The Simpsons: Behold The End Times

Here's more reason for Christian parents to carefully watch out what their young children are viewing on the television: The makers of "The Simpsons" cartoon show have decided to directly promote homosexuality on TV as the upcoming Season 27 of the show will feature, among many other changes, the character Waylon Smithers Jr. finally coming out of the closet as a gay...

Christian Today. 

The Simpsons used to be Fagburn's favourite TV programme, but that was 20 years ago.

Haven't seen a new episode in donkey's balls.

Together with a plotline where Homer and Marge split up, this just seems a sign of utter desperation.

Time for bed, Springfield?

PS Cue a revisit of that most hackneyed subject for a feature; 'Gay' characters on kids TV. Zzzzz...  (And The Simpsons hasn't really been a children's programme since series 1).

Matt Damon: You Can't Say That!

Today in Matt Damon Mansplains It All, the Martian star suggests gay actors shouldn’t publicly come out of the closet if they want to be successful. We suggest he stop talking.

Kevin Fallon, The Daily Beast.

The article is actually quite nuanced, but the line 'Damon posits that gay actors should stay in the closet if they want their careers to thrive' is such a silly misreprentation of what he meant.

This article - but of course - caused the inevitable Twitterstorm from hysterical gaybores.

Here's Matt Damon's rather bland comment to The Observer.

“I think it must be really hard for actors to be out publicly. But in terms of actors, I think you’re a better actor the less people know about you period. And sexuality is a huge part of that. Whether you’re straight or gay, people shouldn’t know anything about your sexuality because that’s one of the mysteries that you should be able to play.”

But why not twist it so you can all play the victim and have a jolly good online whine?

PS Obligatory Guardian Cif liberal winky-wank.

Edit: To clarify, I think Matt's point was that great stars tend to be mysterious and enigmatic. That. Is. All.

Tamal Ray: Sorry Girls!

HERE’S news to leave female BAKE OFF fans feeling as flat as a soggy soufflé – star Tamal Ray is gay.

The trainee anaesthetist, whose gentle nature has won the hearts of housewives across Britain during the hit BBC show, has confessed he’s on the hunt for a boyfriend.

When asked by the Radio Times if he had a girlfriend, Tamal said: “I wouldn’t have a girlfriend, I would have a boyfriend, but I am single at the moment.

He added: “Although, I have had a few offers on Twitter.”

The Sun's inimitable response to 'tasty Tamal' saying he's a gayer.

Ask a silly question.

Note how matter of fact Radio Times were...

PS But it was the laydeez the Star felt sorry for...

PPS Digital Spy ask the inevitable 'Is this news in 2015!!???' 

Well, you thought it was when you reported it here, dear.

Putin: Speaks

Watch it here.

In 2013, Russia enacted laws banning "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations" [to children] and blocking same-sex couples from adopting children. A 2014 Human Rights Watch report documented an uptick in anti-gay violence and harassment in Russia since the laws were passed. *

In the clip above, an outtake from 60 Minutes' two-part interview with the Russian president, Putin says he supports equal rights. "The problem of sexual minorities in Russia had been deliberately exaggerated from the outside for political reasons, I believe, without any good basis," he tells Charlie Rose.

In the U.S., Putin points out, some states still have laws on the books against same-sex relations. (This is partly true; all such laws were invalidated in 2003 by the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas.)

[Missing quote where he condemns such anti-gay laws:

“I would definitely condemn that. I believe there should not be any criminal prosecution or any other prosecution or infringement of peoples’ rights on the basis of their race, ethnicity religious or sexual orientation. We don’t have that.”]

In Russia, Putin adds, "We have no persecution at all.* People of non-traditional sexual orientation work, they live in peace, they get promoted, they get state awards for their achievements in science and arts or other areas. I personally have awarded them medals."

Putin also defends Russia's controversial gay "propaganda" law. "I don't see anything un-democratic in this legal act," Putin tells 60 Minutes. "I believe we should leave kids in peace. We should give them a chance to grow, help them to realize who they are and decide for themselves. Do they consider themselves a man or a woman? A female? A male? Do they want to live in a normal, natural marriage or a non-traditional one? That's the only thing I wanted to talk about. I don't see here any infringement on the rights of gay people."

CBS News.

Bear in mind this is an instant translation and may not be precise; (legal) 'prosecution' and (social) 'persecution' appear to be confused for one. [Here's a dimwitted intern at GT getting it wrong. PS And Attitude!].

