Gay and lesbian asylum-seekers have won the right to live in Britain after the Supreme Court ruled yesterday that the Government was wrong to return refugees to countries where people had to choose between homophobic persecution or hiding their true sexual identity.

The ruling by Britain’s highest court ends the Home Office’s controversial policy of refusing asylum to gay refugees on the grounds that they could avoid persecution abroad by pretending to be heterosexual.

Lord Hope, deputy president of the court, who headed a panel of five justices who heard the case of a man from Cameroon and a man from Iran, said that to compel a homosexual to pretend that their sexuality does not exist or can be suppressed was to deny him his fundamental right to be who he is.

Lord Rodger said the normal behaviour of gay people must be protected as it was for heterosexual people.

This is good news, though Lord Rodger’s breezy explanation (below) expanding on exactly what freedoms people have, is peculiarly pigeonholing and unnecessary. It’s difficult to sense the tone in which this was delivered – possibly the context is someone desperately trying to be liberal and ‘with it’:

“What is protected is the applicant’s right to live freely and openly as a gay man. To illustrate the point with trivial stereotypical examples from British society: just as male heterosexuals are free to enjoy themselves playing rugby, drinking beer and talking about girls with their mates, so male homosexuals are to be free to enjoy themselves going to Kylie concerts, drinking exotically coloured cocktails and talking about boys with their straight female mates.”

Um, thanks for the clarification, Lord Rodger.

Continues: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/why-the-supreme-court-ruled-against-the-deportation-of-gay-asylumseekers-2021227.html