Gay parish priest victim of unprovoked homophobic attack

Now you can't even eat a burger on your way home without the risk of being beaten up because you are gay. And this didn't happen in some major urban ghetto, but in a place which I have always thought of as a relatively genteel town on the south-coast, Bournemouth. The parish priest has chosen to have his name published after the attack, because he is well-known both as a priest working to promote safe sex in the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender community and as a gay man himself and he hopes others will learn from his experience.

The attack was carried out by a man, accompanied by a woman, carrying a metal baseball bat - it seems unlikely that this is the kind of equipment that would normally be carried by someone of an evening who was not going out specifically to look for someone to beat up.