I begin this story by saying that I'm not gay, but was the victim of homophobic bullying at secondary school thirty years ago, because of my non interest in sport, and enthusiasm for what was seen as gay music - anything from HiNRG to Fame. It was a macho, all boy private school, so I was on a hiding to nothing. The ringleader kept up a campaign of vicious comments and threats over a number of years, including turning my friends against me - I think they were frightened of being seen with 'the gay'. This culminated in a violent assault by a group of tough lads, four against one, on the last day of summer term. The ringleader didn't take part in any violence himself, just stoodt there cheerleading, sneering and making homophobic comments. After this, the school had to get involved. The five were punished, the ringleader was put in a separate class to me but still told to apologize. I thought my problems were over the following school year, as I never saw this ringleader or any of his violent mates... Until about a year after the assault, when he approached me in a quiet corridor with no witnesses, and said in his usual threatening voice "if you were naked in the swimming baths, and thought you could get away with it, would you go for someone?" I walked away, he shouted something about gay rapist, and I told my parents that he seemed to want to start it all again. They reported this to the school, who did a follow up, but he denied outright having spoken to me, and accused me of making it up. Obviously, with no witnesses, there was nothing that could be done, but I'd had enough. I couldn't face another summer of dreading school again, so I completed my last year of education at the local comp. I never achieved the qualifications expected of me, and I never went to uni. All this happened roughly thirty years ago, and I have to be careful what I say here, but would it surprise you if the homophobic bully involved was now a respected police officer? Who might presumably mouth platitudes about the 'equality agenda' and 'hate crime', and neglect to mention his teenage obsessive hatred of 'the gays'? If this were the case, it would certainly worry me viz a viz police attitudes and the sort of people chosen to protect all members of society. Just a hypothetical question, you understand...
They don't have a test for homophobia/racism/sexism/whatever for police cadets (how would you test for something like that?) so anybody with any one of those attitudes could get onto the force. And unless they make it stupidly obvious and get themselves fired, it's going to be the citizen's problem and there's not a lot that will get to be done about it I would imagine.
