Tom Daley: Troll Bailed

"The 17 year-old arrested in the Weymouth area this morning, Tuesday July 31, on suspicion of malicious communication has been issued with a harassment warning in connection to tweets to Olympic diver Tom Daley.
"In addition to the warning the teenager has been bailed to return to the police station at a later date whilst Dorset Police investigate other communications on his Twitter account."

Dorset Police on Twitter.
So the police are really concerned about tweets unrelated to Tom Daley, but are about "other things" in his account?
Just like I kept saying, you mean? 
It would save so much time if everyone just listened to me in the first place, you know.

For the record, newspapers that got this story wrong and said the police were only concerned  about tweets about Tom Daley and his dad, and made no mention there might be more serious charges; Daily Express, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror, Daily Star, Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Independent, The Sun, The Times... 
Expect full retractions tomorrow (joke).
Most clarified their story and noted that there were other later tweets that threatened violence (the story broke this morning and has been constantly updated).
I think the main propagator of the myth that the troll was arrested over the "You let your dad down i hope you know that" tweet was BBC News - TV, radio and website.
Their main website story has since been updated. 
The BBC's original take on it can still be seen on the Newsround site;
'Police arrest teenager over Tom Daley Twitter message... Dorset Police confirmed they were looking into a tweet which accused him of letting his late father down."
You can hear the undoctored, unupdated BBC version on Radio 4's "flagship news programme" The World At One here (3.40 in)
Hardly surprising then that many took to Twitter or blogged to say how it was completely over-the-top to arrest someone just for sending an offensive tweet about Tom Daley's dad.
Well, yes, it would be, if it had actually happened. 
Well done the BBC - another winner! etc etc

PS No wait, there's more...

'A teenager arrested over a malicious tweet sent to Team GB diver Tom Daley has been issued with a warning... 
'It told him he had let down his father Rob, who died in 2011 from cancer.
'Police said the teenager was given a harassment warning before being bailed pending an investigation into other communications on his Twitter account...'

Horrendously garbled nonsense from BBC News.
Good job they don't just cut-and-paste their old discredited stories and add some new bits that completely negate their original falsehood.
Unbelievable.

Stereolab: Ping Pong

I kept thinking about ping pong - the game - today cause I kept thinking about twats on Twitter, and our endless, pointless non-debates.
Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth...

PS That space age bachelor pad looks strangely familiar.

Tom Daley: The Truth About What The Troll Tweeted

As per usual, the media are misreporting this, and saying/suggesting that police are investigating cause the troll made a remark about Tom "letting his late father down". 
Well, that would just be as silly as it sounds.
Not that the police don't often do very silly things. 
Firstly, they have not yet said exactly why they are investigating this self-confessed violent racist - it may be because of "other things" revealed in his Twitter account and/or boasted about in other tweets. 
Whatever, he didn't just insult Tom Daley, he threatened him and others.
These tweets got increasingly aggressive, til we got threats of arson, physical violence, and then death threats.
Probably not a very credible threat [These do look more like teenage twattery this morning] - but the police have a duty to investigate.
Sledgehammer/nut? Probably, we don't know yet.
Should sending offensive or insulting tweets be against the law? Of course not. 
Anyway, here's a selection of his charming tweets...

PS As before, I am happy to concede I'm not being entirely rational and dispassionate about this one, and may be just a little bit hypocritical...
Still, you wouldn't expect logic or consistency from little old me, would you?  

Tom Daley: Troll Wars

Aren't there some lovely people in the world?
It actually got even worse than the above suggests.
Looks like the troll's in trouble, though - good.
Happy to have played my little part. 
And I'm more than happy to let all my fancy free speech principles fly out the window on this occasion.
Quite frankly, I think we should bring back hanging just for this jerk, too.
No-one - I repeat no-one - messes with me and my Tommy.
Nighty night.

Olympics: Consolation Prize

Oh well...
Well done, Tom and Pete anyway.
See you on Friday August 10th - Men's 10m Platform preliminaries.
We fight on - we fight to win!

Update: A reader, Mike, tells me he's just heard Stella McCartney being interviewed on the tellybox about designing Team GB's Olympics kit, and it seemed to suggest she'd deliberately tried to make Tom's trunks as "brief" as possible - if so, thank you ma'am. x

PS The screengrab below went viral after the final - not sure why.

