Pride: What The Twits Say

Three hilariously silly pieces about Pride on Pink News.

It's all drag queens and sexual deviants - Boo!
I've lost count of the numbers of articles "arguing" this old tosh.

A boring gay man writes in response; We are normal and we want our rights! 
Ditto.

And a gay man with a grudge responds; "It’s a travesty for the UK’s LGBT Tourism and Hospitality industry." 
It's what we were all thinking.*

This is the level of debate in your actual gay media, folks. 
Please kill me.

* Actually this piece made some good points. 

Gad Beck: 1923-2012

Last gay Jewish Holocaust survivor dies
BERLIN – Gad Beck, an anti-Nazi Zionist resistance fighter and the last known gay Jewish survivor of the Holocaust, died on Sunday in Berlin. He passed away in a senior citizens' home six days before his 89th birthday, which would have been on June 30.

Jerusalem Post. 

PS It is morally obscene to call him a "gay holocaust survivor" when he was not imprisoned for being gay.

Armed Forces Day: Let's Celebrate!

Today is Armed Forces Day.
No idea who dreamt this tomfoolery up, but I say yes.
Let's revisit this classic video for equal marriage which features a lovely gay soldier who's just got back from murdering some Afghani children.
Soldiers are great aren't they?
Actually he's not a soldier, it's just some ex-public school boy dressed up.
In no way has this debate been hijacked by the gay bourgeoisie.
Still, hooray for soldiers!
If THE GAYS don't support imperial wars they don't deserve any rights, that's what I say.

Daily Mail: Obsessed?

Number of stories in the Daily Mail about gay suicide since 2001 - 485.

Luka Magnotta: It Gets Worse!

You couldn't make it up etc etc.
The Mirror.

One Direction: Well Done Lads

The Irish Sun.

To SA: Dahoum

I loved you, so I drew these tides of men into my hands
and wrote my will across the sky in stars
To gain you Freedom, the seven-pillared worthy house,
that your eyes might be shining for me
When I came

Death was my servant on the road, till we came near
and saw you waiting:
When you smiled, and in sorrowful envy he outran me and
took you apart:
Into his quietness

So our love's earnings was your cast off body to be
held one moment
Before earth's soft hands would explore your face and
the blind worms transmute
Your failing substance.

Men prayed me to set my work, the inviolate house
in memory of you.
But for fit monument I shattered it, unfinished: and now
The little things creep out to patch themselves hovels
in the marred shadow
Of your gift.

Stonewall: June 28th 1969

“You know, the guys there were so beautiful – they’ve lost that wounded look that fags all had 10 years ago."
Allen Ginsberg.

"Some people push back."
Ward Churchill.

Fagburn: Happy

So I went to the newsagents and I Feel Love came on...

World Pride: A Million Lies

'London’s gay pride celebration is under threat following a cash dispute between the organisers and contractors staging the event.

'Sources close to Pride London, which usually attracts about a million people, said today that organisers have just 24 hours to save it after contractors threatened to walk out over unpaid bills...'

The Evening Standard.

Hard to know what's more funny.
This or that they're still saying a million people turned up to the last one.
Yes, that's a real thing that actually happened.
There really were a million people there.

No, hang on - let's say a billion.

GT: Worst. Cover. EVER!

What were they thinking?

PS Alan Turing: Who He? *laughs like a mad dog*

Fagburn: Whatever

Fagburn: Me

The only interesting thing about this gay marriage debate is it reminds me why I'm a communist who hates all religion.

#OccuPride: Adorable!

San Francisco Pride, pictured earlier today.

Cameron: My War

O Will of the People.
O Black Hand Gang.
O Lee Harvey O.
O Sirhan Sirhan.

Where are you when we need you
O brave young man.

Labelling: A Lesbian Suicide?

