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Daily praised for ‘taking zero s***’ over negative gay pride comments

A regional daily has been praised for “taking zero s***” in response to negative comments about its patch’s gay pride festival.

The Manchester Evening News won plaudits online after responding to critical posts made by some readers on a Facebook about Manchester Pride, which was held over the weekend.

On its Facebook page, the MEN posted its own comment in response to the criticism of a post which linked to its story about the LGBT festival, remarking on how many comments it had been forced to delete.

The editorial was then shared on widely on Twitter after being posted by a user known as ‘James Fl’.

James, whose post has since been retweeted more than 15,500 times, wrote: “Love how [the MEN] are taking zero shit over this.”

The widely shared post by 'James FI' on Twitter

The widely shared post by ‘James FI’ on Twitter

The MEN’s comment reads: “Quite remarkable how many negative comments we have to remove or hide on stories like this.

“To those asking when is ‘straight pride day’ or questioning why we still have Pride we’d ask this: Did you know that homosexuality is punishable by death in 12 countries? Celebrating Pride in those places can literally get you killed.

“Did you know there’s been a recent rise in homophobic hate crimes? Did you know that in Britain homophobic attacks rose by 147% in three months from June last year. Did you know nearly half of all trans children in this country have attempted suicide? Or that 80 per cent have self-harmed?

“Did you know it’s only been 50 years since homosexuality was decriminalised in the UK? This is why we still have Pride marches. And Manchester’s is the best in the world.”

2 comments

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  • August 30, 2017 at 1:05 pm
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    While I admire the MEN’s response and share their sentiment on this subject, I’m not sure about this whole approach.

    I love the paper’s response to such ignorant comments but, unless those comments are legally problematic, they should still be kept public for all to see. There should be no deleting or hiding of legitimate comments, no matter how unpalatable they are for the more liberal of us.

    The problem with doing this on one story is that you should then do this with them all.

    If you look at some of the latest comments on the story about the death of Shafilea Ahmed surely, by the same logic, those which contain religious or cultural intolerance should be removed and/or responded to in the same way?

    Consistency is vital to the integrity of local newspapers!

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  • August 30, 2017 at 4:19 pm
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    Oh, a virtue-signal! And it got loads of worthless hits, I expect. Great.

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