Gay Star News: Handmaidens Of Power

Gay Star News have been tweeting away like mad this morning about a story they've headed; 'Lebanon arrests 36 in gay porn cinema'.
They must be really pissed about this one, right?
It's a strange way to frame it.
Earlier this year police in Florida arrested 600 men in cruising grounds around Palm Beach.
Gay Star News didn't cover that.
But if they had, would they have given it the headline; 'US arrests 600 in Florida parks'?
So what does 'Lebanon arrests 36 in gay porn cinema' mean?
That you can demonise an entire country if it's an Arab country?
Well, they're all so backward, aren't they boys?
And that GSN are so politically braindead they just puke up Orientalist cliches that support neo-imperial US hegemony?

Geoffrey Hughes: "Gay Icon"

“I went to Miami for the BBC and I was jumped on by a waiter in a hotel who said, ‘Oh My God!’ when he recognised me. Apparently Onslow and Daisy were big gay icons in the US because they liked to hold fancy dress parties and the cheapest form of dressing up was as us because we had such shabby clothes.”

The late Geoffrey Hughes, quoted in the Mirror.
Obviously I disapprove of anyone using the daft term "gay icon" - if you mean someone is "popular with some gay men" then why not just say that - but this time I'll let it pass.

Pornography Trial: Extreme

'Today the Crown Prosecution Service will attempt to persuade a jury that images of fisting should be classified as “extreme pornography” with the risk to the defendant of three years in custody, inclusion on the sex offenders' register and damage to his personal and professional standing.
All for a type of image which is commonly viewed, of an activity which is itself is legal to perform and is even discussed in the book Fifty Shades of Grey.
Nonetheless the defendant, Simon Walsh, has been charged with being in possession of extreme pornographic images under section 63 of the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008: so the Prosecution must prove that the act of fisting is “likely to result in serious injury to a person’s anus”...'

More from Myles Jackman@ObscenityLawyer, who is representing Simon Walsh, on his blog.
Earlier this year Myles Jackman successfully represented Michael Peacock in a landmark trial that saw a jury find Peacock not guilty of a charge of obscenity for distributing gay SM DVDS.
I believe the coverage of this in the gay news media was zero.
Now that's obscene.

Pussy Riot: Free Pussy Riot!

Today, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alekhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich - three members of the Russian group Pussy Riot - begin their Moscow show trial.
In March they were arrested and charged with "hooliganism" after their band performed a song in Russia's main Orthodox cathedral that mocked President Putin. 
The women are clearly being made examples of in an attempt to discourage dissent and the growing protest movement against the Putin regime.
They face up to seven years in prison.
For singing a song FFS.

freepussyriot.org
Index On Censorship interview.

• This preliminary hearing begins at 7.30am BST and will be streamed live here.

Sunday Papers: News Round-Up

"Olympics, Olympics, Olympics. Can we make Danny Boyle a lord or something? Women's Beach Volleyball photo special, pages 19-27"
- All papers.

PS Tom Daley makes his Olympics debut at 3pm tomorrow in the Men's Synchronised Diving Platform.
His diving partner is someone else.

PPS Think I'll just turn up and ask to sit in one of the empty seats. 

Sunday Herald: Cover Up!

THE present and incoming archbishops of Glasgow were dragged into a fresh row over the Roman Catholic Church and homosexuality last night, after it emerged the former head of the college which trains Scots priests in Rome was allowed to keep his parish despite a drunken homosexual incident deemed "totally unworthy of a priest".Father Paul Milarvie was accused of "unwanted harassment" and trying to "constrain" a male guest at his parish house in 2010, just months after he returned to Scotland, leading to an investigation by the Archdiocese of Glasgow. Milarvie, a friend of Philip Tartaglia, the next archbishop of Glasgow, was allowed to keep his post by Mario Conti, the current archbishop.
News of the case, which emerged at the end of a week in which Tartaglia and Conti both spoke out against SNP plans to legalise same-sex marriage, prompted claims the Church was hopelessly confused in its attitude to homosexuality because it failed to reflect the reality of human nature...

Sunday Herald. 

Oops!

Justin Bieber: Barely Legal

Alice Jones in The Independent isn't happy about that headline.
Worse still - she sees it as part of a disturbing trend.
"It's not alone. In the UK, Tom Daley's 18th was marked with a slew of salacious swimming trunk pictures and a rummage around for kiss and tells.
"That there's something unsavoury about the world waiting for teenage stars to be "ready and legal" goes without saying. Aged 17 and 364 days they're treated with faux propriety, but the minute they turn 18, the gloves are off – often along with the rest of the young talent's clothes."
There's a nice photo of Tom Daley in his trunks I saw online today, captioned 'Going Phwoar Gold'.
Oh look - it was in The Independent!

PS 'Looking Super Buff There, Tom!' - Mail Online front page today, right hand column, halfway down.