I wish Russia would repeal their silly little law, but you'd have to be a complete gaytard and/or a stooge of American empire to think 'PUTIN = HITLER!!!'

* Some flaws in the Human Rights Watch report.

Update: Russian LGBT youth group we said was banned clearly not actually banned, Pink News reports.

Thought For The Day: Justin Bieber

'You don’t need to go to church to be a Christian. If you go to Taco Bell, that doesn’t make you a taco.'

From a thoughtful and wide-ranging interview in Complex magazine with the eminently do-able quotable Justin Bieber.

Rainbow List: Where Will It End?

Independent On Sunday.

Welcome to the the LGBTIQABCXYZ non-existent 'community'!

The IoS clearly has no inkling how laughable all this is.

Why not include heterosexuals in your silly fixed tokenistic list and be done with it?

Or, I dunno... paedophiles?

Just a thought.

Thought For The Day: Graham Norton

'I’m 52 and I’m single and on some level I feel like I’ve failed because by the time you’re my age, you really should be settled. But then I look at the relationships people around me have and I find myself asking, “Really?! That doesn’t look like winning to me.”

'It seems that the compromises people have to make aren’t ones I’m willing to make. I don’t know the answer. Maybe I’m just suited to being single. Clearly I am. I’ve reached the point that when people ask, “Are you single at the moment?” I say, “Come on, you can drop the ‘at the moment’. I’m single forever.”’

He still dates (‘I mean I’m not ruling it out. Who knows? Maybe I will find someone’) and would like to date someone his own age, but reckons that’s an ambition too far. ‘That’s the weird thing. Gay men my age don’t want to date someone their age.'

Graham Norton, Daily Mail.

Fagburn: Scrotal Uplift

Enjoy your weekend - Fagburn is going to Tunbridge Wells to have some work done.
x

Lontalius: All I Wanna Say

Stonewall: Now And Then

The historical moment we call “Stonewall”—a series of grass-roots protests with complex motivations and diverse participants that took place in and around a divey Manhattan fag bar during the summer of 1969—has always been something of a Rorschach test: We see in it what we need to see...

Where a critic for the Hollywood Reporter was pleased with the movie’s encouragement of “political awakening,” Gawker’s Rich Juzwiak recoiled at a straight-pandering “monstrosity” whose “badness is nearly unfathomable.” Our disparate reactions to a movie like Stonewall can’t help but reveal personal preoccupations and wishes, and those, in turn, suggest a queer “community” that is very much unsure of where it wants to go next.

To be clear, taking Stonewall seriously in the way I have is not the same as offering a defense. It doesn’t warrant that. But I do think it’s worth considering why such a small, misbegotten movie—one that we could, as Salon’s Andrew O’Hehir suggests, just as easily nudge into the memory hole—has generated so much angst. 

Stonewall was a moment when we all put aside our differences and united to finally fight back—or at least that’s what most of us want it to have been. Stonewall, on the other hand, comes at a moment when the always jury-rigged alliance between the various queer contingents feels more uncertain every day; when our debates over terminology, community norms, political goals, and paths toward social justice feel increasingly fractious. 

Is it any surprise the stakes of this movie—our movie—feel so high? Usually cinema screens simply reflect back the light projected onto them—but sometimes, they act as mirrors for the audience as well. This is one of those times.

The Stakes Of Stonewall, J Bryan Lowder, Slate.

Only the brilliantly perceptive Mr Lowder could make Fagburn temporarily lift his ban on blogging about this sodding movie again.

PS The only other article worth reading on this hoo-hah is Tim Teeman's The Gay Shame Of Stonewall The Movie.

Anyway... No more on Stonewall, it's got boring.

Everyone's feigning outrage now, it's all a bit 'Cecil The Lion'.

PS And finally... here's Tommy Lanigan-Schmidt, your actual surviving Stonewall street kid...

The movie is pretty accurate in terms of the street kids being the main engine of things. In one criticism of this film, someone was saying they were angry because there were so many gay stereotypes. Gay stereotypes are what made it happen. The people who passed for straight hid and didn’t want to be active at the beginning. The straighter-acting people ran away.

GLAAD: Hollywood Must Do Better

This video compiles some of the anti-LGBT moments GLAAD has encountered in Hollywood film over the last five years.

In which some people get called bad words like 'fag', just like happens in the real world they're trying to portray.

