Beaten, tortured and left for dead - just for being gay in Iraq

There are a few things in life that upset me enough to make me so angry I could scream and explode in anger, this is one of them. How does anyone have the right to end someone else's life just because they choose to sleep with someone else of the same sex?

Well done to my colleague Alan Muhammed for spotting the story and circulating it on Twitter.

The story, in today's Observer, talks about the destruction of Islam by the gay people in Iraq! It is such a load of crap, honestly, but it does show that gay people in Iraq were safer when Saddam Hussein was in power and that during the 1960s and 1970s there was more of a liberated gay scene.

This horrific violence towards gay people really started increasing after 2003 when militias groups started targeting gay people and the journalists have interviewed a man who targets gay internet chatrooms so he can select his next victims - it is times like this I wonder how journalists do their job with a fair and freehand, but thankfully they do and can in order to show us these stories although I do wish sometimes they would then turn these people into the authorities.

The article goes on to describe one mother who was taken to see and identify the body of her son with the police once a note had been pinned to her front door telling her where the body was, who had been tortured, having his anus glued and his genitals chopped off, she is quoted as saying "I will carry this image with me until my dying day" - no parent, in fact nobody should ever have to witness that or suffer that torture just for being gay.

The government claim the police would never help these groups that target the LGBT community but that certainly is not what the journalists have uncovered.

These people, are not people but despicable bastards for doing this to any other human being whatever their sexuality but actually going out and targeting gay people and luring them out is just - in fact I am now so angry and upset I cannot find the right words to describe these people at all.

I know there are homophobic people in this country, in fact sometimes I have to talk to them and I do pity them, even recently as some of my work colleagues know I had to email a response to one but I would never let them win, I will continue to try and educate their bigotry and ignorance - I certainly wouldn't torture them just because they didn't understand.

We have to stand up to these people not just because they are homophobic, but because they have such a warped mind they feel torture and murder is an acceptable way to deal with people that are different to them. I wonder what they would do if someone slept with their wife?