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Bombed London Bar Justice Kirby Speaks |
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By Rex Wockner
International News Report Boy George Helps Re-Open Bombed London Bar
London's Admiral Duncan gay pub reopened July 2, nine weeks to
the minute after it was nail-bombed.
Three people died and 86 were injured in the blast, which police blamed on a 23-year-old engineer named David Copeland.
Justice Kirby Speaks
Now, in a 30-page speech to Law Lords, senior international judges and other legal scholars, Kirby said, among much else: "The advent of the human genome project and the likelihood that, in many cases at least, sexual orientation is genetically determined, make it totally unacceptable to impose upon those affected unreasonable legal discrimination or demands that they change. "It was always unacceptable; but now no informed person has an excuse for blind prejudice and unreasonable conduct. If we are talking about the 'unnatural,' demands that people deny their sexuality or try to change it if it is part of their nature are a good illustration of what is unnatural." He also said: "People are not fools. Once they recognize the overwhelming commonalities of shared human experience, the alienation and demand for adherence to shame crumbles. Once they reflect upon the utter unreasonableness of insisting that homosexuals change their sexual orientation, or suppress and hide their emotions -- something they could not demand of themselves - - the irrational insistence and demand for legal sanctions tends to fade away. "Once they know friends or family members are gay, the hatred tends to melt. In the wake of the changing social attitudes inevitably come changing laws: statutes made by parliaments as well as the common law made by judges." |
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