GEORGE GALLOWAY PANDERS TO THE HOMOPHOBES (Updated)

The leaders of the British anti-war party Respect -- which managed to elect its only member of parliament, George Galloway (left), earlier this year -- have demonstrated their lack of principle in a blatant act of electoralist pandering to homophobia.  U.K. Gay News reports that, at the Respect party's conference on Sunday, November 20, a grassroots revolt by party members passed a resolution denouncing the party's leadership for vetoing the inclusion of  gay and lesbian rights in the party platform. George Galloway MP is a crucial member of the Respect party leadership -- which is dominated by the Trotskyists of the Socialist Workers Party, who created Respect.

The reasons that Galloway and the Respect leaders killed any reference to gay rights in the party's platform -- or its electoral "manifesto," as party platforms are called in the U.K. -- are quite simple. The district in which Galloway deliberately chose to run had a huge Muslim population, and it was thanks to the votes from that population that he was able to be elected. The party "manifesto" is to be the basis for Respect's campaign in municipal elections this coming May, and the party leaders' strategy is to try to elect local city council members from ares that have high Muslim populations. Moreover, “Respect is in alliance with the right-wing, anti-gay Islamist group, the Muslim Association of Britain [MAB],” as Peter Tatchell (left) -- the veteran gay and human rights campaigner who heads the militant British gay rights group OutRage -- pointed out, adding that the party does not ally with liberal and left-wing Muslims. And, U.K. Gay News reported, "Respect’s right-wing Islamist backers demanded the axing of gay rights as a condition of their electoral support for the party."

The grassroots resolution, passed at the Respect party's conference over the objections of the party's leaders, called their failure to include gay rights in the party platform "unacceptable." From the podium of the conference, Respect leader Lindsay German, who is also a senior leader of the Socialist Workers Party, disparaged the resolution, claiming it had a “hidden agenda” and was moved in “bad faith” according to the U.K. Gay News account. .The resolution read, "“Conference regards it as unacceptable that our manifesto for the general election did not contain any reference to the defence of LGBT rights.” Rather significantly, the account of the conference in the Trotskyites' newspaper, Socialist Worker, didn't even mention the successful rank-and-file rebellion in support of gay rights against the SWP-dominated Respect leadership.

OutRage's Tatchell went on to say, “The MAB [the ally of Galloway and Respect]endorses the recreation of an Islamic Caliphate where Muslims would be subjected to the barbarism of Sharia law, which includes the execution of unchaste women, apostates and gay people. Respect has betrayed progressive Muslims, in favour of an alliance with Islamist conservatives and fundamentalists... Respect has failed to defend gay Muslims against fundamentalist Islamists and it attacks gay rights groups that support Muslim queers.The politics of Respect on LGBT rights is reformist at best. Its policies are far less radical than those of the Liberal Democrats. Unlike Respect, the Lib Dems included gay rights in their manifesto.” You can read the entire U.K. Gay News article on all this by clicking here.

When Galloway spoke to the Respect conference that repudiated his and the leadership's refusal to include a forthright endorsement of gay rights (photo left), he did so from a podium decorated with a banner that proclaimed the party's commitment to "Justice" and "Equality." But the party leadership's suppression of any reference to gay rights in its platform makes a mockery of those two words. Galloway has long made common cause with despicable, homophobic dictators, from Saddam Hussein to Syria's Bashir Al-Assad, without ever denouncing the reign of terror and repression their despotic  regimes have visited upon gay Arabs and Muslims in their own countries. Now, Galloway and the leadership of the party whose principal spokesman he is have demonstrated beyond argument that, from them, gays and lesbians can expect no....respect.

I've been a lifelong opponent of American imperialism, and have written reams of articles and columns against the Anglo-American invasion and occupation of Iraq. But Galloway is not a genuine democrat, and for that reason I always thought it was a serious mistake for some sectors of the U.S. anti-war movement to have embraced Galloway as an anti-war spokesman on his recent American speaking tour.  Now, this repulsive and opportunistic pandering to homophobia by Galloway and his party's leadership as part of their electoral strategy ought to make American opponents of the war shun them. Period.

UPDATE: A bit of research unearhed some interesting facts about the funding of the Respect party. Eric Lee -- who runs the excellent trade union-funded, London- based  labor news website LabourStart (which mobilizes support for striking workrs around the world) -- checked out Respect's required financial filings this year with the U.K. Electoral Commission. It turns out that half of Respect's money comes from one man, Dr Mohammed Naseem (upper left).. This Naseem, who was been a Respect candidate for Parliament in 2005, is also a leader of something called the Islamic Party of Britain IPB) -- a tiny sectarian group whose website claims that "Islam is the solution to the world's problems. No other religion, way of life or culture can possibly succeed." Naseem's IBP also put out  a statement claiming that the London bombings of buses and subways last July weren't carried out by Islamic fundmentalists but (as Lee summarizes the IPB document he links to on his personal blog)  "the attacks were a provocation, staged by the police, the Blair government, or the Mossad -- or all of them together." Naseem repeated his claim that no Islamic fundamentalists were involved in the bomings even after the arrest of Yasin Hassan Omar, an Islamist who helped plan the bombings. Naseem is also, according to a BBC profile of him, Chairman of the Birmingham Central Mosque, "one of the largest Islamic instutions in Britain." Since Respect gets half its money from a Muslim religious leader whose IBP (for which he is Home Affairs spokesman) denounces secularism as the basis for organizing government and claims that only a strict interpretation of the Koran can guide the world -- includng on homosexuality -- it's not surprising that Respect's leaders would be reluctant to defend gay equality, a secular principle which Naseem and his coterie oppose. According to the Islamic Party of Britain’s website: “People afflicted with unnatural conditions like homosexuality or pedophilia (sic) need treatment, not encouragement." The IPB’s home affairs policy would “safeguard public decency by preventing any public advocacy for homosexuality”. A violation of this law would fall under “public incitement” -- meaning gay publications or broadcasts or posters would be illegal. For “public displays of lewdness witnessed by several people”, (e.g., having sex in a public park or toilet), the “death penalty” would apply (George MIchael better get ready for the gallows if the IPB takes power.) To read the IPB website entries on homosexuality, click here and here. ) Respect's accepting half its funding from a man who holds such abhorrent views, and making him its candidate for parliament earlier this year, is stomach-turning.