An incident in London last week saw a same-sex couple verbally attacked with homophobic slurs for kissing at a bus stop. 

The incident was caught on video, taken by friends of the couple, which later went viral on Twitter.

The video shows two women who pull up in a car next to the bus stop, and start shouting out the window to the couple who had apparently just stopped kissing.

The video shows them shouting out the car window, telling the couple: “You’re not going to be kissing your little boyfriend in the street…You do that behind closed doors.”

The couple – who have decided to remain anonymous – refused to apologise, and the woman continued to shout, using homophobic slurs and telling them to stop kissing. “My son is not going to grow up like you,” she says before driving away. 

Friends of the couple began sharing the video to bring attention to the growing rate of homophobia in the UK. The twitter user who originally posted the video stated in the tweet: “It scares me how backwards people are when we think we’re making progress on being a more open and accepting country.”

This incident comes just a few months after another homophobic crime on a London bus where a female couple were verbally and physically attacked. Recent figures have also stated that reports of homophobic abuse have soared in the last few years – but that persecutions have fallen from 20% of reports to 8% over the same time period.  

PLEASE WATCH: My best friend and his boyfriend were stopped by these women and verbally harassed for kissing at a bus stop in London, it scares me how backwards people are when we think we’re making progress on being a more open and accepting country ? pic.twitter.com/yRMlaqpkIy

— Rose (@roseannem98) October 17, 2019