THE GALHA FREE-SPEECH CONTROVERSY

FOLLOWING the publication of the Autumn issue of Gay & Lesbian Humanist (G&LH) magazine, there was some criticism from certain left-wing politically correct quarters. Unfortunately, instead of rebutting these criticisms of the right to free speech, and pointing out that nothing carried in the magazine was necessarily the view or opinion of its publishers, the Pink Triangle Trust, or its associated organisation, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA), the GALHA committee chose to attack the editors in a most vicious and public way.

The editors' response to these attacks was both detailed and considered, and it is reproduced in full in the dossier that the link later in this page will take you to. Since this rebuttal of the criticisms, there has been much said concerning this matter, and our aim in making available this dossier is to put all of this material in the public domain so that it can be discussed properly.

This is only consistent with our beliefs as editors that all sides of every argument should be presented so that the intelligent and thoughtful reader can make up his or her mind on the validity of the various arguments.

We would like to point out that we are no longer editors of G&LH, since we could not agree to the new condition the GALHA committee have sought to impose, whereby all future copy must be approved by them. We feel this is nothing more than an attempt at censorship, and we could not, in all conscience, continue editing the magazine under these circumstances, and so have resigned.

We stand by our decision to publish the material and are greatly saddened that such challenging and thought-provoking articles are, it seems, unlikely to appear again in G&LH.

This dossier will be updated periodically, so, if you require up-to-date information, please visit this site again and check the 'last updated' date below.

We are grateful to MFEBooks.com for providing web space for this dossier and would like to point out that all material presented here is solely the responsibility of the undersigned.

Andy Armitage (former editor)
Dean Braithwaite (former assistant editor)

The Document

(Second Edition Published 2 January 2006)

THE dossier document is in PDF format, so in order to read it  you will need Acrobat Reader software installed on your computer. If you are familiar with Acrobat and PDFs, just click on the icon below to access the document. If not, please read on for more information.

Please note that because this is quite a large document, without broadband it may take several minutes to download.

Acrobat Reader (or similar) software will already be installed on many computers. If your computer doesn't have this software installed it can be easily and quickly downloaded from the Adobe website and is FREE.

To check whether your computer already has Acrobat Reader installed click on the PDF TEST link below.

IMPORTANT: If Acrobat Reader is installed it will automatically load and you will see a short message confirming that it is installed. You must then click the BACK button of your browser to return to this page so you can access the document.

If it worked and you saw the confirmation message, please click on the icon below to see the document. If you want to save a copy on your computer remember to click on the 'Save a Copy' icon at the top of Acrobat Reader. Alternatively, right click on the icon and select 'Save As' to download the document without reading it. You can then use Acrobat Reader to open the document saved on your computer.

If Acrobat Reader is not installed and nothing happened, you will need to download the FREE Adobe Acrobat Reader software by clicking the 'Get Adobe Reader' icon below. This will take you to the Adobe website, where you will need to follow a few simple instructions to download the program.