Perverse Pedantry

[muninnhuginn]

Just picked this story up in Peter Preston's entry in the Guardian Online blogs.

A Ugandan woman, previously "held for five months and repeatedly raped and beaten" in her home country is to be deported, because Home Office **** (you choose your term(s) when you've finished the sentence) don't accept "homosexual" covers lesbians too. Homosexuals are recognised as a persecuted group in Uganda, but since she's a lesbian she's not, apparently.

Also, she can't really be a lesbian, since she's had a child.

As someone pointed out in the comments, this ought to be in the main news sections, not in the blogs. But at least it is there with a link to the (inevitable, but useful) web site. And yes, I've signed the petition.

Being stoopid, I also turned to my Biblecomfort blanket and looked up homosexual (n) in the big OED which said:

A person who has a sexual propensity for his or her own sex; esp. one whose sexual desires are directed wholly or largely towards people of the same sex. In non-technical contexts it is often taken to mean a male homosexual, a female one being termed a lesbian.

The adjective's even more clear cut:

Involving, related to, or characterized by a sexual propensity for one's own sex; of or involving sexual activity with a member of one's own sex, or between individuals of the same sex.

No question about it: she ought to receive the same treatment from the Home Office as a male homosexual would in a similar situation.

I'm appalled.