Homophobic assault in Edinburgh

The following story appeared in my email box this morning. Sadly, the fight against homophobic attacks has not yet been won, at least here in the UK. I wish the two gay men a speedy recovery and swift justice for their attackers.

As a side note, I don’t recall hearing of any homophobic attacks in Thailand and have always felt safe there.

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Homophobic Leith Street assault: Three men arrested following 'abhorrent' attack against two gay men in Edinburgh

Three men have been arrested following an ‘abhorrent’ assault involving a homophobic hate crime on Leith Street in Edinburgh.

By Hannah Brown
Saturday, 7th August 2021, 5:16 pm Updated 19 hours ago

Three men, aged 23, 22 and 21 years old, have been arrested and charged in connection with two alleged assaults and homophobic crime following an incident involving two men on Leith Street, Edinburgh.

The assault happened on Friday against two gay men in Edinburgh last week.

A gay couple in their 30s were assaulted and robbed in front of onlookers by a group of thugs in Leith Street, near to the John Lewis department store, at around 9.20pm.

One eye-witness who contacted police told the Evening News that they saw a group of four men in their early 20s punching, kicking and spitting on of the victims before stealing a bag and running off in the direction of the Omni Centre.

It is understood that one of the couple was left hospitalised by the attack.

It was announced as being investigated officially as a hate crime, Police Scotland confirmed at the beginning of this week.

News of the attack sparked a wave of condemnation on social media, with Edinburgh Council Leader, Adam McVey labelling it “horrific”.

Mr McVey, who is gay, added: "This isn’t the first violent, homophobic attack this year, my thoughts are with the victims this morning.

“We need to work together as a city to stamp out all root causes of hate.”

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For the full article see: Edinburgh Evening News

Oh dear - and this posted just minutes after my posting that I've just booked to go to Edinburgh and intending to hit the gay bars there this weekend too. Sad to see. And such assaults are unfortunately becoming more and more common here in the UK it seems now ( or perhaps just being reported more as hate crimes, I'm not sure which ) :-(

At least in this case the police have arrested and charged the alleged culprits so hopefully they've be dealt with harshly by the courts if founds guilty ( fat chance though this days it seems) :-(

I have only once in my life been qeerbashed and it happened in Thailand, but it was the USA Navy. It was fifteen years ago or more. Walking back over to Boyztown with a muscular young gentleman I had offed from a go go bar nearby, I saw a group of Navy boys pointing up Boyztown and laughing and shouting abuse, so I held back and waited for them to walk on then we crossed the road and a couple of them had obviously held back having seen us and they then jumped out of a doorway and punched me to the ground and started kicking me in the head. My strong companion punched one of them hard and then shouted up Boyztown and all the boys came running and kicked the crap out of the Navy boys. After a while I asked them to stop and went back to my hotel, Cafe Royale. Not the best experience of my life.

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Originally Posted by Ruthrieston

After a while .......

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The best part of that whole saga ! Hopefully it was QUITE a while to teach the pricks a lesson.

Indeed it was. I had to ask the boys to stop.

I experienced something of that Thai quiet temper / strength when walking in Sunee late one night with two quite fem Thai freinds.

Two or three ( cant recall) youngish 'hard men" farang ( arab's I think from memory) were walking past us and one of them shouted a few of the usual old derogatory homophobic comments about the Thai boys / us, to which one of my Thai friends shouted back something along the lines of "fuck you go back to your own country".

Next thing at least one of the Arab guys weas on his way over in a red mist and looking for trouble and just as I was quickly advising my Thai friends that we should leave and fast, next thing I knew it was my two small, fem, demure Thai friends who were charging over on their way over towards the farang, goading him on and telling him they were going to knock him out! But what really struck me was that even against these large chunky aggressive farang the two Thai boys were TOTALLY and absolutely fearless and in fact were almost egging the guy on to get him to fight.

Thankfully it all blew over with a bit of shouting and swearing and the farang all walked on eventually ( I think when they realised the boys wouldn't be a simple push over) and when I said to the boys 'holy shit are you crazy, that could have gone so wrong very fast" they just laughed and said "nooooo, dont worry, we love fighting and especially with farang like that, dont worry, we would have beaten them EASILY, we fight so good, we love it! as they walked away laughing - and I KNEW they meant every word of it !"

For me it was a great lesson in never judging a book by it's cover and of course Im sure we've all seen many examples of small Thai guys beating the shit out of mouthy farang in bars etc. I'm also walked away with absolutely no doubt that the same two boys Thai could and would have delivered on their promises to "knock him out" if allowed / pressed too:)!

So, it sounds like us UK gays need to ask for a special UK visa to be allowed to enable a raft of (cute) fit Thai guys to come here to the UK to look after us apparently wimpy Brits ! ( Or just import them ANYWAY as that's ALWAYS a great idea in my book at ANY time ! :-)

...in my teen years the gay bars were illegal but "tolerated" and situated in semi industriual areas....getting bashed was a usual occurence so we would always travel in packs...i always had a sharpened carpenters pencil ......best thing next to a knife ...many an aggro straight boy ended up screaming wondering wtf just got him...and when randomly searched by the cops they never identified it as a weapon..., worked a treat...next best thing was to tag along with lesbians...they are like pitbulls....

And in Manchester:

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Two men were attacked with bottles and subjected to homophobic abuse in an “appalling hate crime” in Birmingham’s Gay Village, police have said.

Rob and Patrick, who are in their 30s, were outside the Missing bar on Saturday night when four men in a black SUV shouted homophobic abuse at them before getting out of the car and assaulting them.

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https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...ms-gay-village

Just for future reference and in case anyone else should be thinking of heading to Edinburgh and might be worried / put off by the above report - I'm just back from my weekend there and both myself and men friends found the place to be "quite gay" actually, with plently of guys holding hands walking along in the street and plenty of cute ( I assumed) gay guys about the place too on their own.

The gay bars too were all rammed as well and aside our from having to try ( and failing mainly) to "book" tables in restaurants AND bars to ensure access and service ( that being due to them being so busy just rather than any covid related rules) we had an enjoyable time and wouldn't let reports such as the above put you off going in any way.