"In November last year, television fitness expert Angie Dowds killed herself jumping from Beachy Head. Last week's inquest reveals that Dowds, who'd previously struggled with addictions, had toxic levels of alcohol and drugs in her system at the time of her death. She was also anxious about work and had split from her partner, to whom she sent a text: "My heart is broken, my spirit is broken." Such a sad story, and one which requires no embellishment. Why, then, was the fact that Dowd was a lesbian deemed so intrinsic to the tragedy? When a human being feels so beaten and lost that only suicide is the answer, what does their sexuality have to do with it?
"Dowds was a lesbian, but her suicide was not lesbian. Dowds had a sexual orientation, but her death didn't...
"Even today, there are still times when people's sexuality has a direct bearing on their death – such as the ongoing persecution of gay people all over the world and the recent spate of suicides of bullied gay teenagers. Sometimes a death, or a suicide, truly warrants being defined as "gay" or "lesbian". Angie Dowd's didn't, and the rush to label it makes me wonder just how much we've really moved on."

The great Barbara Ellen writing in The Observer. 
Headline illustration from the Daily Mail, natch.
But what of the inverse of this - The Obituary Closet?

Edward Heath: Czechmate

It was a scandalous accusation, and the leading Conservative politician made clear he would be consulting his lawyers. A book by a defector from the Czechoslovak secret service was claiming that Edward Heath, who had only just been ousted as prime minister and leader of the Tories, had been the target of a homosexual blackmail plot. The defector, Josef Frolik, wrote that more than a decade previously, in the early 1960s, a colleague in London had decided that the noticeably unmarried minister was a ripe target. And so, it was said, the Heath Caper had been born.
According to Frolik, the man behind the plot was a brilliant young spy named Jan Mrazek, who specialised in targeting politicians (even becoming friendly, Frolik said, with the wife of one minister). Mrazek’s alleged plan was to exploit Heath’s well-known delight in playing the church organ.
A “handsome young organ virtuoso” named Reinberger was selected to act as the bait. Reinberger was supposedly trained in the “techniques of homosexual approach and seduction” before being sent to meet Heath in London and invite him back to Prague to play the internationally acclaimed organ at the grand baroque Church of St James. Then he would pounce, leaving Heath open to blackmail by the Czechoslovakians...

The Sunday Times.
The so-called "Heath Caper" is an old story, which first surfaced in the 70s.
Was there a fiendish blackmail plot by the far Right planning a Pinochet-style coup in Britain?
Probably not.
Josef Frolik almost certainly made it all up.
The Sunday Times concludes "there seems no evidence of a real plot."
Thanks for that.

• The Heath Caper is on BBC Radio 4 tomorrow at 11am.

Keep Marriage Special: And Incest Too

"If the only basis for marriage is the desire of the parties to get married then there is, according to the logic of this proposal, no reason not to open up marriage to more than just same-sex couples. Polygamy, polyandry and incest would all be permissible."

From a pamphlet published by new looney tunes group, Keep Marriage Special;
"Our aim is to defend the biblical definition of marriage and to oppose any possible redefinition by HM Government."
Good for you. 
Quoted in The Observer - who've illustrated the news item with a rare photo, above, of a gay couple with their heads and faces showing!
Of course, it would be churlish to point out that both incest and polygamy are sanctioned by the Bible.

David Laws: On Returning

The Sunday Telegraph runs a thinly disguised love letter to "homosexual" David Laws, masquerading as an interview.
Apparently, Mr Laws is "widely tipped to return to front-bench politics in the Cabinet reshuffle expected in the autumn," replacing Vince Cable as business secretary, they're hoping.
His big idea? Slash taxes and public spending.
Which is a bit rich coming from a multi-millionaire who fiddled his parliamentary expenses, I'm sure you'll agree.
He describes inadvertently outing himself through that expenses scandal - he didn't declare that the man he'd claimed and paid £40,000 to in rent was his boyfriend - as "a very difficult thing.”
“Quite often politicians have single car crashes which are quite painful, but this was a multiple car crash – affecting many different parts of my life at once. It took a long time to recover from that."
He adds; “Michael Gove was very supportive – I am a big fan of his."
Who knew!
Oh, and he supports gay marriage - and arguably becomes the first person to put the case for marriage equality in the pages of the Telegraph unchallenged. 
The Telegraph lauds Laws as "one of a species now almost extinct – a Liberal Democrat popular with Tories"
Can it be long til David Laws does the decent thing and comes out as a Conservative?

