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Loading ...Court: Straight man can be victim of homophobia
12.22.2008 2:06pm EST
(London) Britain’s Court of Appeal has reversed a lower court ruling that had said a man was not entitled to file a homophobic harassment case against his former employer because he is heterosexual.
Stephen English says he was forced to quit his job at an awning manufacturer because the company refused to stop workers from calling him a faggot and other gay slurs.English filed a complaint with the Employment Appeal Tribunal alleging the harassment began when fellow workers discovered he had been educated at a boarding school and that he lived in largely gay Brighton.
The complaint said that final straw came when the company’s in-house employee magazine said he had attended Brighton’s Gay Pride parade wearing “skin-tight Lycra cycling shorts”.
The Tribunal refused to hear the case because English is not gay and is married.
English appealed to the Court of Appeal.
In a 2-1 landmark ruling the court said that a person can be “harassed” by homophobic remarks even though he is not gay, is not thought to be gay by his fellow workers and he accepts they do not believe him to be gay.
Writing the majority opinion Lord Justice Sedley said it did not matter whether English was gay or not.
“[The] calculated insult to his dignity” and the consequently intolerable working environment were sufficient to bring his case within the regulations.” Sedley wrote.
“The incessant mockery created a degrading and hostile working environment, and it did so on grounds of sexual orientation,” the judge said.
The ruling said that he had a case, and ordered the Tribunal to hear it.
Another reason why protecting LGBT people makes sense. Protecting us protects more than just those within the LGBT community, but also those affiliated with us (mistaken or otherwise).
A great ruling. Of course a person can be subjected to harassment on the basis of sexuality even if they’re straight. I have a very good friend who was bullied mercilessly at school for being gay when he was straight, but no action was taken to protect him because it was “just a case of name-calling”.
No one should be subjected to harassment or bullying on any grounds, whether the underlying cause of said harassment/bullying is based in reality or not.
And to think that the English call us Americans uncivillized and barbaric! HAH!
This is part of the reason why all laws protecting folks due to sexual orientation ought to be expanded to include gender identity. Discrimination and harassment are often based on perceived gendered characteristics. If a male is fired for being “too feminine” and not for being gay, he might not be able to get his job back unless gender identity is inserted into the law.
Alex’s comments are right on. This is why it was foolish to strip gender identity from ENDA last year. Gay people often do not adhere to established norms of gender expression (butch women, feminine men). Gender identity protections do much more than protect the transgendered. Taking it out of the bill severely weakens ENDA for everyone.
Rachel, it was not “foolish” to strip gender identity from ENDA — it was done with deliberate, hateful, premeditated malice and bigotry. For those who think America is progressive, try to imagine our current Supreme Court making the same decision the English court made in this case.
I commend the British Court for having the guts to stand up to bullies, whether gay or straight against anybody!! People who taunt others are either closeted gays who hate themselve so that have to belittle somebody else to feel superior, or they were bullies in school and nobody did anything to stop them.
I would sue every employee that taunted me. I hope the guy gets a nice big fat punitive and compensatory settlement.
Hip hip hooray for the courts!
Billy P
9th Generation Californian
United States of America
Good luck to Mr. English.
In 1997, the Pennsylvania Bureau of Workers’ Compensation replaced wages lost since 1988 as the result of an “abnormal working condition” that included public supervisory harassment to “straighten up, get back with the Roman Catholic church, and get married,” and “not touch (other people) because (the applicant) might have ‘the AIDS’.”
See youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_MY0i3ILOHA
Knowing the laws associated with assault, being married does not make you straight. Outwardly heterosexual, but definitely not straight. Unless as a straight person, knowing that if he responded in kind to borderline behavior from in all probability, LGBT employees, he knew that he would lose his job. The UK acted responsibly to protect his rights. It only took 43 years in the USA for that to happen, except the straight person had to be sexually assaulted. Thank you for the Oncale vs Sundowner Offshore Oil Services decision.
Thank you Lord Justice Sedley. We all should think the way you do.
Happy Holidays to you and yours from me here in the USA.
I want to bring in another angle – what I see as wrong here is that being gay is seen as such a horrific thing that no one argues against the slanderous effects behind such terms such as faggot. They are universally accepted as the epidomy of insults. I don’t know if I can explain this properly but what I see, here, is that there is something far more at stake here then a straight man being harassed by the use of the term faggot etc and that is that no one is arguing that there is nothing wrong with being gay and therefore the man should not be so insulted by being called a faggot and his co-workers should not get the mileage they get out of those terms. What needs, I believe, to happen is that we (the GLBTTQ community) and our allies need to start to insist that being Gay is just fine, thank you very much, and to get angry and protest when people accept terms such as Gay, Faggot, Homo etc as the ultimate insult. Stop accepting these labels as insults, start insisting that it is perfectly cool to be Gay and take away their power to keep us ashamed and keep us down. If someone calls you a faggot tell them “thank you for the compliment”. There I think I explained myself as best I can.
There’s two main approaches to the meaning of bigoted slang: the semantic and the contextual. The semantic approach claims that the meaning of the word is just bad in all cases (or something like that), and the contextual that it depends on use and audience–context. Anyway, I happen to side with the semantic approach over the contextual, and anyone who calls me a faggot will definitely not be getting a thank you from me…maybe a short trip down a long flight of stairs, but not a thank you, thankya thankya. The reclaiming side always goes for the contextual approach to the meaning of bigoted hate jargon, but without any understanding of why to avoid it.
Hooray! Bring on the hate!
http://blog.jreignconsulting.com/2009/01/04/hooray–bring-on-the-hate.aspx
The backlash from hate is what will move us forward!