Oh boo hoo squish.

David Cameron: Why He Said I Do

As the standard bearer for a new law on gay marriage, Cameron found himself alienating many traditional Tory activists and MPs. Even his own mother found it hard to defend his stance.

Mary Cameron, a magistrate, was asked at a lunch about the negative reaction among party supporters. Reportedly, she said: ‘I know, but David just won’t be told.’

In the run-up to the vote on gay marriage, many Tory MPs who didn’t personally feel strongly about the issue faced a furious backlash in their constituencies.
 
There was much resentment about a policy that was neither in the Conservative manifesto nor the coalition agreement. Threats to resign became commonplace.

‘Pretty much the universal advice of any colleague who spoke to [Cameron] on the subject was to drop it, whatever their personal view,’ says Graham Brady, chairman of the 1922 Committee.

Cameron, he believes, didn’t grasp the implications for the party — particularly MPs with marginal seats. ‘A lot of colleagues were being driven to despair by the loss of support,’ he says. ‘There were people with small majorities, who were losing all of their activists.’

Indeed, Brady believes the Prime Minister risked being toppled over the issue. There was a ‘real danger point’ ahead of the crunch vote, he says, when many MPs were coming under unbearable pressure from their local associations to take a stand.

As it was, fewer than half of Tory MPs voted in favour in February 2013, though other parties carried the day for the PM.

‘I really believe that had he known the scale of the aggro, he wouldn’t have done it,’ says former Defence Minister Nicholas Soames, who is nonetheless ‘utterly convinced’ it was the right thing to do.

Cameron’s determination to push through such progressive legislation is curious, given his reluctance to be the figurehead for other radical change. And his views on homosexuality haven’t always been especially liberal. An acquaintance who knew him in his late 20s recalls him being ‘surprisingly squeamish about homosexuality for someone of his age’.

As an MP, Cameron attacked Tony Blair for ‘moving heaven and earth to allow the promotion of homosexuality in our schools’, and twice voted for amendments that would have excluded adoption by gay couples.

So why was he so keen on gay marriage?

On a political level, the PM and his aides believed that it would reinforce the party leader’s credentials as a ‘modern, compassionate Conservative’...

The latest instalment in the Daily Mail's SENSATIONAL SERIALISATION of Lord Ashcroft's 'a lover spurned' bitchfest', Call Me Dave.

Presumably this is meant to be a negative story.

It also rather misses the point.

What actually happened was Cameron had to withdraw a chunk of his 2011 Conservative party speech at the last minute as it was leaked and thought 'hideously patronising'.

In a panic, his newly appointed speechwriter, Julian Glover (Matthew Parris's boyfriend btw) told him to say something about gay marriage, to undercut his Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone backing same-sex marriage at the Lib Dems conference.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you got gay marriage - basically.

It was completely cynical.

The dirty posh Tory pigfucker.

NB Call Me Dave is published by Biteback, fiefdom of top gay Tory Iain Dale. Hmm...

Thought For The Day: Sam Smith

Twitter.

LOL!!!!!!!!!!!!

Morrissey: Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before

I think the sex scene in Morrissey’s much-mocked first novel, List of the Lost, sounds quite fun: “A rollercoaster coil of sexually violent rotation with Eliza’s breasts barrel-rolled across Ezra’s howling mouth and the pained frenzy of his bulbous salutation.” I mean, that sounds better than the rollercoasters I’ve tried at EuroDisney. But the moral of Morrissey’s otherwise terrible foray into literature is: repression can be a wonderful thing.

I don’t mean repression for everyone. For humans, it’s not good, as a rule. But for artists, yes. As a teenager, like so many of my generation, I yearned with Morrissey, not for him. It was only in adulthood that I realised why: he was a gay man born in 1959, facing a triple whammy of Irish, Catholic, and Northern repression. No wonder he hated the gay scene, himself and everyone else, with a twisting, superior self-loathing that royally screwed him up for evermore.

But for everyone else, it was great. In the closet he became a songwriter of genius. Now, I look back and see he was hiding in plain sight — his best songs hissing with anger at forcing his self away. Yet it was coded enough that I never noticed at the time; I didn’t need to. Putting on record after record in my bedroom, his peculiar, dated, suffering became universal. It was a longing made sarcastic.

