JK Rowling has been criticised after she appeared to mock a tweet about police LGBT+ outreach efforts near the site of a homophobic hate crime.
On 18 March, the South Wales Police’s LGBT+ network tweeted pictures of patrol cars decorated with the Pride flag in Cardiff City Centre.
The increased efforts to support Cardiff’s LGBT+ community come in the wake of Dr Gary Jenkins’ murder in Bute Park, near the city centre in July last year.
A consultant psychiatrist and father of two, 54-year-old Jenkins was violently assaulted by two men and a teenage girl on 20 July 2021. He died of his injuries 16 days later at the University Hospital of Wales.
The trio was convicted of murder in February after they pleaded guilty to manslaughter and robbery in a trial that lasted eight days.
Multiple comments under the 18 March tweet called the department out over its “waste of resources” and “virtue signalling”.
One critical tweet read: “Stop virtue signalling and get on with your job. I’m sure folk would rather have those two cars patrolling the street.”
The SWP LGBT+ network replied: “Supporting our communities is not [sic] virtual signalling, and we make no apologies for doing so.”
On Monday (21 March), the Harry Potter author retweeted this reply, mocking the obvious typo in it.
Rowling’s tweet read: “Virtual signalling. Like virtue signalling, but for people who couldn’t be arsed.”
Criticising Rowling’s tweet, Scottish actor David Paisley called her out for “laughing about” the network’s outreach work which was happening “10 minutes walk from Bute Park where Dr Gary Jenkins was brutally murdered in a horrific homophobic attack”.
He added: “South Wales Police LGBT+ community outreach followed a specific request at the vigil for Dr Jenkins, asking police to be more visible allies.”
Sharing screenshots, Paisley also revealed Rowling apparently follows the controversial Fair Cop account on Twitter. The anti-LGBT+ group has threatened legal action against police forces that participate in Pride marches.
Reacting to Paisley’s threaded Twitter post, multiple users expressed outrage over Rowling’s “repulsive and ignorant comment.”
“Do better, Jo,” one person wrote.
Another user tweeted: “As a writer, do you do any research or is it just whatever falls out of your head first?”
“I don’t want to assume that this tweet is as badly motivated as it seems, so could you clarify that you’re not actually mocking the police for promoting the safety of the LGBT community in an area where a man was recently homophobically [sic] murdered,” a Twitter user appealed to Rowling.
Paisley later addressed people who defended Rowling by saying it was “just a joke about a typo”.
“It amazes me that the world’s most successful living author chose today to get really nit picky about other people’s spelling & just coincidentally happened to choose a police force supporting the LGBT+ community,” he said.
The Independent has reached out to Rowling’s representatives for comment.
