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Dear Editor (ONCOM)
Cllr Cranfield-Adams yet again condemns "some
gay men" by accusing me in his letter to you (29 March) of
"vindictiveness and spite" for "threatening"
him with the Standards Board for England (SBE). If he had familiarised
himself with the workings of SBE prior to writing he would have
realised that they only deal with an extremely limited, narrowly
defined and descriptively specific range of complaints about "certain
types of inappropriate behaviour by elected, co-opted and independent
members of a range of authorities, including councils" (SBE
Mission Statement November 2003). Whilst I am certainly in the process
of making a formal complaint to SBE, now strengthened by the content
of his aforementioned letter, there was and is no "threat"
involved, as this complaint is a standard bureaucratic procedure
devoid of the drama he seeks to imbue it with.
I now address the content of the Councillor's letter,
using his helpful numbering system from 1 to 4.
1: In my view the comments published by Cllr Hilary
Dance, that "God did not originally make two men (or women)
to love and complement one another" qualify as homophobic.
I suggest Cllr Cranfield-Adams closely scrutinises the 'Equality
and Diversity Policy and Strategy' which Richmond Council adopted
on 23 March, as he will then be able to identify the various sections
which have been breached by Cllr Dance and which prohibit her from
expressing her views in her role of Councillor without disciplinary
action being invoked. The same applies to her breaches of Richmond
Council's 'Members' Code of Conduct' (Jan 2003). That Cllr Cranfield-Adams
does not consider her comments homophobic is entirely irrelevant
and does not impact on the complaint about her submitted to the
SBE.
2: Cllr Cranfield-Adams may not consider Cllr Arbour
homophobic in dismissing my submission that some gay men and lesbians
felt unsafe on the streets of Richmond, but this merely reflects
the total unfamiliarity of both these councillors with the report
published by Richmond Council in May 2002, 'Community Safety Survey
Report of Findings', authored by Tracy Reynolds of Council's Best
Value and Business Planning Unit for Council's Community Safety
Unit (Corporate Policy Unit). This report confirmed and boldly underlined
the data submitted by me but dismissed by Cllr Arbour, when it found
that 49 percent of Richmond residents "feel unsafe when walking
alone in the borough after dark", with 11 percent feeling "very
unsafe". Richmond's homosexual population is estimated at between
5 to 10 percent, dependent on location within the borough, therefore
even the mathematics supports my submission which was airily brushed
aside by Cllr Arbour who simply had not done his research, a calamitous
state of affairs now entered into by Cllr Cranfield-Adams who repeats
the same error.
When Cllr Cranfield-Adams suggests that, having spoken
to "many gay friends and acquaintances" this view is "not
shared", this exercise in anecdotalism does not impact on the
facts of the matter quoted above and merely reflects that the percentage
of gay men who feel unsafe is not 100 percent, which I never claimed
to be the case. As to ascertaining data regarding an "increase
in violence against gay men and lesbians" since Cllr Dance's
letter was published six months ago, these data would be hard to
come by as it is well established that most homophobic crimes go
unreported and therefore unrecorded.
3: Cllr Cranfield-Adams now claims that it was "At
no stage (his) intention to close down the entire Online Communities
website", but my reading of his emails to you, which I read
online on the website quoted, state the opposite. Whilst I can understand
his panic in now attempting to dissociate himself from his actions,
the record can not be erased and readers can decide for themselves
the truth of the matter by reading his emails online here.
I am perplexed by his complaint against me when he
writes "Perhaps Mr Mann thinks it appropriate that someone's
sexual orientation should be the object of ridicule?" as I
have not, at any time whatsoever, made any comment which would justify
such a response.
4: Cllr Cranfield-Adams questions whether there "is
a gay community in the borough" and states that "none
of the (persons I have spoken to) have heard of Mr Mann or his organisation".
This statement merely confirms the well-established fact that there
is no monolithic, homogeneous lesbian or gay community, but that
there are, in fact, several special-interest lesbian and gay micro-communities
which may run tangentially or in parallel and which may be entirely
uninvolved with the micro-communities in which they have no direct
interest.
When he suggests that the persons whose views he solicited
have no knowledge of Positively Healthy, the world's longest established
gay men's holistic AIDS charity and Richmond's only AIDS agency,
or of me, he is claiming that these persons do not read the Richmond
newspapers, where the matters under discussion herein have dominated
the letters pages for six months, and do not interact with local
gay men with HIV or AIDS. As for his derisory comments about my
being the "self-appointed spokesperson" of the gay community,
this is not a role I have ever claimed, but I will always strenuously
defend my community from homophobes and, in this, require no title
nor hallmark. His comments about "libel" can not refer
to anything I have said or published and therefore requires no response
from me.
He concludes by referring to the "time I spent
last year brokering and leading meetings (sic) between the Council
and Mr Mann", but the facts do not support his statement. His
approach to me by email was entirely unsolicited by me and followed
the publication of my letter in Richmond & Twickenham Times
in which I exposed the fact that Richmond Council's accounts department
had advised me there was £15,000 of unallocated HIV funding
against which we were not being allowed to tender a bid. Cllr Cranfield-Adams'
unsolicited approach resulted in my brief meeting with him in a
Richmond cafe, lasting twenty minutes, followed by a one-off meeting
lasting one hour which he did indeed set up with Philip Bradshaw
and Debbie Nicholson from Richmond Council's Adult Services department.
Whilst I was grateful that Cllr Cranfield-Adams brokered
this meeting I always felt uneasy as to his motives, an unease which
deepened when the meeting's only discernible result was Council
then denying that the £15,000 ever existed or had been available
to tender against. At no time whatsoever following this meeting,
did Cllr Cranfield-Adams ever contact me again on this matter.
When he inaccurately refers to our single meeting,
never plural "meetings", with Council as driven by my
"allegations of institutionalised homophobia" and that
"the exercise demonstrated that (Mann's) allegations were completely
misplaced", he entirely misrepresents what transpired at this
meeting, as these allegations which he claims were central to this
meeting were clearly not, as my notes, and those taken by Bradshaw
and Nicholson, will undoubtedly confirm.
In conclusion, when Cllr Cranfield-Adams entered the
debate and muddied the waters by vilifying the borough's gay community
for its "spite and vindictiveness", he abusively personalised
the issues involved and inflamed the situation needlessly by demonising
"some gay men" in this way. He must now, and will, take
full responsibility for his actions as a Richmond Councillor.
Yours sincerely
Cass Mann
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