Repression, paradoxically, restricted Morrissey enough to be creative. Now he has the licence of his latter years to write this novel, he just isn’t editing himself enough. What if Morrissey had been born in Brighton today and found contentment and a lovely boyfriend aged 17? All of his best stuff would never have been written.
Helen Rumbelow, The Times.

Well yes, of course.

Though this point has been made before and - dare I say - far more eloquently in the essays, Ambisexality and Morrissey: The God That Failed in Richard Smith's quite brilliant Seduced And Abandoned: Gay Men And Popular Music.

PS As with the stinking reviews of the Stonewall movie, I can't be arsed compiling all the bad reviews of List Of The Lost.

Paul O'Grady: My (Lack Of) Drugs Shame

Mirror.

How refreshing.

Yes, she's got another volume of her steamy memoirs out, Open The Cage, Murphy.

His first, At My Mother's Knee, was famously the only showbiz bios ever to get a rave review in Private Eye's notoriously sniffy, Literary Review; 'Funny, well-observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this.'

"Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this." - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf

"Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this." - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf

"Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this." - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf

Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this. - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf

Funny, well observed and recognisably human. Soon you start to wonder why all celebrity autobiographies can't be like this. - See more at: http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/paul-ogrady/at-my-mothers-knee-and-other-low-joints-9780553819489.aspx#sthash.PEaiB9D4.dpuf

X Factor: That Bad, Huh?

The Sun.

Question Time: Yanis Varoufakis

Question Time.

Well said sexy Greek Marxist dude!

Straight-Acting: Groundhog Gay

Huff Post Gay Voices

After just a few years of reading the gay media, everyday is like Groundhog Day.

Repetition repetition repetition.

Christ, how many articles on this tired excuse for a subject have you read?

Or on drag or drugs or... I give up.

Have any of them said anything new?

Even those rare articles eulogising 'straight-acting' gay men - and announcing The Death Of Camp no less! - are just the same, just the same.

PS And you can piss off too, Guardian Film.

Elton & Putin: It's On!

Russian President Vladimir Putin has phoned pop star Elton John and proposed a meeting, according to the Kremlin.

Sir Elton has said he wants to talk to Mr Putin about his "ridiculous" attitude to gay rights.

The singer previously fell victim to pranksters who impersonated the Russian leader on the phone.

But Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian media that Mr Putin had this time called the singer and asked him not to be offended by the hoax.

Mr Putin said on Thursday he was ready to meet Sir Elton - when their schedules allowed it - and discuss "any issues of interest" to the British star, Mr Peskov said...

BBC News.

Thought everyone would see right through my silly - and, let's face it, rather childish - hoax, but it looks like I've got away with it for now.

LGBTs Support Refugees & Migrants: Launch Statement

The sight of people risking their lives to escape war, poverty and oppression has been heart-breaking. The callous response from the British government stands in stark contrast to the compassion and commitment of ordinary people who have risen up across towns, cities and villages to organise and bring solidarity to the refugees.

We are a group of LGBT people who have been active in Stand Up to Racism and Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners. We know what it’s like to be scapegoated, made to feel like outsiders and to be persecuted by the media. We will not allow oppression, division and hatred to succeed. We therefore ask all LGBT people who are dismayed by the plight of refugees to join us now to build practical and political solidarity.

UNITED WE STAND, DIVIDED WE FALL

We will be taking our banner to Calais on the Stand Up To Racism convoy on 17th October, along with all the supplies and money we can collect in the meantime. We will liaise with emergency organisations on the ground at Calais and other crisis areas.

We will build the biggest possible contingent on the demonstrations at the Tory Party Conference in Manchester on October 4th (TUC march) and October 6th- Stand Up To Racism plans to protest as Home Secretary Theresa May makes her speech.

• All ideas welcome - please join us
• No to oppression and persecution
• Tear down the barriers: REFUGEES ARE WELCOME HERE

If you would like to add your name please message this Facebook page with your name, contact details and position/organisation.

Morrissey: There Is Only One Thing Worse Than Being Talked About...

It’s commonplace in this kind of article to tell you we’re reading the book so you don’t have to. It’s a tease, usually. In the case of List of the Lost, however, it’s absolutely true. Do not read this book; do not sully yourself with it, no matter how temptingly brief it seems. All those who shepherded it to print should hang their heads in shame, for it’s hard to imagine anything this bad has been put between covers by anyone other than a vanity publisher. It is an unpolished turd of a book, the stale excrement of Morrissey’s imagination. 