The Twilight World Of The Heterosexual: Part 322

From a stupid sex survey cited in the Mail On Sunday.

Alan Turing: Molly Malone

A lesser known fact about Alan Turing is that his favorite song was Molly Malone (his Mother was Irish, after all), which, so the story goes, he insisted on rendering on the violin to the police who came to arrest him on charges of gross indecency, before agreeing to make his statement to them.

This recording by Matmos of Clodagh Simonds (of Fovea Hex) singing Molly Malone, in itself a sonic marvel of intelligent artifice, was first featured on their FOR ALAN TURING ep, a work commissioned in 2006 by The Mathematical Sciences Research Institute at Berkely CA on the opening of their new Mathematics Hall.

I thought this was really moving.
Happy birthday, Alan Turing.

Thought For The Day: Clive James

'To be the kind of newspaper writer who doctors fiction until it sounds like fact is to work a confidence trick. I admit that everything attributed to me by the Mirror journalist I did actually say in my BBC show, but he shifted the context by leaving out when and in what circumstances I said it. He thus turned one kind of fact into another kind of fact, which means he turned it into a fiction...  
'The journalists for the cheap press are uneasily aware that nobody cares much about what they say. Hence their sad conviction that they can say things any way they like, even if it means staging a man’s funeral for him just because he makes a few down-in-the-mouth remarks. Talk about getting the hearse before the horse.'

Clive James in the Telegraph on the Mirror's premature attempt to file his obituary.
In true tabloid-style, as he has cancer he became "Brave Clive James". 
The now notorious episode of Meeting Myself Coming Back is on Radio 4 tonight at 8pm.

Marriage: Hate Mail

'A newlywed couple have being bombarded with internet hate mail after posing on the steps of 10 Downing Street to hand in a 550,000-signature petition against gay marriage' 

Daily Telegraph.
Remember these two hate-filled fucks?
Some robust messages have been left on god-bothering groom Rhys Curnow's Facebook page.
What was delivering the petition if not delivering half a million items of hate mail? 
Seems like a fair swap to me.
"And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise."

Update: Below from the Daily Mail who are so not happy about this.

Only a queen would pick someone up on their wedding dress being polyester...
The Mail are of course oblivious to the fact that "a sad and lonely death" is a paraphrase after the infamous piece they ran by Jan Moir after Stephen Gately's death. 
Irony is wasted on stupid bigots.

Ronald Reagan: Fingered After Death

'A pair of gay rights activists who were invited to the White House for a first-ever gay pride event last Friday stirred a controversy after being photographed giving President Ronald Reagan’s official portrait the middle finger.
'The guests, among them Philadelphia activists Matthew Hart, Zoe Strauss and Mark Segal, traveled to Washington, DC, on President Barack Obama’s invitation to observe Gay Pride Month.
'The event also came on the heels of Obama's recent declaration of support for same-sex marriage...'

Daily Mail. 

The bastards!!!

• The Mail finally let on the reason for the ad hoc protest in their last paragraph with a recycled quote from Matthew Hart (above, left); "Ronald Reagan has blood on his hands. The man was in the White House as AIDS exploded, and he was happy to see plenty of gay men and queer people die. He was a murderous fool, and I have no problem saying so. Don’t invite me back. I don’t care."
For more see Reagan's Aids Legacy: Silence Equals Death.

Jimmy Carr: Who's Sorry Now?

"Not all gay people are camp and funny. Some are lesbians."

Gag told by a contritious Jimmy Carr as he returned to the stage after being outed as a tax-dodging millionaire scumbag.
Quoted in The Guardian.
He wouldn't have seen Miriam Margolyes on The Graham Norton Show last night. 

David Starkey: Blah Blah Blah

"Gay activists mock the supposed hypocrisy of the Church. It was founded, they jeer, to enable Henry VIII to marry whomsoever he wished: what therefore is its moral authority for resisting the sincere desire of gay men and women to ratify their union by marrying in the sight of God – or at least in the eyes of the State?

