East End Gay Pride: Hate Against Hope/Cancelled Due To EDL Interest

Comment: Why Are Gay People Trying To Ban East End Pride?
"In a sad reminder of the prejudice that Prides face throughout the world, the event has been denounced as confrontational, with the organisers facing a flurry of baseless and deeply personal abuse..."
Paul Birrell, Pink News, yesterday.

'East End Pride Organiser Resigns After ‘English Defence League Past’ Is Revealed'
"One of the organisers of East London Gay Pride resigned today after it was revealed that he had been involved with the English Defence League.
"Raymond Berry helped found the far-right group and remains involved in groups including Stop the Islamification of Europe, it was claimed..."
Pink News, today...

• For the record Out East did not call for East End Pride to be "banned". In their open letter they wrote they have; "great concerns about this demonstration and we have decided neither to participate in the event nor to call our supporters to be part of it, and we think it important to express the reasons why...
"We call on you and the organisations supporting this event to cancel it with a view to working with the local communities of the East End to ensure active, inclusive responses are made to homophobia, which do not inadvertently contribute to community tensions."
The statement from LGBT Muslim Group Imaan that outed Raymond Berry's EDL connections.

UPDATE: Wednesday March 16th. Organisers have cancelled East End Gay Pride.
In a rather silly statement they blamed "personal vendettas" against them.

UPDATE2: The shamefully thick and lazy Peter Lloyd, Pink Paper news editor (!), does his usual trick of just cut and pasting a press release without getting a second opinion - thus missing the point of the story (the furore started over unproven assumptions the stickers/posters were put up by Islamists).
He even manages to spell "Defence" "Defense"; Mr Lloyd, (American) spellchecks are only useful if you yourself can spell. Jesus fucking wept.

East End Pride: An Open Letter From Out East

"As a result of the recent homophobic stickers that appeared in Shoreditch, Stoke Newington and broader East London, you have decided to organise a Pride March event on the 2nd April. Out East, with other local LGBTQ community groups, has great concerns about this demonstration and we have decided neither to participate in the event nor to call our supporters to be part of it, and we think it important to express the reasons why.
"Firstly, it is not clear who is behind the stickers and the police are still investigating that issue. However, what is clear is that the message of the stickers identifies Islam as the cause for this hate. There have been allegations that it is an attempt from far right groups to stigmatise Muslim people. Whether this is true or not, what will remain in people’s minds is that Muslim people as a whole group are the cause for homophobia. It may not be the intention of East End Gay Pride to endorse this message but having a short term response and an emotional reaction to these stickers risks antagonising and scapegoating Muslim communities. Out East refuses that LGBTQ rights or pride demonstrations are used to promote islamophobia even if not intentionally..."

Read the letter in full here.