Manchester’s Student Union Bans Speakers from Society Event after Hosting One Who Advocated Execution of Gays

After the University of Manchester Students’ Union banned both Milo Yiannopoulos and Julie Bindel from a society event, you may be wondering, what kind of speakers will they allow?

University of Manchester’s Students’ Union has been in the news quite a bit over the past week for censoring opponents on both sides of a debate. Julie Bindel, a lesbian feminist activist, was banned from a society event because she has held views that the Students’ Union deemed “transphobic.” The union placed severe restrictions on her opponent, Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative gay journalist and outspoken critic of progressive feminism. Days later, the Students’ Union saw fit to ban him as well.

Oh, before I forget: the prospective title of Yiannopoulos and Bindel’s debate? “From liberation to censorship: Does modern feminism have a problem with free speech?”

You just can’t make this stuff up.

If you’re like me, you may be wondering, if individuals on both sides of this debate have been silenced, then who does the Student Union allow? Who could possibly be politically correct enough to earn a platform at a society event?

It didn’t take long to find my answer. This isn’t the first time a Manchester society event has made the headlines: at a 2013 society event put on by the Students’ Union, the event speaker said that in an ideal society, all gays would be killed. (Rememeber, the two speakers who have been censored — Bindel and Yiannopoulos — are both gay.)

During the event Colin Cortbus, a Middle East studies student, asked if “in the Islamic society in which you strive for” people would “feel comfortable, personally and morally, to kill a gay man?” The chairwoman responded, “Absolutely.” She went on to say that two gay men kissing on that very campus would ideally be subject to the death penalty.

This made headlines because Cortbus had the forethought to film the meeting secretly. (The video has since been pulled from YouTube as a violation of YouTube’s policy “prohibiting content designed to harass, bully or threaten.”) The Students’ Union responded with a statement from Wellbeing Officer Cat Gray, which declared they were “deeply concerned with the covert filming of a student event within the Union.” Global Aspirations for Women made no apology for any of the remarks made at the society event. Quite the opposite, Khadijah Afzal, chair of Global Aspirations and speaking on behalf of the society, told student rag The Mancunion that their focus on this aspect of the event showed that they were “ignorant of Islam as a political system.”

So who has the Students’ Union permitted to speak at their events? Those who advocate for mass execution of homosexuals. And we’re supposed to believe it’s Bindel and Yiannopoulos who are the dangerous ones.