"As it happens, I am torn. As an atheist gay who regards marriage as part of the baggage of heterosexual society which I have come to respect but can never fully share, I am tempted to say a plague on both your houses. As a conservative and a patriot, however, I am aware – and increasingly so – of the value of established institutions and suspicious of the levelling equality which dissolves them and atomises society. Above all, as an historian I believe in getting things right..."

Disgraced racist gay Tory windbag David Starkey writing in the Daily Telegraph.
He - somewhat idiosyncratically - thinks the equal marriage debate is about "whether gays can legally call each other Mr and Mrs."
Erm...
His article - which cites obscure acts of parliament, bobbins church declarations and arcane royal tittle-tattle - is every bit as bum-achingly boring as I recall history lessons being at school.
After much careful thought, Mr (Mrs?) Starkey decides to side with the establishment and support the status quo.
Surprise!
 

Coming Out: It's No Biggie

In this week’s Entertainment Weekly special report cover story, writer Mark Harris examines the new, casual method gay celebrities are using to reveal their sexuality publicly for the first time. Fifteen years ago, when Ellen DeGeneres decided to come out of the closet, it was big news. Not just big: It was the cover of Time magazine, and a major story on Oprah, Primetime Live, and CNN. Last month, another star of a popular TV comedy went public with his homosexuality. But the news that The Big Bang Theory’s Emmy-winner Jim Parsons is gay was reported with such matter-of-fact understatement that many people’s first reaction was a quick Google search to see if maybe he was out already and we’d all just failed to notice.
But sometimes big news arrives quietly. That new blink-and-you’ll-miss-it style is an important hallmark of changing times. Fifteen years further into the evolution of gay equality than DeGeneres was, Parsons joins American Horror Story’s Zachary Quinto, White Collar’s Matt Bomer, and any number of other gay TV personalities, from Modern Family’s Jesse Tyler Ferguson to Glee’s Jane Lynch to CNN anchor Don Lemon to Bravo’s Andy Cohen, who have pretty much put to rest any questions about the viability of being out in showbiz.
Even if it’s accomplished in a subordinate clause or a passing reference, coming out casually is, in its way, as activist as DeGeneres’ Time cover, although few of these actors would probably choose to label themselves as such. The current vibe for discussing one’s sexuality is almost defiantly mellow: This is part of who I am, I don’t consider it a big deal or a crisis, and if you do, that’s not my problem. It may sound like a shrug, but it shouldn’t be mistaken for indifference. By daring anyone to overreact, the newest generation of gay public figures is making a clear statement that there is a “new normal” — and it consists of being plainspoken, clear, and truthful about who you are.

Blurb from Entertainment Weekly on how stars are now coming out "casually".
That a significant number of American lesbian and gay celebrities - and other public figures - are finally coming out is news in itself, of course.
I'm not sure why this should be one area where the US is lagging behind the UK.
Apart from Hollywood always being in the grip of the dead hand of mammon, obvs.
And something tells me there may be more than the dozen or so celebs who've come out so far. 
Just a hunch.
Oh, and didn't the American magazine, The Week, run an article noting this trend a month ago?

Alan Turing: The Day Before You Came

In his famous article in 1950 Alan Turning proclaimed: "I believe that by the end of the century ... one will be able to speak of machines thinkingwithout expecting to be contradicted." Clearly the famous Turing got it wrong (Tom Melzer, G2, 18 June). And even if the Turing test had been passed, he would still have been wrong. The Turing test is the crudest of behavourism. In my lifetime Turing has gone from obscurity to awe-inspring icon, but this seems to be exaggerated. He certainly did good work on the notion of computability, though that was based on something much more fundamental called Godel's theorem. It doesn't seem to be true that he was the inventor of the computer, though again he did good work on early versions of programming computers. I can't comment on his contribution to breaking the German codes, since none of the accounts I've seen explain exactly how they did it. But I understand that it took them a long time, and that when they'd done it, Doenitz became suspicious and changed all the codes. It is perhaps time for a more balanced view of Turing. 
Roger Schafir
London

Letter to The Guardian. 
Interesting, though I'm way too dumb to verify most of this.
One might also contest Alan Turing's elevation to the status of great gay martyr; he died more than a year after he'd stopped the hormone treatment, we do not know for certain if he took his own life (he left no suicide note, and there is evidence he may have been poisoned by a "nutty professor" home experiment), and he appeared to be quite happy being gay - indeed, it was his shamelessness which meant he shopped himself to the police.
Whatever, I shall happily be joining in the celebrations of Alan Turing's 100th birthday tomorrow.