Michael Hann, The Guardian.

The digested read: Morrissey is still obsessed with death and young men's athletics.

"Hello? Morrissey? Right, well... I’ve got some good news and some bad news. The good news is that EVERYONE’S talking about your book…"

— Pete Paphides (@petepaphides) September 24, 2015

James Middleton Watch: Time To Ditch The Beard

Asked during an interview to promote his cake-making business last year whether he had considered proposing, James remarked incredulously: 'Am I getting married? What a ridiculous question! Um, we're enjoying our relationship as it is now.'
 
As for Donna, she hardly ever mentions James by name. And of their relationship, she once commented: 'I don't feel like it is high-profile because James and I don't court publicity.

'We don't have a big showbiz celebrity life in any sense.'

James, 28, has rarely broached the subject of his romance with Donna publicly - apart from that rare interview - and the couple tended to go to great lengths to not be seen out together, apart from at public events...

Daily Mail.

Pope Francis: The Man Who Changed The World

Jorge Mario Bergoglio was elected pope on 13 March 2013 - taking the papal name Francis.

And just four months after his election - at the end of July back in 2013 - he uttered the now infamous words: "Who am I to judge?" when asked about his feelings on Catholic homosexuals.

Speaking to reporters on a flight back from Brazil, he turned around the perception of a church that was out of touch.

Responding to a question asking if there was a "gay lobby" in the Vatican, he said: "If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?" *

This statement has been repeated hundreds of thousands of times around the world - by Catholics and non-Catholics alike.

Was this the question that changed the world? With 1.2 billion [sic] followers of the religion it was a monumental moment for the history of Catholicism.

Since that fateful moment, Pope Francis has been hailed as a revolutionary leader of the worldwide Catholic Church...

 

Daily Express.

Calm down, dear.

 

As popes go Francis isn't the worst, but that's a bit like saying Albert Speer wasn't the worst Nazi.

PS The Pope's 'gay-friendly' image is a con, and it's time we stopped falling for it, Nick Duffy, Pink News.

 

PPS An interesting history of the Catholic Church's notion of sex as sin, and the sanctity of sperm, by David Morris at AlterNet.

* Frankie later un/clarified this statement.

 

Update: Frankie told US Congress today he still thinks we is children of a lesser god and gay marriage is Satan's spunk.

 

And finally... some got very excited that a couple of god-bothering LGBTers were invited to a White House reception for his holiness. 

 

But I'm not sure if he noticed them among the 11,000 other guests.

Dancer From The Dance: Adapted From The Book

Director Alan Poul is teaming with Brazilian-based RT Features for a feature film based on Andrew Holleran’s cult novel Dancer From the Dance, considered a cornerstone of 1970’s gay literature. The book chronicles the search for love and pleasure in the mid-seventies dance-club subculture of New York, centering on the unlikely friendship between the charismatic and mysterious Anthony Malone and the wildly flamboyant Andrew Sutherland.

Poul’s TV directing credits include Six Feet Under, The Newsroom, Rome, Swingtown, and the feature The Back-up Plan. RT Features’ productions include Frances Ha, Love is Strange, Mistress America, and The Witch. Screenplay is by Joshua Harmon, John Krokidas, and Austin Bunn. Poul, Rodrigo Teixeira, and Mauricio Zacharias will produce. Production is scheduled for summer 2016 and WME is packaging.

Deadline.

For the record, this is Fagburn's favourite gay novel of all time.

Please don't ruin it.

Olly & Neil: Conscious Uncoupling

Mirror.

That's nice dear, so why not run a photo of the happy couple together?

PS Famous last words? 'I feel like if you invest too much of yourself in the construction of yourself as a gay couple in the media you end up fucking up the real thing, so I try not to think too much about it.'

Hillary Clinton: Always There

February 2013, her second Advocate cover.

'Gay rights are human rights.' *

This simple statement is the principle underlying Hillary Clinton’s actions on behalf of the LGBT community — past, present, and future. It was the impetus behind another powerful action, announcing her full support for gay marriage, using more of her powerful words:

“LGBT Americans are our colleagues, our teachers, our soldiers, our friends, our loved ones…And they are full and equal citizens and deserve the rights of citizenship. That includes marriage.” **

Twenty years after Hillary welcomed us as a couple into the White House, Judy and I got married just a few minutes away at the National Mall. When we got home from our reception, we had a letter from Hillary congratulating us on our marriage. I’ll never forget the first few words written on her letter: “at long last.”

