Hull church puts up electric fence to highlight LGBT hate crime

A church in the North of England has installed an electric fence in its entrance hall, in a bid to highlight the plight of LGBT people across the globe.

Known simply as “The Electric Fence” the artwork hopes to be provocative and challenge people’s perceptions of hate crime.

Annabel McCourt, the artist behind the piece at Hull Minister, said it was a direct response to attacks on same sex marriage.

She explained: “The Electric Fence was born out of a direct and personal response to a highly publicised American Pastor’s sermon in which he advocated a ‘solution’ to same sex marriage.

“I couldn’t have foretold the current climate in my wildest nightmares. Soundbites of ‘learning lessons’ resonate in a hollow mantra in which we haven’t evolved.

“First, Trump rises to power promising a wall, then, reports of gay men being interned and tortured in concentration camps in Chechnya, evoking the indescribable horrors of Auschwitz.”

She added: “Now, a ‘coalition of chaos’ fuelling fear and throwing into question new-found and cherished LGBT freedoms. Borders, boundaries, terror, fake news… we are trapped in a loop of hatred where the human condition and an architecture of fear are working in perfect harmony.”

Back in 2014 a North Carolina pastor had called for the death of lesbian and gay people through imprisoning them inside an electric fence.

Charles Worley was filmed in Providence Road Baptist Church saying society should “build a great, big, large fence — 150 or 100 mile long — put all the lesbians in there.

“Do the same thing for the queers and the homosexuals and have that fence electrified so they can’t get out…and you know what, in a few years, they’ll die out…do you know why? They can’t reproduce!”