People are allowed to think that someone is homophobic.

I completely understand her not finding PDA's appealing.

But marriage? What's that got to do with it? Nobody's forced her to attend a gay wedding have they?

Oh, but wait she's against heterosexual marriage too?
Oh BUT WAIT, she thinks people should only adopt when in a stable marriage, HETEROSEXUAL MARRIAGE.

Nope, not homophobic. Just a bit fussy.

I see what you are saying and I agree.

she's homophobic it's not rocket science

:joker: Brilliant post :clap1:.

I hate how words get thrown around , if anything education is needed for understanding what "homophobia" actually is before accusing people of it .

Another word that's thrown around alot is "bully" and its usually if someone is just opinionated towards people . That's not what a bully is :facepalm: , infact both homophobia & bullying involve hatred , intimidation and verbal abuse /physical attacking .

We live in a world now that's overly PC and people end up walking on egg shells in fear of hurting or saying the wrong thing .

you can still be homophobic/racist without doing those things lol

:joker::joker::joker:

A genuine homophobic person wouldn't be so close to Amanda & Wayne !!! think before you throw accusations around :facepalm: .

Ann has her views , she's not going to change them to fit into a scared overly PC world where people are too frightened to express themselves, so they jump on the bandwagons instead :bored:.

She's a 70 year old who doesn't need to please people for the sake of it . She wouldn't give Shane J the time of day if she hated him/his sexuality , she has sat down and listened and had discussions .

If she was soo prejudice she wouldn't bother and she'd probably avoid Shane J all together . She even tried to be understanding with India .

Eh idk how to define homophobia exactly but I'd probably say she's homophobic but not in a way that requires outrage. Nothing about Ann is malicious or harmful she just has OLD views on a lot of things. She's an old lady coming from a different time and sticks to her religious beliefs. It'd be different if she made disgusting comments on it or was purposely hateful towards the gay people around her but that's just not the case from what we've seen. There are different levels to things you know.

I don't blame people if they take offense and dislike her for her views but I like her for being straightforward, putting people in their place, being both intentionally and unintentionally/ironically funny in many instances and just generally not giving a sh!t. :joker:

she gets away with it because she is quite hideously ugly.

The pope is fully accepting of the lgbt community and thinks that the Catholic church should apologise to, and embrace them. So. Terrible argument.

Theres a scale of homophobia, it isnt a yes or no. Nobody is suggesting that Ann is a full-on 10/10 that goes round on punching sprees on weekends, but she is in a house that unanimously accepts homosexuality (because like, we're not ancient anymore), yet shes still clearly uncomfortable, shes still against equal rights, and she seems completely unwilling to engage in any learning curve. She features on that homophobic scale for sure, nobody else in the house does.

:clap1: Excellent post.

But John Barnes was given mad grief , then as soon as he's evicted the poor guy has to clear things up in his interview and all of a sudden people are like "ohhh he's a nice guy" oh "he's not that bad" :bored: . When he was always a nice guy but they wanted to see the bad in him,and were waiting to be offended and they jumped on him with a major overreaction.

And i think people are making too much of a fuss over Ann's views, she seems to get on with people as long as they don't disrespect her . And its more a generation thing as Andrew & Shane J are mentally 10 years old !!! and she doesn't have time for immature antics .

But what exactly do people want Ann to do ? start wearing a rainbow flag , and start jumping around in the garden with Shane J .

Like i've said people need to focus on real discrimination and stop moaning about a 70 year old politician's views :facepalm: .

Your literally in a big brother forum. Why would you expect to see more threads on 'real discrimination' than a lesser form of discrimination that comes from a housemate on big brother?! Ann too, will have a chance to defend herself and people may or may not change their mind on her... until then, obviously people will discuss the housemates of big brother on a big brother forum. You're in the wrong place if you wanna be focussing on something else!

id be interested yo know the age of the OP

I suspect its rather young...

:idc:

FGS :bored: . I think we've all grasped that it's a place for discussion ,but this is just going round in circles.

And I didn't mean talk about serious discrimination necessarily on this BB section,I'm just saying people lose sight of other stuff .

Do they? Do they lose sight of other stuff? Are people forgetting about LGBT rights in central Africa every time they discuss Ann Widdecombe in Celebrity big brother? This is the place to talk about Ann widdecombe on cbb. Nobody forced you on the thread, but people will talk about her in cbb until she is evicted, and even if a similar discussion has been had before. You shouldn't be surprised by the thought of this.

Oh really? Well I'm perched for the first gay marriage in a catholic church and lesbian cardinal. Did he give you any dates for that at all?

I think the problem is everything has to be under the phobia umbrella.
If somebody doesn’t believe in same sex marriage due to religious beliefs then they are classed as homophobic, could that mean that people that believe that statement are Christaphobic?
I am not trying to be glib, just trying to explain that I think throwing everything together under any phobic title sort of waters down the real issues people have to deal with.
This coming from an atheist who believes people have a right to believe in god if they so wish.

Why would she need to defend herself for being repulsed by those two idiots?

The one that will need to defend himself is Andrew

Here's my take on it.

I DON'T CARE if Ann is a homophobe or not. It's up for debate certainly and there are various different viewpoints.

However I am sick to death of this HOW IS SHE GETTING AWAY WITH IT hysterics.

Every second thread on here now is "so and so is a Homophobe". It's boring. Same with John Barnes who actually quite clearly is NOT a homophobe.

