That would be me.fat and old wrote: there was a reference to the police actions in Oxford St 40 years ago that's just as distasteful imo.
And I stand by that: in both cases there were police officers willing to carry out harassment ordered by their superiors in response to a protest.
I absolutely agree that sexuality is not a choice (unlike transport or religion) and that the degree of institutional violence is orders of magnitude different.
However, we now have a culture in the press (including their choices of what to publish in the "letters to the editor" and to leave up on their comments page) which promotes violence and antipathy towards cyclists. In NSW and the ACT we've just had a raft of frankly mind boggling increases in fines and introduction of additional anti-bike laws. And across the country we have had specific police actions to target cyclists, some of which verge on the pythonesque. And, yes, Virginia, this has turned into assault. For the cyclist's own protection, of course.
Indeed cyclists, along with "illegals" appear to now be proxies for all the other "out" groups that one used to be able to bully and harrass without consequence nor remorse.