Times columnist jokes about gay people getting thrown off buildings for Easter
A notorious newspaper columnist who has comes under repeated fire for sick columns about LGBT people is up to his old tricks again.
Rod Liddle was rebuked by the press regulator in 2015 after he published a Sun column targeting a Labour Party candidate who is blind and transgender.
The regulator finding against him did little to tone down his outspoken columns, however, with Liddle last year claiming in a Spectator column that gay men’s need to use lube during sex is “God’s way of telling you that what you’re about to do is unnatural and perverse”.
Even that slur wasn’t enough to dent his ability to get printed in pretty much every major newspaper – with Liddle penning a new column yesterday in the Sunday Times, again targeting LGBT people.
The column took aim at a egg painting workshop in Hackney, east London, taking exception with the description of the event as both “multi-faith” and “LGBT-friendly”.
He ‘joked’. “I can’t wait. I’ve already decorated my egg (…) mine shows a homosexual being pushed off a large building by a jihadist, which I think is in keeping with the spirit of the event.
“See you all there.”
The comments have predictably not gone down well on social media:
Cannot believe the naked homophobia by @RodLiddle in today’s column in @thesundaytimes. Utterly disgusted. His comment is unforgivable pic.twitter.com/piBaTgM5mZ
— William Luff (@willluff) April 16, 2017
@darren_scott @willluff @RodLiddle @thesundaytimes Fuck me, really? In what world is that OK?
— Darren Styles (@bydarrenstyles) April 16, 2017
Liddle was found to have breached the code of then-press regulator IPSO in 2015 over his column targeting blind transgender Labour politician Emily Brothers.
IPSO affirmed: “The first column’s crude suggestion that Ms Brothers could only have become aware of her gender by seeing its physical manifestations was plainly wrong.
“It belittled Ms Brothers, her gender identity and her disability, mocking her for no reason other than these perceived ‘differences’.
“Regardless of the columnist’s intentions, this was not a matter of taste; it was discriminatory and therefore unacceptable under the terms of the code.”
He did not face action, however, after the Sun retracted the column in question and published an apology to Ms Brothers.
