Asda’s ‘gay gnomes’ send shopper into a rage

By Barry Duke • 4 years ago

Jul
2019

'Gnomosexuals' were the centre of a row in Plymouth

POLICE in the UK city of Plymouth had to remove a man from a local branch of Asda after he kicked off over a display of ‘gay’ garden gnomes.

Four officers attended the Estover branch at around 4.25pm on Saturday following reports of an abusive male shouting at staff. The garden ornaments had been painted in the colours of the rainbow flag, and the man said this offended him.

Image via Facebook/Asda

Advertising the gnomes on Facebook, Asda said:

We’re proud to be supporting Pride events across the country this summer – and to celebrate we’ve created these special rainbow gnomes. ?️‍? They’re £20 each and available in selected stores now. See where they’re available here: http://bit.ly/2tALP7d.

Asda’s Facebook post attracted many positive comments, but one woman – Mary Sonja Tudor – expressed her horror:

Please STOP. These are horrifying! I saw them in a store, there was a whole family of them, and they’re nightmare material. Gnomes should be #1 on the list of nightmarish things to put around your house to scare away children, neighbours and good taste.

Mysteriously, the link provided by Asda is now dead.

An eyewitness said:

A man was causing a disturbance over a gnome, sort of gay pride flag colours, which I’m all for. The guy started saying random things like it’s a gnome, it’s offended him as they don’t have a sexuality. I’m assuming the guy was offended as they look like they have a gender, that’s the bit I caught of the situation.

A spokesperson for Devon and Cornwall Police said the man was “abusive and loud” and “was advised to leave the store by officers at the scene”.

The furious shopper “eventually” co-operated, he added.

Asda sells a range of Pride products and in 2017 launched a multi-coloured gnome in support of pride events across the country.

A spokeswoman for the chain confirmed that a member of staff called the police after a man was “highly aggressive” in the store. She added:

We don’t accept threatening or abusive behaviour towards colleagues or customers.

The Author

Barry Duke

Veteran journalist Barry Duke, born in South Africa in 1947, settled in the UK in 1973, where he became actively involved in the anti-apartheid movement and gay rights organisations. A militant atheist, he joined the National Secular Society (NSS) and was a co-founder in 1979 of the Gay Humanist Group which changed its name to the Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association in 1987. In 2017 he was handed a Lifetime Achievement award by the NSS for his "spirited opposition to religious intolerance and irrationality" in his roles as a free speech advocate and his work as editor of the Freethinker and the Pink Triangle Trust website. In 2022, when the Freethinker suddenly went "woke", he was summarily sacked for being too aggressively atheistic. In 2017 he was married to his partner of 25 years, Marcus Robinson, in Gibraltar. The couple live in Benidorm, Spain.