Hillary has always stood with me, Judy, and the entire LGBT community. And she always will.

The Advocate op-ed August 2014.

Just one example of their endless fawning coverage of this evil woman GAY ICON!

* How Fagburn recalled her 'landmark' speech to the UN.

** She was a vocal opponent of equal marriage until March 2013.

[Bill] Clinton's longtime friend Taylor Branch interviewed the former president several times in the 1990s for an oral history project. One recording in particular, from 1999, is raising eyebrows for its content. Bill Clinton is said to have used offensive phrases such as "the gay agenda," and to have made references to gays "acting out," which when viewed in a contemporary frame could be seen as damaging in terms of LGBT support...

According to Branch, as Hillary Clinton prepared to enter the New York U.S. Senate race, President Clinton worried that her positions on gay rights would hurt the campaign. After stopping the interview to take a call from his wife, the President returned with a candid assessment of how the issue could affect her campaign. Branch says in his recording:

“[Bill] came in and he said, ‘You know I’ve had much more contact in my life with gay people than Hillary has. He said, ‘I think she’s really a little put off by some of this stuff.’ [Bill] said, ‘Generally I support the gay agenda right down the line. He said [signing Don't Ask Don't Tell] was hard for me, and I’m sure there are still a few things that are hard for me to swallow.'"

Branch recounts President Clinton's worries about the upcoming New York Senate race and claims the president told him, "Hillary, emotionally speaking, still finds the issue harder to swallow than I do. And that it could be difficult for her in New York politics, how far she’ll be asked to go.” ...

The Advocate, September 2015.

LOL!

PS As Glenn Greenwald has written Hillary is also adored by Wall Street, the Israel lobby, imperial war zealots and old school Neo-Cons.

Drag Queens: I Came Across A Cache Of Old Photos...

Wearing sweeping gowns, fluttering delicate fans and showing off their era's finest boned corsets, the figures in a collection of 19th century photographs appear, at first glance, to be a series of society matrons.

However, the pictures, which were posted by littlethings.com provide a rare glimpse of some of the most laughed at, and often reviled, members of Victorian society - female impersonators and transgender women.

The article's author notes: 'We can’t tell you how most of the subjects in the following photos identify, but we can say with certainty that these people took a major risk by dressing this way during less tolerant times.' ...

Mail Online have published some enchanting old photographs of Victorian drag queens, apropos of nothing.

Visit littlethings.com to see all 54.

PS More here, but see comments, some are fake (ironically).

Stonewall: Straight Power!

Danny is the centerpiece of Stonewall, a decision Emmerich made, in part, in an effort to attract a wider audience who could connect with him.“You have to understand one thing: I didn’t make this movie only for gay people, I made it also for straight people," he says. I kind of found out, in the testing process, that actually, for straight people, [Danny] is a very easy in. Danny’s very straight-acting. He gets mistreated because of that. [Straight audiences] can feel for him.”
Roland Emmerich talks to BuzzFeed LGBT about his Stonewall movie.

Dear.

Maybe they should have made Harvey Milk a straight dude in Milk, 'in an effort to attract a wider audience who could connect with him'?

The almost painful pay-off here? Roland keeps right on digging!

The petition to boycott Stonewall also takes issue with Ray, the most prominent character of color, falling in love with Danny — critics read that particular arc as a White Savior narrative. Emmerich, for his part, thinks that Ray and the other street hustlers benefit from Danny’s presence, even after Danny leaves the Village to begin his freshman year at Columbia.

“They learned something from Danny — that you can make it, that you can study, you can maybe have a more regular life,” Emmerich said. “I also don’t have the feeling at the end that they are so much on the streets anymore.”

Poster released after the whitewash furore blew up.

You may also enjoy; The Problem With Stonewall: It Isn't About Stonewall, Keving O'Keefe, Mic. Stonewall Is Terribly Offensive, And Offensively Terrible, Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair. There Aren't Enough Bricks in the World to Throw at Roland Emmerich’s Appalling Stonewall, Rich Juzwiak, Gawker, and an untitled absolute stinker of a review on IndieWire; 'The thick blanket of badness that covers the entirety of the film doesn’t do its problematic subtextual politics any favors, either. At the very least, Emmerich can hold his head high in the knowledge that he wasn’t responsible for the astonishingly thick script...'

