MAP Forum

The holy month of Pride is upon us once more. For the next few weeks, you won't be able to visit a supermarket, order a takeaway coffee or board a bus in many cities without being confronted by that lurid rainbow flag.

Every time throughout June when I see a rainbow zebra crossing, a rainbow train or a host of rainbow flags all the way down Regent Street, I shall feel it as an attack on lesbians (the old fashioned female sort).

Pride parades are no longer about equal rights for gay and lesbian people. They have been hijacked by sexual fetishists, many of them heterosexual men, and turned into outdoor porn extravaganzas.

Gay Pride has become Pervert Pride. I would earnestly advise anyone with children to steer well clear of these marches, because you are likely to encounter men in bondage gear with bare buttocks and even their genitals on display.

The Trump administration has aggressively rolled back efforts across the federal government to combat human trafficking, a Guardian investigation has found.

The sweeping retreat threatens to negate decades of progress in the drive to prevent sexual slavery, forced labor and child sexual exploitation, according to legal experts, former government officials and anti-trafficking advocates. They say the administration’s moves are impeding efforts to prosecute perpetrators and protect survivors in the United States and around the world.

“It’s been a widespread and multi-pronged attack on survivors that leaves all of us less safe and leaves survivors with few options,” said Jean Bruggeman, executive director of Freedom Network USA, a national coalition of service providers, researchers and trafficking survivors.

Under Trump, key initiatives for fighting human trafficking have been cut back at the US Department of State, Department of Justice, Department of Labor, Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Guardian found. Senior officials and other staffers have been forced out, workers shifted to other priorities and grants delayed or cancelled.

Four Carnival Cruise Line crew members were removed from a ship in Baltimore by border security officials.

Customs and Border Protection inspected the Carnival Pride ship on Sept. 7, “based off intelligence that crew members were in possession of child sexual exploitation material,” the law enforcement organization told USA TODAY.

“After boarding the vessel and interviewing four suspected crew members, officers confirmed they had received and viewed the exploitation material,” the emailed statement continued.

CBP did not specify whether any criminal charges had been filed against the crew members. “This is a law enforcement matter of which we always cooperate, and we defer to the authorities for further comment,” Carnival said in an emailed statement.

A man accused of raping a 14-year-old girl as part of a grooming gang has told jurors he did not know how old she was and never encouraged her to have sex with others.

Leonard Paun was 16 or 17 when he met the girl and he believed they were in an "on-off" consensual sexual relationship, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

The now 23-year-old is one of six men who have denied offences against six girls, aged between 13 and 16, in Gateshead between 2015 and 2019.