Holyrood paper editor Mandy Rhodes ends contract after Respect MP fails to apologise for rape definition
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 22 August 2012
George Galloway: editor said it was impossible for Respect MP to continue as columnist following his 'alarming' comments about rape. Photograph: Christopher Thomond for the Guardian
George Galloway has been sacked as a columnist on the Scottish political magazine Holyrood after he refused to retract his widely condemned remarks about the rape charges facing Julian Assange.
Mandy Rhodes, the editor of Holyrood, said the Respect party MP's remarks that Assange was guilty of just "bad manners" by failing to ask permission to have sex with a sleeping woman, had left her "frankly gobsmacked".
Rhodes said she had not always agreed with Galloway's views in the past but had respected his integrity, his role as an "effective thorn in the side of the establishment", and his stance on Iraq.
However, she said it was impossible for him to continue his column following his remark that having sex with a sleeping woman was "not rapeas anyone with any sense can possibly recognise it" if she had already had sex with that man.
"There is no excuse, ever, for sex without consent, and regardless of the details of the Assange case, Galloway's comments and inappropriate language about rape per se are alarming," Rhodes said in a statement on the magazine's website.
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