street. This came as a shock to the radio presenters.
In the video, the presenters were harassed from strangers on the street within the space of 10 minutes. Dealey had also noticed that a parent ushered their child away from them as they walked past.
Soon after, Lee and Dealey confronted a teenage boy who they earlier heard say, “ugh” as they walked past.
When the presenters confronted him, the teen appeared reluctant to respond as the pair pressed for a response.
The woman who was with the teen spoke instead: “He doesn’t obviously agree with homosexuality. He’s got a stigma. He’s a teenage boy.”
The presenters then asked the woman about her own views.
“I’m not against it, but I don’t like it in my face, to be honest,” she said.
“It does make me feel a little bit embarrassed if you two were to embrace in a kiss, I would feel a little bit awkward but that’s about as far as it would go.”
The woman remarked that she was not “narrow-minded” but said same-sex couples were not a common sight in Luton.
The experiment follows the recent viral video of a young female who walked through the streets of New York City, receiving harassment from men as she passed them by. Her video also spawned spin-offs around the world, including ones of gay men being subjected to homophobic harassment.
I don’t think a teenage boy saying “ugh” a father ushering his children away and people giving looks is anything to worry about or even write about – I think being followed by a camera defers people to react as the normally would.
I’m sorry but this story has minimal substance. If the closested radio presenters want a shock story to sell out on, they should ditch the camera men and walk hand in hand alone.
This just plainly goes to show that we still have a really long way to go, until full equality for all us LGBTI people!
It’s really interesting (yet very sad) psychology I think.
Firstly the woman interviewed describes herself as “not that narrow minded”. In other words she’s being honest enough to admit that she’s confronted a bit by difference, but not overly-so. Like she wouldn’t want any harm to come to people who are different. And I think that describes a great many of the general public.
The problem is however that she admits that two guys holding hands is too much for her to deal with – it’s “in her face”. So it’s okay for gay men to exist yet she just doesn’t want to see any. She wants to only see heterosexual things in her world.
I know these are not her words, but what else can you conclude? And she doesn’t think that this attitude is “that narrow-minded”. Well madam it’s VERY narrow-minded.
What you are doing is willing gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender and intersex people back into hiding. Hiding which causes so much mental anguish which results in higher rates of suicide and anti-social behaviour and a far heavier burden on the health system.
And you’re setting up a community where dislike and intolerance of LGBTI people is subtly evident just under the surface, setting up the reason that the younger guy in this video can’t actually explain why he is confronted by two men holding hands other than to say it’s wrong. Truth be known he doesn’t know why he is confronted by it only that he knows from his upbringing in such a community that there is such a stigma about this that he had better say these kinds of things or he’ll potentially be labelled a poof himself and suffer the stigma himself.
They just don’t get it – they’re not THAT narrow-minded … bull shit – they’re bigots!