This article discusses challenging themes from the start.
A few weeks back, I spent a Saturday evening binge-watching Russell T Davies’ new drama on Channel 4 called ‘Tip Toe’.
The ending of this five-part drama – largely given away at the beginning – is a horrific watch, but I want to concentrate on one segment of the show involving a character called Melba.
Melba is a self-confessed belligerent old queen; not afraid to speak her mind amongst a sea of challenge, but there is a certain monologue set on the cobbled paths of Manchester’s Canal Street that hit home.
“If you’d asked me in 1996: ‘What do you think 2026 will be like [for the LGBT+ community]?’ I’d have said: ‘Glory days… But they tricked us, didn’t they?
“They just waited.”
The speech goes on to a thought that a lot of us are now thinking.
“They let us all come out. So, now we’re standing in the open ready for them to shoot us down”.
I remember the day I came out as gay in 2012. I walked to work with a freedom I had not felt in years, thinking things can only get better from here.
It lasted for a while. But, in recent years that freedom feels as if it is vanishing in front of our eyes. I’ve been less vocal, more cautious and I feel as if I’m being pushed back into the closet.
We are returning to the days of open bigotry; unchallenged and allowed to fester by unverified social media accounts and grifters, and in the past fortnight, one of many examples burst out from my phone and slapped me in the face.
False claims
I’m loath to mention GB News, but here, we must.
On Saturday, 20 June, there was a panel discussion on this channel kicked off by Dr Renee Hoenderkamp on the ghastly case of two men jailed for the horrendous sexual assault and murder of 13-month-old Preston Davey.
This segment has since gone semi-viral and has grown into the deepest parts of social media. It seems no one has the authority and desire to ensure its accuracy.
Dr Hoenderkamp began this discussion by outlining the 13-month old was, “sexually assaulted, tortured and then eventually murdered by the two gay men who adopted him”, and in doing so, instantly linked this heinous crime to the fact the two perpetrators were homosexuals.
Merely by mentioning their sexuality, which – let’s be clear – would not occur had the perpetrators been a man and a woman, she opened Pandora’s Box, and what followed was a disgusting show of bigotry that left me seething.
Beginning her speech with, “I can’t pull up the evidence now”, one of the panel guests, who calls herself ‘Based and Bougie’, launched into a false and damaging tirade of tropes that belong in the dark ages.
The lowlights were links between gay men and domestic abuse against each other and false claims of a prevalence in sexual assault against children by gay parents.
These false claims received next to no pushback from the panel, with ‘Based and Bougie’ going on to post her so-called evidence on ‘X’ a full three days later.
The ‘evidence’ was four articles, three of which were penned between 1998 and 2003 by a disgraced American psychiatrist named Paul Cameron.
Cameron is a man who was expelled from the American Psychological Association for ethical breaches after being found to consistently misrepresent research on gay people, and whose work has been debunked.
The fourth article ‘Based and Bougie’ posted was an apparent link to “child abuse and molestation”, except the article she posted wasn’t about LGBT+ people committing abuse, it was about LGBT+ people surviving it.
This is apparently the level of professionalism required to gain a consistent spot on GB News, a channel who are more interested in causing moral panic than presenting facts.
This spurious presentation of ‘evidence’, along with the original panel debate, is still live on multiple social media channels.
As if it needed saying, there is no discernible link between sexual assault of children and the sexual orientation of the perpetrator. The fact that the two men in this case were gay does not make us all monsters.
A landmark study in 1994 confirms this.
Researchers conducted a year-long study into every single suspected child sexual abuse case in a major children’s hospital, finding that out of 269 individual cases, just two were identified as being the children of gay or lesbian parents.
The full findings of that study can be found here. Indeed, more recent science extensively corroborates the fact there is no link.
Read: A study on sexuality of offenders – (Zero Abuse Project)
Read: Male Sexual Abuse : The Myths and The Realities – (Survivors UK)
As a gay man, these blasé, alarming lies pumped out by a national ‘news’ channel puts me in direct danger.
If false claims like the ones on GB News go unchallenged and are left alone, they can spread, and the more people soak up these extreme lies as genuine ‘news’, the more they will filter into the mainstream.
The more it filters into the mainstream, the more acceptable it becomes. Fuelled by a well-known apathy amongst the general public, the lies are entrenched as fact.
Where does that lead us to? The ending of ‘Tip Toe’? I hope not.
We fought for decades for the attitude changes that led us to the “glory days” Melba speaks of, and we cannot allow the climate to go backwards because of statements made by liars on the hunt for a quick buck.
I am furious that those in powerful positions are happy for this to occur. We have just waved the latest Pride Month into the history books, but we are reminded that this fight is not over.
It will need to be restarted.
Toothless OFCOM
This is not an isolated incident on GB News.
In October 2025, regulator OFCOM stated that the channel had breached the broadcasting code after 71,582 people complained about a ‘Headliners’ show in January of the same year, which included a dangerous lie relating LGBT+ people to paedophilia.
Between January and October, GB News took ‘Headliners’ off the air citing low viewership, while the presenter who made the comments apologised on a separate show on the same channel two weeks later.
OFCOM decided that this action was “adequate” and closed the matter.
But the seed was sewn and the damage had been done.
What is the point of accepting apologies when lessons are not learnt? What is the point of an apology if you are not going to try and change?
OFCOM has already ruled that the broadcasting of these exact correlations break their own code. Yet the offences are repeated, again and again.
Why? Because GB News knows there are no real consequences for its actions.
It will continue to peddle lies if it is not properly challenged. They will continue to peddle lies if there are no consequences. They will continue to wilfully divide while action remains minimal.
OFCOM must do better. GB News, which gives political leaders their own shows to present their opinions as facts in a news-style format, as if that’s a completely normal thing to do, do not appear to care.
Collective punishment
Irresponsible journalism has indulged a pattern of behaviour that includes unchecked and biased sources, influencing and empowering those who wish to divide us.
Despite spending years claiming, “we should treat everyone as individuals”, when provided with an opportunity to do so where minorities are concerned, the types who covet the GB News studio chairs turn their backs and blame groups instead.
It’s a trait that has now become normalised against the Muslim community, who often take the brunt of collective punishment when a crime is perpetrated by a single person.
See the pogroms of Belfast at the beginning of June as an example of what this can turn into.
I’ve always been wary of hyperbole in the rare op-eds I do write, but consistently hearing the homophobic and racist tropes I thought were left in the dustbins of the 1980s crawl its way back into modern life is now becoming frightening.
The Belfast riots are the most stark example yet that people whose views were once consigned to the darkest corners of the internet have now been given permission to roam free.
And its results are devastating.
Witnesses speak of “people being stopped in their cars to be asked what their nationality is”, while Andy Hughes of ‘The Crime Agents’ podcast relayed a story where masked men tried to overturn a car only to stop and apologise upon finding out the owner was a white man.
They then moved on to the next house to find people who weren’t.
When you see bigotry pouring out of unattributed social media accounts, amplified by algorithms and pushed to the front of a stage led by powerful people who claim we are being “invaded”, it’s of little surprise these racists now feel emboldened to act.
Unfortunately, there will always be monsters in our society; this is a horrible fact of life. But this method of collective punishment against the ‘groups’ these monsters are supposedly part of must be stamped down upon.
The authorities must act now, or this will end in the most horrendous way.