Oops!

Real-life Stonewall hero Marsha P. Johnson only gets a little screen time, and is played as comic relief, flatly, by Otoja Abit. Many of the characters who don’t look and sound like Danny are rendered as jokes, silly people who need Danny’s relatively rugged masculinity to get them angry and organized. Stonewall is ultimately yet another cartoonish fantasy about white saviors and square-jawed heroes; it should be called Independence Gay. Vanity Fair.

PS Boring Queerty interview.

Update: Not sure there's much point in listing all the articles listing all the flaws in this film - Salon's listed the most scathing - but Fagburn thinks Tim Teeman should have the last word with his fine essay for the Daily Beast, The Gay Shame Of Stonewall The Movie.

If the Stonewall Riots radicalized politics and culture—and their echo is still present, it is now an official New York landmark—then let this listless film be its own wake-up call for writers, directors, and mainstream cinema to mine the true variety of LGBT lives.

The Advocate: Meat Is Grindr

Thought this was an, erm, interesting choice of graphic by The Advocate.

I am looking forward to not reading this article later.

PS What did you expect to find on Grindr, love?

If you're looking for new friends to share hobbies and polite conversation with, join the Girl Guides.

PPS Cos those 'David Cameron fucks pigs' memes will never get old...

Brian Sewell: Different Times, Different Times...

The journalist Tanya Gold describes realising, in 1999, that she was an alcoholic when she tried to jump Sewell. “I looked across the office,” she wrote, “and saw the art critic, sitting at his desk. I decided to ‘take’ Brian. I lunged, straddled him – and the newsroom gaped. As I was peeled off, a pale Sewell said, ‘If I was ever unsure I’m a homosexual, I’m not now.’”

The funny thing about that story is that it sounds, now, like just about the most improbable thing that could ever happen in an office, but at the time, it seemed no more than 10% out of the ordinary. He certainly wasn’t ruffled – he was always pale – and she was by no means the drunkest person in the office. It was a very different time, for newspapers, when transgressions were deliberate and admired, and kudos was all about effortlessness: expertise imbibed in subtle, imperceptible ways, articles knocked out in 20 minutes, bitchiness executed with total nonchalance but never vulgarity.

Sewell wasn’t the only one capable of that but he was, much like his accent, in a class of his own. Knowing that made him generous even while he pretended, with all the might of his typewriter, to be a bastard.

From a touching tribute, The Day Brian Sewell Picked A Fight With Princess Diana, by Zoe Williams in The Guardian.

PS Here's some of her writing for the Evening Standard.

Noam Chomsky: On Power And Ideology

Even Chomsky has bad hair days.

The role of concentrated power in shaping the ideological framework that dominates perception, interpretation, discussion, choice of action, all of that is too familiar to require much comment. Tonight I’d like to discuss a critically important example, but first a couple of words on one of the most perceptive analysts of this process, George Orwell. 

Orwell is famous for his searching and sardonic critique of the way thought is controlled by force under totalitarian dystopia. But much less known is his discussion of how similar outcomes are achieved in free societies. He’s speaking, of course, of England. And he wrote that although the country is quite free, nevertheless unpopular ideas can be suppressed without the use of force. Gave a couple of examples, provided a few words of explanation, which were to the point. 

One particularly pertinent comment was his observation on a quality education in the best schools, where it is instilled into you that there are certain things that it simply wouldn’t do to say - or, we may add, even to think...

Lecture given to the New School, New York, Saturday. Via Democracy Now!

And here's a Jacobin interview on Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Syriza and the prospects for radical change.

PS Now seems a good time to revisit Fagburn and Uncle Noam on US/Cuba.

Piggate: PG Rated

THE “Piers Gav”, as it is known, is now the coolest and most exclusive of Oxford University’s dozens of drinking societies.

It is also the most notorious.

Where the Bullingdon Club is famed for excessive drinking and criminal damage, the Piers Gaveston Society is noted for sexual excesses and, more recently, easy access to hard drugs.

There is no official membership but at the heart of the men-only club are about a dozen undergraduate “officers” devoted to “camp behaviour”, “ostentatious decadence” and a code of secrecy

Founded in 1977, the society is named in honour of the 1st Earl of Cornwall Piers Gaveston, the supposed gay lover of Edward II. 

The Sun. 

PS The society's motto is 'Fane non memini ne audisse unum alterum ita dilixisse^' ['Truly, none remember hearing of a man enjoying another so much'].