What on earth do gay people want from the world? That NO-ONE ever disagrees with them? Seriously? There's some growing up that needs to be done if you think you're going to go through this life without someone criticising you or not approving of you.

If you take it to heart every single time you're going to have a very hard life.

I'm also sick of hearing about Ann's vote against gay marriage. We live in a democratic society, she has a right to that vote the same as anyone else. If the referendum had failed I'd see a reason maybe for some resentment but it didn't fail so what's the problem?

Quit whining. I think that you are heterophobic.

Yes indeed! :clap1:

This is TIBB ,it happens every year ,if you don't follow the gang and support who they all blindly support you are either racist,homophobic,transphobic,sexist,xenophobic ........ This is why I like and defend who I choose not my mates in a chat room ,and Ive got to tag along or the "gang" may not like me ... How boring is that ? Its lovely to have your own mind ,and if they feel like throwing a "Bic" at me I will bat it off and carry on regardless

Don't be fool now. You have to realize that you are phobic person and you need some help.

This

I don't think Ann hates gay people. And it's as clear that she has homophobic views as it is that she's friendly with gay people, and both of those things can be true without one dubunking the other.
I don't accept her religion or age as excuses for her homophobia though as plenty of people in both categories aren't, and she's shown her religion doesn't always dictate her politics, for example the Roman Catholic church is against the use of condoms yet she advocated for them in prisons in order to protect people (straight men interestingly enough)... so as she saw it there was a morally just reason for her to go against her religious teachings, she chooses which aspects of her religion to follow in regards to her politics based on her personal feelings therefore she's either homophobic or she's a hypocrite, and personally I don't think she's a hypocrite.

I think it's also important to note that she converted to the catholic church because they were more in line with her views. So she doesn't hold the views she has because of the church's teachings, she chose the church because of views she already held.

But yeah like I said I don't think she's a hateful person and she's by no means the worst type of homophobe. And really, if her job hadn't been what it was we probably wouldn't even be aware of any of this stuff. She's only ever discussed her views when she's been asked directly so it's not as though she's been trying to shove them down peoples throats, she's spoken very highly at times of Amanda/Wayne/Shane J, and the nomination reason she gave last night would probably have just been put down to her being a prude if we didn't know of her political background (and she's a prude as well as being a bit homophobic so that probably doesn't help perception of her :laugh: ) Normally we wouldn't know so in depth the political views of housemates though and if we did, we'd probably have very different opinions of a lot of them so Ann's not really on a level playing field here and just judging how she is with people in a real life context, she's been very friendly and respectful with the gay housemates and that goes a long way. I'm not saying her homophobia is 'ok' and she's in there to be judged so criticism of her is fair, but at the same time if people judge her more positively I think there's also plenty of reason for that too, I think denying her homophobia completely is a bit narrow minded though, but then so is making her out to be an extreme example of homophobia, basically both sides of the argument have validity to them because she falls somewhere in the middle of it.

Absolutely spot on.

Has the younger generation never heard of DIVERSITY?

It makes the world go round, is up for discussion after discussion and stops dictatorship by one group over another.

It works both ways, gays have so much more freedom of expression, more than they ever had, they keep pushing the boundaries of acceptance but they will never get 100% how some people seem to expect and neither should they.

If they keep being more and more outrageous, they will find it unacceptable to others. Gays are no more righteous than anyone else in this because they are people at the end of the day and deserve no more or less than anyone else.

Wouldn't Ann's reply be, That's OK, it's your opinion and then move on.

I wish others would

:clap1:

Definitely. Just because she wouldn't want to argue it herself though it doesn't mean people shouldn't talk about that aspect of her, I do think the extent of it/number of threads about it etc is a bit much, but we're on here to talk about the housemates after all so it's all fair game. Someone shouldn't go on the show if they don't want their views judged and discussed.

:clap1: it appears on TiBB at least that perceived homophobic is ALOT worse than the poor treatment of women in the house if you judge it by the threads, the homophobia threads are pages long and Andrews treatment of women is barely raising a whisper

True Cherie, double standards as per usual and lots of "Poor me " thrown into the mix

You think TIBB care about women's rights?

Nope !!

I disagree, she would expect you to have your views and expect the same in return.

Nothing more

Saying things like Christophobia is like saying heterophobia with a straight face, neither exist because both are the majority in their fields. A majority can never truly be discriminated against because they are the majority.

The 'Phobia umbrella' comment only seeks to undermine the fact that these problems still exist. Is Ann not comfortable around gay people? Yes. Has she voted against gay rights in the past? Yes. She IS a homophobe, she may not be out there hunting down gays and executing them but she does have a homophobic attitude.

Religion ultimately isn't an excuse for bigotry, especially with something like Christianity since the bible is FULL of contradictions, you cannot realistically follow all it's teachings, you have to pick and choose and people who choose to believe that homosexuality is wrong yet don't see an issue with wearing different kinds of materials or eating shellfish should not be protected by their religion.

Religion comes under the umbrella of Free Speech, she's allowed to be homophobic as long as it doesn't transcend into hate preaching or violence and people are allowed to criticise her and the religion she uses to justify her beliefs as long as they abide by the same rules she does.

:clap2:

internalized homophobia is a thing

well when it boils down no, makes a mockery of generally supporting female hms :laugh: