In the United Kingdom and Wales Hate speech laws forbid any communication interpreted as “hateful, threatening, abusive, or insulting” which “targets a person on account of skin colour, race, nationality (including citizenship), ethnic or national origin, religion, or sexual orientation”.
And today that law is being put to the test.
Yesterday after the news broke of the horrific murder in Scotland of a young gay man Stuart Walker who was beaten, tied to a lampost and then burned to death the scum crawled out of the woodwork, especially on Twitter with one in particular Jay Miller – @mabsmiller posted disgusting homophobic messages about Walkers death that sent the Twitterverse into a frenzy and resulted in numerous complaints bring called into the Metropolitan Police who are also assisting in the investigation
Miller who descibes himself on Twitter as a “Liverpool fanatic”, a “true scouser” and “hard as nails”, statements included: “Bet when they put you out you was like a frazzle!”, a reference to the fact that Walker had been beaten and set on fire in what is believed to have been a homophobic attack and “Better dead now than infecting people with #Aids,” and more as you can see from a screenshot taken of his account below.
Mersyside Metro police are asking that members of the public with information about Jay Miller of Liverpool should contact them at 0151 709 6010.
MANY THANKS to @pdtThomas – Peter Thomas on Twitter for the heads up.
Wow, I’ve been thinking the past few days that America needs a law like this. Nice to know that it exists and is enforced somewhere in the world and hopefully one day we’ll get it here.