Update Saturday 23rd: 'Alan Turing: Inquest's Suicide Verdict 'Not Supportable'. BBC News. Told ya!
One of many impressive, wide-ranging and accessible articles about Alan Turing for the centenary on the BBC website. Kudos to them.
There's a more boffiny collection of articles on the science bits at Wired.com.
Polari Magazine online have also published several articles - much of it interesting and thoughtful, but they do tend to obsess on getting an official pardon and some kind of memorial (The fourth plinth of Trafalgar Square! A bank note!).
I doubt that Turing would have been bothered about such things.

Update 2: Turing Committed Suicide: Case Closed Very good breakdown by the producers of Codebreaker.

Gay Inc: "So Excited"

If you want something to read, Fagburn heartily endorses this article by Stephen Thrasher from Village Voice's new Pride Issue on the corporate takeover of gay.
Why has liberation been overtaken by equality in our collective imagination?
Why do people obsess over promoting "marriage equality" over other LGBT issues?
Why are some campaigners only capable of seeing gay people as consumers? 
If big business is funding gay groups are they buying silence on their dodgy working practices?
And just because a politician is pro-gay why should we overlook how otherwise they are a reactionary right-wing scumbag and/or unconvicted war criminal? 
Please write your answers in full and show your workings...

•  The above tweet sent by Gay Star News made me despair - in 140 characters or less it perfectly encapsulates the attempted cultural banalification and political stupification of our world. "So excited". WTF?

Fagburn: Announcement

Today I am doing stuff.

• Image by the god-doesn't-exist-like genius, David Shrigley.

The Kinks: Wonderboy

Ray Davies - probably my favourite songwriter, if such things are measured by who's written the most of your favourite songs - is 68 today.
Wonderboy was The Kinks' first release in 1968.
It stalled at number 36, the band's first flop.
Happy birthday, Ray.

x

Life In Hell: Freezes Over

Breaking: Matt Groening has announced that he's stopping drawing his cartoon strip Life In Hell after 35 years.
If you're not American and not a big Matt Groening fan this will probably mean bo-diddley-squat to you, but hey, your loss.
Farewell Akbar & Jeff ("brothers or lovers or both... whatever offends you most") and the rest of the gang.
Thanks. It's been a ride.

x

PS Sadly there's no Akbar & Jeff archive online, but to see a selection of strips featuring cartoonville's first and most tetchy gay couple type their names into Google Images...

Owen Jones: The Justin Bieber Of The British Left

"Owen Jones, to those not formally acquainted, is the Justin Bieber of the British Left. Super-star; muse; author; poet."

Dan Hodges, Daily Telegraph blog.

Praise indeed!
There is a slight danger of over-exposure, though.
And one hopes it doesn't all go to his pretty little head and he doesn't turn all vainglorious like that L***** P*****. 

Wham! Reunion: Wham Bam No Thank You Mam!

Daily Mirror.

"Categorically not true", according to George Michael's PR, Connie Filipello.

Transphobia: Freedom Of Information

A very interesting/scary piece on Pink News by Jane Fae about how newspapers have been using FOI [Freedom Of Information] requests to generate "stories" about trans people.

'The most recent example surfaced in the People a fortnight ago, in a story about the number of transgender officers in the Metropolitan Police. This originated in a FOI request made on the popular WhatDoTheyKnow website in May, which turned up the fact that some 582 Metropolitan Police officers identified as LG or B (or 8.5% of those who expressed a preference). In addition, 8 identified as intersex, and a further 6 as transgender/transsexual... *

'Similar issues arose earlier this year when The Sun claimed that the Ministry of Defence was paying for troops’ gender reassignment surgery. This arose from an FOI inquiry that revealed that over a possible two year period, the MOD had spent around £7,000 – out of a budget in excess of £100bn – to support military personnel in gender re-assignment.

