Father Ted creator Graham Linehan arrested at Heathrow for ‘anti-trans posts’

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/met-police-father-ted-heathrow-anti-trans-posts-x-graham-linehan-b1245573.html

by fotogneric

48 comments

  1. You can disagree that someone calling themselves a woman makes them a woman.

    You can’t be calling for them to be assaulted.

    What a tit

  2. “I hear you’re a transphobe now, Father Linehan”

  3. Himself and McGregor are two cheeks of the one pestilential arse entitled, “Shitting away every single shred of respect the Irish public had for you”.

  4. This news website is breaking the GDPR law. If a website if free to use for users that agree to tracking cookies, then it must also be free for those that don’t agree to be tracked

  5. The guy’s gone off the rails. Destroying his own life for this issue.

    Fucking weird how obsessed he is about it.

  6. How weird to be so transfixed (pun intended) on this single issue, when so few of the population are trans. I can only imagine he has some skeletons in his closet.

  7. I no longer believe a word that comes out of this guys mouth. He sadly lost the plot years ago.

  8. Freedom of speech doesn’t cover telling people to punch someone in the balls. It’s ridiculous to think it should be either.

  9. We need some consistency about freedom of expression and incitement to violence.
    If what Linehan has said here justifies arrest then expressions like “punch a terf” should be treated likewise.

  10. Imagine being one of the most beloved and successful comedy writers ever and dying on this stupid ass hill. Idiotic doesn’t even begin to describe it

  11. I generally disagree with policing speech. However there are some obvious exceptions.

    Inciting violence is a pretty clear one. Asking people to assault someone just based on them being in a certain space (regardless of any rules) is just that.

    You don’t even need to agree with the (imho common sense) perspective that trans women are women to see this as inciting violence. Even a man in the wrong bathroom can’t be randomly assaulted for it. They might be forcibly removed, sure, but a violent assault is clearly off the table.

  12. No matter what your opinion is of other people or groups of people, you cannot expect to openly wish for or advocate for violence against them and expect to get away with it under the banner of free speech.

    For example my personal opinion of Graham Linehan is that he’s a horrible cunt, that his writing is overrated crap, and that he physically repulses me. But no matter how much I despise him I would never wish for or advocate for violence against him. And that’s the difference.

  13. American lurker but uhhhh UK wtf are you doing these days?

    Selfish reason to care but I hate how dumb laws somewhere else are used to justify bad politics here. Possible to support trans people and free speech! (And in fact a culture which accepts arresting offensive and “dangerous” people is not going to be safe for trans people!!)

  16. Why on earth was 5 armed police officers sent to arrest him. I mean come on. The world has gone nuts. And although it was made in bad taste for sure, his comments are not serious. He has warped humour. No one seen father ted? Snow flakes.

  17. They’d probably say “hi mate, I think you’re in the wrong bathroom”

    At that point, I’d leave and go into the men’s.

    No ball bashing required.

  18. The comments he was arrested for are laughably mild. It needed 5 officers to arrest him as well for it. What a joke.

  19. They’re pushing this too far and it’s going to backfire, methinks.

  21. So he jokingly says kick them in the balls and it’s a call to violence but the labour minister who says slit their throats gets off Scott free. Uk is a warped place

  22. You guys can really get arrested for this kind of thing?

  23. I wonder how many people in this comment section who agree with this have also advocated to “punch TERFs” lmao

  24. They needed 5 armed police to arrest this monster. Seriously that’s how dangerous this man is. They’re lucky to have survived.

  25. >A second tweet, on April 19, was a picture of a trans rally with the caption: “A photo you can smell.”

    >The third was a follow up to this tweet which said: “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”

    What is he even saying here? I genuinely don’t get it. Is he saying that trans people are… homophobes? Is he referring to… himself as a homophobe? Neither interpretation makes any sense, and I can’t think of any other possible interpretations of what he wrote.

  26. Fuck radical politics. Fuck you if you support them. Imagine being imprisoned for your opinion. Dystopian brainwashed sheep all of you.

  27. Arresting someone with **armed** police for tweets is definitly not going to cause issues, deluded redditors told me so!

  28. Can someone answer a question for me. How do these Internet laws work? Like say if an American, living in America writes something on X that is against UK law. Can that person be arrested whenever they travel to the UK?

  29. “Death to the IDF” – no problem

    “Death to the west” – no problem

    “punch a trans in the balls” – straight to jail

    I get that people will argue the later is a more direct call to violence, but to me the fact that only one of those is deemed arrestable is absolutely unhinged

  30. At this point, I almost think this is a UK governmental Psyop to make people even more radical. Do they think arresting people for mild tweets is going to make people more accepting? Hell no, it only widens the divide and could turn a few tongue-in-cheek jokes to actual hatred.

  31. This guy has indeed gone off the rails. I seen it happen in real time like 10 years ago.

    He’s obviously a tit, and I wouldn’t defend any of his opinions on trans people. In fact I mostly think the exact opposite of what he does on this issue.

    At the same time I think what he is doing here is making a stupid joke…I don’t think he’s actually trying to incite violence. He’s certainly not making a specific threat of violence. He’s trying to be an edge lord.

    I’m beginning to not like the level of intervention the government and police are having online… particularly when they are both so shit in the real world.

  32. Damn the UK sucks. I don’t care what he said, being arrested for a tweet is some authoritarian shit.

  35. Why does the UK even allow social media at this point? Silly Brits.

  37. what he did that’s worthy of five officers arresting him as soon as the plane landed.

    “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

    A picture of a trans rally with the caption: “A photo you can smell.”

    “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F*** em.”

    Some of y’all have written worse stuff in this reddit thread. hope you don’t live in the UK.

  38. I just wanna know if it’s still okay if I like Father Ted ?

  39. Here’s the quote, judge it for yourselves instead of taking anyone else’s word for it.

    > ”If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls”

    I personally find that a laughable thing to be arrested over(fined maybe but arrested lol) but I’m not British.

  41. It’s wild that you can be arrested for an internet post

  42. > “If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.”

    > “A photo you can smell.”

    > “I hate them. Misogynists and homophobes. F***em.”

    The three tweets he was arrested for… if this happened in America Graham would be walking away with a huge cheque for having his rights violated. According to him the reason he even went back to the UK was because he has a court summons that forced him to come back because there has been someone who has made several false accusations against him for similar things. I know he has been tied up in legal issues due to that same person accusing him for years.

  43. Arrested for posting his disdain for trans. WTF is democracy?????

  44. You should never be arrested for voicing an opinion unless it leads to violence. It’s only a matter of time until we all say something that will fall foul of this ever creeping restriction on what constitutes causing offence to someone.

  45. if what he said are calls for violence then half or /r/europe is in trouble

  46. Arrested for posting his opinion. get me out of this god forsaken country.

  47. “Anti-trans posts” makes it sound like he was just being transphobic on socials… he called for trans people to be directly attacked, those are threats

  48. They really buried the lede on the fact he was calling for violence in the posts. That’s generally gonna get you in trouble.

    Reminds me of when Jordan Peterson lost his psychology license, and people tried to make it a free speech issue but the guy was calling for all his colleagues to be locked up over gender affirming care and even tweeted “die woke die” the same day some guy in the same province ended up stabbing a gender studies prof… Even if it was a coincidence that sort of thing a sign you should have pumped the breaks a long time ago.

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