The defacement of posters put up by
CERN's LGBT group (discussed briefly in our
ECGD meeting in Dec 2014) has been reported on Sunday 20 March 2016 by the
Sunday Times, and subsequently in many other news outlets, including the
Independent,
International Business Times,
Ahmedabad Mirror,
Daily Mail,
Physics World, and
many more.
These poster defacements, which in rare cases included insults, threats
and bible verses, show that there are bigoted people incapable of
operating in the open, international, multicultural and tolerant
working environment for which CERN rightly prides itelf, and in which
scientists of any sexual orientation and identity are welcome to work
and express themselves. Homophobia, transphobia, biphobia and other
froms of bigotry need to be tackled wherever they raise their ugly
heads. We therefore welcome the discussion of this issue in the press,
although we do not believe that these instances of bigotry reflect an
overall homophobic atmosphere at CERN, as some articles imply. CERN as
an international laboratory reflects the international community, and
as such cannot completely isolate itself from the widespread problem of
homophobia, transphobia and biphobia. What should be done to tackle
this problem at CERN, and elsewhere in the world, is an important
discussion.
A statement by the CERN Director General (Rolf Heuer at the time) condeming the defacements can be found
here.
A statement by
CERN's LGBT group on the matter can be found
here.