Laurence Fox, a prominent right-wing activist and former actor in the United Kingdom, has been told to pay £180,000 ($225,242) to two LGBTQ+ men, former Stonewall trustee Simon Blake and RuPaul’s Drag Race UK star Crystal, following comments Fox made on X (formerly Twitter) falsely referring to them as pedophiles.
Fox had previously lost a libel battle involving the two men back in January, when high court judge Justice Collins Rice ruled that he had defamed them. He has been ordered to pay each of them £90,000 ($112,621).
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This defamation occurred when Fox had decried the supermarket chain Sainsbury’s, calling for a boycott after they made a social post celebrating Black History Month. Blake and Crystal, whose legal name is Colin Seymour, had called him a racist for his post, after which he replied with an accusation that the two men are pedophiles.
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“By calling Mr. Blake and Mr. Seymour pedophiles, Mr. Fox subjected them to a wholly undeserved public ordeal,” said Rice. “It was a gross, groundless and indefensible libel, with distressing and harmful real-world consequences for them.”
Fox had previously attempted to countersue both of the men in response to them calling him a racist. He alleged that being called a racist was “reputation-destroying” and “career-ending,” and that he had lost work as a result of it. The claim was dismissed following the January ruling.
Rice called the libel against the two men “distinctly homophobic.”
She added, “They are entitled by law to an award of money, to compensate them for those damaging effects, and to ensure that they can put this matter behind them, vindicated and confident that no one can sensibly doubt their blamelessness of that disgusting slur and that they were seriously wronged by it.”
The judge ruled that if Fox repeated these allegations, he could be held in contempt of court.
Fox is the founder of the U.K. Reform Party, and had made his career starring in television programs like ITV’s Lewis. He has previously ran for mayor of London unsuccessfully. He is also a former pundit for the right-wing news network GB News.
In the last, Fox has posted pictures of the Pride flag as a swastika, burned the flag on video, engaged in blackface, mocked Black Lives Matter, and opposed national COVID safety guidelines such as lockdowns and social distancing.
Crystal alleged following the January ruling that after Fox’s statements on Twitter, he received a great deal of abuse.
“It’s horrible,” he said to PinkNews. “It’s been three years of a pretty-non-stop barrage of abuse, especially whenever I put myself in a public sphere where I’m going to be encountering people who aren’t part of the drag community or drag fans or the queer community.”
The judge expressed sympathy for Blake and Crystal, saying that “They had been forced to fight a libel claim all the way through to trial with every conceivable point being taken against them. They have done so under the sustained hailstorm of Mr Fox’s exercise of his rights to amplified free speech.”
Fox referred to the ruling as a “bullies charter” and expressed his grievances with it on Twitter, saying, “You get the same wonga if you lose a leg at work. So surreal it’s almost funny.”
The concept of referring to LGBTQ+ people as “pedophiles” or “groomers” has been going on for years and encourages violence against the LGBTQ+ community. The slur has especially been used against drag performers who have been vilified internationally for allegedly “sexualizing children” through “adult” performances.
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