Gays to protest over Qwelane
25/07/2008 12:35  - (SA)  

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Cape Town - The Mother City's gay community will on Friday protest outside Media24's offices in reaction to a "homophobic article" written in the Sunday Sun, Cape Town Pride said.

Spokesperson Ian McMahon said in a statement the protest was organised in reaction to "a shocking homophobic article" written by Jon Qwelane in his column in Media24's Sunday Sun, published last Sunday.

The protest would highlight the attack on the constitutional and human rights of gay people and what McMahon referred to as "Qwelane's blatant hate speech".

McMahon said a petition, calling for a retraction and apology to gays, would be handed to the Media24's managing director.

Qwelane wrote that: "There could be a few things [about which] I could take issue with Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe, but his unflinching and unapologetic stance over homosexuals is definitely not among those."

He added that he could only pray that politicians would one day have "the balls" to scrap the sections in the Constitution that sanctioned gay and lesbian marriages.

Qwelane added that soon people would also start demanding that the right to marry animals. Alongside the column appeared a cartoon of a man and goat kneeling before a clergyman as they were pronounced "man and goat".

'I stand by my column'

Qwelane told The Times newspaper that he stood by his words.

"I stand by my column. Whatever happened to freedom of speech in this country?"

The SA Human Rights Commission had received complaints about the article and was looking into the matter.

Meanwhile Gayspeak, a gay and lesbian online magazine, had called on the public to rally their support and join the protests in Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Spokesperson Coenie Kukkuk said although complaints had been made to the Press Ombudsman and the Human Rights Commission, there was a need for the masses to come out in full support.

"These institutions are largely toothless watchdogs. We have people on the net, we have e-mail, we have facebook and other sites. We can loudly protest,'' Kukkuk said.

News24 is part of 24.com, which is owned by the Naspers subsidiary Media24.

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