The Sun v the Criminal Justice System and Gays

Once again there's a nice neutral headline in our favourite tabloid newspaper:

"Barmy Euro law let pervs abuse"

The article is about how two registered sex offenders were allowed to share a flat which is clearly the fault of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The Sun claims that the police felt they were unable to tell their neighbours that they were in the area, because of a

"fear of being in breach of European Human Rights legislation on cohabiting same-sex partners."

What a load of rubbish. The ECHR doesn't say anything like this. In fact, homosexuality is not mentioned at all, presumably because it was drafted in the 50s when homosexuality was illegal in a lot of countries, including the UK. The nearest there is article 8: Right to respect for private and family life, which itself stems from an English case from the early 1600s that established the principle of "An Englishman's home is his castle". Effectively the Sun is raging against one of the basic principles of English common law: Why does the Sun hate our freedoms?

What is more likely to be the reason for this lack of action - if indeed that is what actually happened - is because of how people reacted in summer 2000 to the News of the World's anti-paedophile campaign, including innocent people being attacked. In any event, they were on the sex offenders' register, so it was already a matter of public knowledge.

The Sun also appears to be gay-bashing. It states that the men started a relationship in prison and then in the next sentence states they then targeted the kiddies. The Sun seems to be implying that homosexuality and paedophilia are one and the same or are in some way connected. The only people who take this line are those of a nutty, right-wing persuasion (see the Google search for homosexuality and paedophilia for examples). It implies this even though later on it states that one of the offenders had two kids.

The only positive to this article is that the Sun doesn't explicitly say that the ECHR was forced upon us by the Eurocrats, but the fact it uses the term "Euro" shows what it wants people to think.