Andre Grey tweets...

Triggaaar said:

I agree.

Regardless of whether a gay guy received one, it's against the bloody law.

They recently jailed an Islamic activist who was also a lawyer and tried to cleverly work around our laws, preaching hate just within the law. I think we need to have tougher laws to stop people like that.

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It's difficult because you only have to look in Twitter to see it's rife. I'm sad more than outraged because the people who do it are clearly so poor in intelligence that they do not understand the implications or law concerning these things. The losers aren't so much the subjects of their bile, as society has moved on and embraced them, as the people who say such rotten things. It's nothing new really, it's just more prevalent due to social media. Perhaps it's better out in the open. If a person makes some shitty disparaging remark in Twitter we see it, but if they make it in a public park we don't. I have faith in the direction of society at present, I guess that's what counts, but we have a long way to go.

alfredmizen said:

do you think he should be ?

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If he said it now, yes, as he's in the public eye and he spreading irrational thought and dangerous hatred. It was 4 years ago though so he at least (how much the club intervened we don't know) needed to apologise, which he has, and there is a chance he has learned in the past 4 years not to think like a bigoted small minded idiot and not to judge someone by their sexuality.

Boy Blue said:

He's black so can get away with such comments.

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This is you isn't it ....

triggaaar said:

they're different cases. It's a hate crime to say these things against ethnic mimorities, gay people etc, but it's probably not a hate crime to say the same things against british soldiers. I don't know if the people in your picture are breaking the law.

Started? People have already been imprisoned for similar hate crimes.

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well it fvcking should be then.

alfredmizen said:

well it fvcking should be then.

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They're suggesting the soldiers, once they die, should burn in hell (which obvs doesn't exist). They're not saying die now, which is the difference. As police I would still ask them to remove the placard though.

Albumen said:

They're suggesting the soldiers, once they die, should burn in hell (which obvs doesn't exist).

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If it was obvious that hell didn't exist, not many people would believe it does, yet a very large percentage of people do. And if they were charged with a crime, they would state that hell does exist, so they wouldn't use it not existing as a defence.

Brighton Lines said:

It's nothing new really, it's just more prevalent due to social media. Perhaps it's better out in the open. If a person makes some shitty disparaging remark in Twitter we see it, but if they make it in a public park we don't.

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I disagree. You could apply the same logic to racism etc. If people can be racist on twitter, then it gives off the impression (particularly to young people) that such behaviour is acceptable. It isn't. And I'd feel the same about some Islamic views. They aren't acceptable and we shouldn't pretend that they are.

Triggaaar said:

If it was obvious that hell didn't exist, not many people would believe it does, yet a very large percentage of people do. And if they were charged with a crime, they would state that hell does exist, so they wouldn't use it not existing as a defence.

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Hence you can't charge people in this country due to the Blasphemy laws being thankfully abolished in 2008.

Triggaaar said:

I disagree. You could apply the same logic to racism etc. If people can be racist on twitter, then it gives off the impression (particularly to young people) that such behaviour is acceptable. It isn't. And I'd feel the same about some Islamic views. They aren't acceptable and we shouldn't pretend that they are.

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I see your point. Although I would hope that other folk's reaction might be evidence enough. In reality it comes down to the environment of personal development. We can have laws, mostly with value, but it's not law that changes society on the street corners where it cannot see to apply itself, it's people. Forgive me if I sound a bit lofty in my expression, I don't mean to, but I genuinely believe that you change people to change society and not vice versa.

Then again, maybe we are both trying to say the same thing.

Brighton Lines said:

I see your point. Although I would hope that other folk's reaction might be evidence enough. In reality it comes down to the environment of personal development. We can have laws, mostly with value, but it's not law that changes society on the street corners where it cannot see to apply itself, it's people.

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I just think that when battling bigotry and hate crimes, the law and society work together. If it was legal to be homophobic, it would be even more prevalent in the north on England than it is, and when the majority of people are racist or homophobic, it discourages people to stand against. If nasty aggressive people are spouting their bile, what's your average person supposed to do? You don't want a fight, so you ignore it. Young people see what's happening and think it's ok to behave like that.

What's happened to the 'does your boyfriend know you're here' chants? The law has stopped them, so less people grow up thinking it's fun to be homophobic. IMO.

He said his life was turned around in 2011 after getting cut up outside a nightclub.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...Gray-Being-stabbed-turned-my-life-around.html

Clearly didn't turn it around enough.

symyjym said:

He said his life was turned around in 2011 after getting cut up outside a nightclub.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/fo...Gray-Being-stabbed-turned-my-life-around.html

Clearly didn't turn it around enough.

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I think if his apology was purely based on being "found out" I would be inclined to be as sceptical as some others and regard it with a degree of cynicism, but because he has already publicly referred to his troubled past and acknowledged the errors of his past behaviour in an interview more than a year ago I don't think his apology is as disingenuous as it may appear to some. While I don't excuse the vileness of his comments which cover not only homophobia but also misogyny, advocating violence towards both gays and women and also what appears to be a lack of sympathy for someone who may have committed suicide on a motorway, all of which, by the extreme manner in which they are expressed are very difficult to excuse or forgive, I think it is important to remember that we are judging someone who has come from a background which is probably and hopefully totally alien to most of us. I think it is probably more admirable to have come from such a background and risen above it, albeit maybe a little late in his case, rather than never to have held those views but grown up in a safe, middle class or even working class environment and from a culture where you are not subjected to and exposed to those prejudices and the casual acceptance of violence as an everyday occurrence and where such views, opinions and behaviour are seen as normal amongst your peers. Obviously Gray has had the luxury of having professional football to provide him with an escape route from that life but even with that escape route he still previously expressed regret for the actions of his past even before being “exposed”.
It takes quite a strong individual to stand up as a voice of dissent amongst your peer group especially if the reaction of that peer group is more than likely to respond to your non-conformism with violent hostility which could even be potentially threatening to your life. In that situation most people might prefer to fall in with the moral code of that peer group as a means of self-preservation. Of course that could be viewed as the coward’s reaction but it seems to be people’s natural response for self- preservation even when the stakes aren’t as high. You see it in all walks of life from school where some kids would suck up to the bully and join in with his antics in order to ensure they themselves didn’t become the target, and this strategy for self preservation doesn’t always stop once you leave school as you can also witness it in working environments but obviously on a less extreme and more subtle level. I think everyone is capable of it to some degree, it’s just a matter of how far you are prepared to go, which really you can only say with any certainty with the benefit of experience and hindsight and what’s at stake and what you are prepared to sacrifice.
One example of the extreme levels individuals are prepared to go to absorb the morals of their peer group in extreme situations and indulge in acts of behaviour which would otherwise be totally alien and abhorrent to them is the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War in which a company of US soldiers murdered, tortured and raped more than a hundred Vietnamese women and children. I don’t believe that the majority of those soldiers who took an active part in that massacre would ever have believed they would have been capable of such barbaric behaviour towards women and children before they went to Vietnam. It was the environment they were placed in that revealed to them what they were capable of, which they were hitherto probably totally unaware. I don’t think it was a matter of mere coincidence that the most immoral, inhuman and barbaric individuals just happened to be thrown together into that same Company of soldiers, it was more a case of how barbaric, immoral and inhuman otherwise “normal” and “decent” individuals can become when they are perverted and corrupted by the environment they find themselves in especially if they don’t have the strength of character to fight against it. I know we would all like to think that we would have been the dissenting voices in that situation but the really scary thing is that none of us really know until we are put into that situation.