'While accurate, this piece was condemned at the time by members of Trans Media Watch for stirring up controversy by running a story out of all proportion to the actual impact of the money involved...'

Jennie Kermode of Trans Media Watch told Pink News; "In the absence of any other context for the story, we can only conclude that the FOI use in this case was speculative and was intended to acquire material for a negative story about vulnerable minority groups. The negative intent in this case is clear from the paper’s choice to change the word ‘intersex’ in the police data to the inaccurate word ‘hermaphrodite’ which most intersex people find offensive.
“The deliberate omission [of background] suggests that the intent is to mislead readers.”
Quite rightly, Kermode says she does not wantto see any restrictions placed on FOI requests.
But what to do?

It's strange though that Pink News has headlined this article; 'Concern over ‘pernicious’ Freedom of Information requests on LGBT issues' - why not specify here this is a trans issue?
I can't think of any similar cases involving, say, gay men.
As Fagburn keeps repeating, trans people now occupy the same place in tabloid demonology as gay men once did.
So someone being trans is a story in itself - they hold a particular fascination if they work in "manly" professions, such as the police, the fire service or armed forces.
The tabloids think it is quite legitimate to out trans people.
And trans people are - almost always - only allowed to be presented as either a joke or a threat.
It really is quite dreadful, shameful, hateful stuff.

PS Worth stating again how vastly improved Pink News is since Stephen Gray became editor last year.
It's great to have a UK-based gay news where I can find out some things I didn't know were going on, rather than scream at all the things they've got wrong.
Pink Paper seems to have given up - the whole thing now appears to be written by interns...

* The Pink News article also details several “material inaccuracies, use of pejorative language and disingenuous statements”.

Radio: Turned Off By Aunty

The BBC is a broadcasting bastion of equality and diversity, willing to put community needs before commercial success – or so it self-deceives. Not so long ago, the Asian Network and BBC6Music radio channels were saved from cost-cutting measures by campaigners who accused the ‘corporate media barons’ of betraying their audiences. Now the Beeb has come up with another such scheme that completely undermines its ethics and lets down local licence fee-payers. Only this time, there’s actually no money to be saved...
As part of a cost-saving, streamlining measure, LGBT Citizen Manchester, Jewish Citizen Manchester and Irish Citizen Manchester are to be replaced with a three-hour syndicated show called All Around England. Despite LGBT Citizen and Jewish Citizen Manchester being the only dedicated representations of either minority across BBC Radio, and Citizen Irish now the longest-running Irish-specific show (at 27 years, no less) on BBC radio, the programmes will not be rescheduled for broadcast anywhere else on either BBC Manchester or the national network...

When barely a week goes by without a media debate on gay marriage, and in the year that London hosts World Pride, the axing of Citizen LGBT seems a particularly bizarre move, if only in terms of topicality. The success of commercial LGBT radio stations such as Gaydar may act as a disincentive to launch a programme on the national network (the last such show, Out this Week, which won a Gold Sony Award in 1995, was axed four years later and has not been replaced since). But the audience demographics of commercial and local LGBT radio are quite different, with local listeners tending to be over the age of 45. Considering that Myers’s report on local radio concluded that, currently ‘the biggest loser is the older demographic’, this only seems to support the case for protecting Citizen LGBT.

New Statesman blog.
Save Citizen Manchester LGBT! Facebook page.
Listen to the latest show on BBC iPlayer.

Luka Magnotta: Extradited

A Canadian porn actor suspected of murdering and dismembering his lover has arrived back in Canada after being extradited from Germany.
BBC News.

I note the cops didn't even let her do her make-up.
WHERE WERE YOU AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL!!!


