Turkey: To say that gays are 'perverts' is hate speech

Colin Stewart is a 45-year journalism veteran living in Southern…

A court ruling in Turkey could buoy the spirits of human rights activists in the Third World who seek fair treatment for sexual minorities but cannot cite the examples of Western nations without being shunned as agents of Western cultural imperialism.
Today’s court ruling endorsing respectful treatment for LGBTI people comes from a largely non-European country at the continent’s crossroads with Asia.
In the ruling, reported today, the Constitutional Court of Turkey declared that referring to gays as “perverts” is a form of hate speech.
The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by Sinem Hun, a human rights attorney who represents LGBTI clients. Hun claimed damages for an article on the news and opinion website habervaktim.com that called her “the lawyer of the association of the perverts called Kaos GL.”
The court ruled that the reference was indeed hate speech, but said that Hun was not entitled to damages in this case, because the hate speech was directed at the Turkish LGBT rights organization Kaos GL, not at her.
For more information, read the article on LGBTI News Turkey and on the Kaos GL website about the court ruling.