PPS I am reliably informed they are known at Oxford for doing shitloads of coke. 

Hugo Rifkind, The Times - a most amusing piece.

VIP Paedophile Ring: Wasting Police Time

Scotland Yard abandoned a central part of its Westminster paedophile investigation last night, claiming it could no longer stand by its assertion that three children were murdered by VIP child abusers.

The Metropolitan police retreated from a controversial statement last year in which it said that lurid allegations about a sadistic child-sex group at the Dolphin Square apartment complex were “credible and true”.

In a lengthy statement responding to speculation that the inquiry, Operation Midland, was in trouble, the Met conceded that it was for a jury rather than the police to determine the truth of criminal allegations, which were made by a witness known only as “Nick”.A spokesman said: “We acknowledge that describing the allegations as ‘credible and true’ suggested we were pre-empting the outcome of the investigation.”

He added that those making the allegations were often “very vulnerable individuals” whose personal situations had to be handled carefully “irrespective of whether the allegations can be substantiated or not”. The force said that the inquiry into claims from the 1970s and 1980s was continuing and added: “This is and remains a murder investigation” ...

The Times.

In fine: 'Yes, it was all bollocks, but we need to save face so won't completely close down this wild gay goose chase.'

Pink News: Genuflection Or Journalism?

Pink News.

Surely it's only surprising it's taken the inbred leech so long.

What did you expect him to say?

We should all be hunted to death and eaten by hounds?

Adventures In Capitalism: Is This Man A Cunt?

Clue: The answer's 'yes'.

Normally an American would have to kill a lion to become so instantly and intensely hated.

PS A boffin explains how this crooked scam works (against us).

Nick Jonas: Fisting The Night Away

George Michael: Careless Whispers

A former prison officer has admitted selling information about singer George Michael's time in prison to the Sun newspaper for £2,000.

Amanda Watts, 43, from Suffolk, pleaded guilty to one count of misconduct in public office and was told a prison sentence was "inevitable".

The Old Bailey heard that details of Michael's time in Highpoint Prison in 2010 led to five stories in the Sun.

Watts, who was arrested under Operation Elveden, will be sentenced next month.

Judge John Bevan QC told her: "You should understand the fact I'm bailing you until [16 October] is to enable you to make appropriate arrangements.

"A prison sentence is inevitable. I'm sure you understand."

The court heard she received £2,000 for the information she gave.

Operation Elveden is a Metropolitan Police investigation into alleged inappropriate payments by journalists to police and other public officials. 

BBC News.

Ms Watts was being paid around £400 a pop for such fascinating stories as what George may have had for lunch on his first day inside, pasta and chips, possibly.

Correction: The above pastagate story was (I think) from another leak when George was at Pentonville, Amanda Watts was a prison visitor at Highpoint. Soz.

Picture Of The Day: Boylesque

Anselme D Lenga at Café de Paris, London.

From a series of photographs on Guardian online by Magnus Arrevad.

By day they’re brothers, lovers, sons. By night they’re porn stars, ‘boylesque’ stars and go-go dancers. Photographer Magnus Arrevad has spent five years going behind the curtain after-hours at clubs from Paris to Ireland to a trailer park in Washington

Fagburn may be too busy laughing to blog today...

Tweet Of The Day: Hameron

Couldn't resist a bit of #snoutgate photoshopping. #piggate #hameron #porkback pic.twitter.com/j5dm53xqgO

— Zombride (@MariBiscuits) September 21, 2015

That's probably enough about Piggate...

A rare photograph of King Edward II with his young lover Piers Gaveston, of Society fame.

Thought For The Day: David Sedaris

The battle for gay marriage was, in essence, the fight to be as square as straight people, to say things like “My husband tells me that the new Spicy Chipotle Burger they’ve got at Bennigan’s is awesome,” and “Here it is, Valentine’s Day less than a week behind us, and already my wife is flying our Easter flag!”

That said, I was all for the struggle, mainly because it so irritated the fundamentalists. I wanted gay people to get the right to marry, and then I wanted none of us to act on it. I wanted it to be ours to spit on. Instead, much to my disappointment, we seem to be all over it...

David Sedaris, A Modest Proposal, The New Yorker.

David and his partner of 24 years, Hugh Hamrick, are now 'engaged, I suppose'.

David Cameron: Well This Is Oinkward

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!