PS A Daily Mail reader comments; "just as well he fled to germany and not the uk as he would claim asylum and be given a free house and benefits"

Brideshead Revisited: Revisited

"The production lasted two-and a-half years. We all knew we were being stretched to our limits but working together for so long made us very agile as a group. We could rise to anything. We knew what we had – but could never be sure we'd pull it off. There was a fear that it was too long, too slow and too gay. Then, crucially, two US backers said what they'd seen was brilliant. That was all we needed to push through the last stages."

Director and writer Charles Sturridge talking to The Guardian about making the "classic" Granada TV series.
Anthony Andrews does, too.
All sounds a bit nightmarish.
Oh, and it was too slow - and coulda been gayer.

Victor Spinetti: 1929-2012

Actor, raconteur... and Fagburn's former neighbour.

x

Letters: 'Bigots Branded Bigots' Bemoans Leading Bigot

Sir, I am sorry that Nick Herbert feels “distant” from the Church over the highly divisive issue of same-sex marriage which his government has forced into public debate (“Gay Tory challenges ‘intolerant’ Church”, report, June 16).
This debate is not about the dignity and rights of gay and lesbian people, who already have the benefits of marriage through civil partnerships, but about a change in the definition of marriage for everyone.
Does he realise the extent to which this so-called “consultation”, with no backing from his party’s manifesto, is leaving many people alienated and distant from his government? It is in fact the supporters of traditional marriage who have been accused of bigotry and homophobia — the kind of intolerant and judgmental language he talks about in his interview.
Lord Carey Of Clifton
House of Lords

Letter to The Times from the former Archbishop of Canterbury - and current Coalition 4 Marriage mouthpiece.

Oh, do piss off!

The Times: Going Underground

I am pretty sure I was hit upon last week, on a train at rush hour. It was a little guy, neatly dressed, and we were both squashed together, holding the same, ahem, pole. We touched hands accidentally at first.
And yet, whenever I moved my hand away from his, up or down the pole, he simply followed it and, in apparent homage to the opening scene of Michael Fassbender’s recent erotic drama Shame, came to rest neatly and gently on top of mine.
This bizarre game lasted for three or four stops until, not quite feeling the vibe, I took my hand away entirely, plunged it deep into my jacket pocket, and spent the rest of the journey swaying and wobbling apologetically into my fellow commuters.
When I told a friend about it later he said I should’ve rammed my wedding ring right into the little guy’s face and shouted, “Check it out, buddy! I’m hetero! And I’ve got kids!” 

Kevin Maher in The Times.
Maher decides that; "When you think about it, getting propositioned by a gay man is something close to a heavy-duty compliment these days."
But then he goes and spoils it all by listing every cliche in the Gay Book.
"They’re usually the best-looking blokes in any room, they’ve mostly got brilliant jobs and immaculate fashion sense (OK, handlebar moustaches and leather chaps not good), and if you work on the theory that a gay man is never going to punch, romantically, below his weight (“pull-a-pig’’ contests are strictly for straights on stag nights) then it’s a serious win-win for your ego when you make the grade ie, for the straight man, “gay-bait’’ is really where you want to be, looks-wise..."
He does end up saying some positive things about gay marriage so, you know, fair do's. 

• Photo via Tubecrush.net

Dennis Skinner: Children Of The Revolution

'The young Skinner had been very good at what would now be called power walking, an Olympic sport. One night his dad confronted him. "What tha' doing at night?" A friend of his had told him he'd seen Skinner walking along, "waggling his bloody arse", and his dad was panicking. "Straight out of Billy Eliott."
'But Skinner explained that he was training for the Sheffield Star Walk. When the race day came, off he went to Sheffield, and won a trophy.
"When I came back with my trophy, it was late – four o'clock, three buses. It was only 12 miles, but nobody had a car. And my mother said: 'Didn't you do well!' I said: 'How did you know?'" Skinner's father had concocted an excuse to leave the pit early that day, and go to Chesterfield to buy an early edition of the Sheffield Star with the race results, so he could tell everyone at work about his son's triumph the next morning. "So he'd never congratulate me. But in those moments? Yes."

Dennis Skinner talking to The Guardian.

PS Fascinating fact! John Prescott's favourite film is Billy Elliot. ""I have seen it more than six times and it's the only film that's made me cry."

Scottish Sun: I Was Away When We Did Numbers

THE majority of Scots are AGAINST plans to legalise gay weddings, according to new figures.
'Around 70,000 people responded to the issue in one of the biggest Scottish Government surveys since devolution.
'And about Two-thirds — 50,000 — are opposed to the proposals...'

The Scottish Sun.

Ah, no, sorry - not true.
This is just how the amount of responses to the Scottish government's consultation divvy up.
You can't spin it into being a representative "survey" of how the nation feels.
That would be silly.
My hunch is you've been spoonfed this distortion by some wee bigot from Scotland For Marriage, who you quote.
But that's balls, too - when the consultation closed in December only 50,000 responses had been received in total. 
But you are good enough to add a bit of small print somewhere near the bottom of this story that in an actual survey the opposite is true.
'A recent poll supported by gay rights groups found that two-thirds of Scots were in FAVOUR of marriage rights for gays.'
Yup, in a MORI poll released quite literally yesterday 64% of Scottish people said they support gay marriage.

PS The Home Office received more than 100,000 responses to the consultation on introducing gay marriage into England and Wales - this is believed to be the biggest ever response to a Home Office proposal. 

Independent On Sunday: Question

 By going to see his new film?

Happy Father's Day: From Coalition 4 Marriage

This charming ad has appeared on a few websites today.
Though it doesn't make it clear, it's a reference to birth certificates in Spain now listing Progenitor A and B instead of mother and father, apparently.
The horror, the horror!
It appears on Guido Fawkes blog with a supportive editorial once again showing that this self-styled "libertarian" has no grasp of libertarianism. 

PS The ASA has rejected complaints against Coalition 4 Marriage's last ad. More during the week as the news is embargoed - though the Telegraph have broken it...

PPS And today's gay marriage op-eds include... Nick Cohen in The Observer, A church fit only for bigots and hypocrites, and in the Sunday Telegraph, Will gay marriage bring on The Rapture? (Or something).

Britain In A Day: "Brilliant"

'Another teenage boy: in his bedroom, reflecting on his life. Pyjamas. Duvet. Slight, still half-child — beautiful eyelashes. He’s full of joy. He lists all of his blessings — his parents, his health, his friends, his books. But he just wants one more thing.
“If I find a boyfriend,” he concludes, “I would have someone to share it all with. And then I’m going to be so happy. I’m going to be the happiest person in Britain!”
A boy telling all of Britain he is ready for love — fearless in a way that no gay child could have been even ten years ago. And then it is midnight on November 12, 2011, and then it ends..."

Caitlin Moran reviews BBC2's "brilliant" Britain In A Day in The Times. 
Watch it here.

Gaydar Radio: "Amazing"

'Gaydar Radio started life 11 years ago as an audio player in the corner of dating site Gaydar, which operates from the floor above where I am today. The station's ambition was to be little more than background music for users to enjoy while searching out chaps to cuddle. Back then, Robin says, the station was a CD jukebox on a table propped up by a copy of Spartacus International Gay Guide, and the music policy wasn't particularly well-honed, often defaulting to a mix of boybands and divas.
These days the music is a well-defined mix of upbeat, club-based pop in the day, and harder house sounds at night. Robin says the BPM never drops below 128, which strikes me as being one Keanu Reeves appearance short of an amazing film idea. I start to wonder what sound Gaydar Radio would make if it exploded. A Kylie ad-lib, perhaps...'

Peter Robinson does Gaydar Radio for his cleverly titled Radio Daze series in The Guardian Guide. 
Doff doff doff doff etc.

PS I love it when journos call Gaydar a "dating site". 

The Times: Make Your Own Jokes

The fourth gay marriage front page in a week...
Obviously the Daily Mail didn't like this outburst from "homosexual minister Nick Herbert".
Reader Deborah (in Spain, natch) says what what we're all thinking:
"Homosexual behaviour is condemmed by the Bible so how come he is a minister?"