Will Young: MC WY

Hmm... alll seems to be Olympics, Olympics, Olympics in the press today.
But look! Here's the first photo of Will Young as the Emcee in Cabaret at the Savoy Theatre.
Apparently, Will "Nice-but-dim" and co-star Michelle Ryan are going to "raunch up" - whatever that means.
Theatre fact: Earlier West End revivals of Cabaret have seen the Emcee played by Wayne Sleep, Alan Cumming and James Dreyfuss.
Hmm...

Olympics: Is That It?

Well, if even a miserable old cynic like me enjoyed Danny Boyle's Olympics Opening Ceremony spectacular, it must have had something going for it.
One point though - which I hope doesn't sound too parochial (or like a knee-jerk gay journalist's Dave Spartism).
The ceremony was clearly trying to show what a wonderfully diverse and inclusive place modern Britain has become - particularly the second half.
And it picked as two of a handful of historic moments that made modern Britain, the Suffragettes and Windrush.
So where were we?
It seems incongruous as so much of the soundtrack (Kinks, Queen, Bowie, Frankie...)* hinted at what a queer old place this is.
I may have missed something, but all I saw was a snippet of the "Brookside lesbian kiss".
But this was so brief I doubt hardly anyone would realise what was going on if they didn't know of the fabled "Brookside lesbian kiss". **
[The kissing segment is 1.05 in here. I'd estimate the Brookside bit is two or three seconds long - out of an 80 minute show! If anyone's fast enough to actually time it, please let me know].
There was one other thing, that I'm not too sure about - again it was a blink-and-you'll-miss-it-moment.

As the Queen and James Bond flew over London there was a few fleeting seconds of the scene on the right.
It could just be some men in their best suits drinking Champagne - or is it meant to be a civil partnership?
As with the above was it deliberately brief, and vague - and thus really a quite pointless gesture.
Wouldn't this have been something to go big on, if you wanted to show the world how much this country's changed for the better?

Update: Unfeasibly right-wing Tory MP Aidan Burley calls the ceremony "leftie multicultural crap". Not a patch on Berlin 1936, eh Aidan?

* There was a distant clip of Bowie doing Starman on Top Of The Pops, which you could call a pretty seminal gay moment, but this had no context.

** Postscript: The Guardian online calls the kiss a "Little-noticed 'special statement'" - it's hardly much of a statement if hardly anyone noticed it. I think this was intentional.

Daily Mail: Sorry

It's a dark day for comedy lovers...

Amazon: Cooking The Books

Lots of people are getting very excited about this;
"Jeff Bezos, the billionaire founder of Amazon.com, and his wife, MacKenzie, have agreed to donate $2.5 million to help pass a same-sex marriage referendum in Washington State, instantly becoming among the largest financial backers of gay marriage rights in the country." New York Times.
A lot of people seem to have forgotten about this;
"Amazon.co.uk, Britain's biggest online retailer, generated sales of more than £3.3bn in the country last year but paid no corporation tax on any of the profits from that income – and is under investigation by the UK tax authorities..."  The Guardian.
So that's about £100million they owe us last year alone - imagine say what the NHS could of done with that.
Is it any wonder the boss can afford to be so generous?

Olympics: Those Out Gay Athletes In Full

1. Carl Hester, British equestrian.
2. Matthew Mitcham, Australian diver.
3. Err, that's it.

According to OutSports.

OutSports say they also know of 19 female athetes who are out:
Marilyn Agliotti (Netherlands, field hockey); Judith Arndt (Germany, cycling); Seimone Augustus (U.S., basketball); Natalie Cook (Australia, beach volleyball); Lisa Dahlkvist (Sweden, soccer); Carlien Dirkse van den Heuvel (Netherlands, field hockey); Imke Duplitzer (Germany, fencing); Edward Gal (Netherlands, equestrian); Jessica Harrison (France, triathlon); Alexandra Lacrabère (France, handball); Jessica Landström (Sweden, soccer); Hedvig Lindahl (Sweden, soccer); Maartje Paumen (Netherlands, field hockey); Carole Péon (France, triathlon); Mayssa Pessoa (Brazil, handball); Megan Rapinoe (U.S. soccer); Lisa Raymond (U.S., doubles tennis); Rikke Skov (Denmark, handball); Ina-Yoko Teutenberg (Germany, cycling).

11,000 athletes are competing in the London Olympics.
This suggests only 1 in 520 is out.
Or 1 in 3,000 men.

• Carl Hester is interviewed in the current issue of Attitude.

Private Eye: Homophobes!

Sir,
It is evident of the amount of respect I have for your esteemed organ that I shook my head and sighed upon seeing the cover for Private Eye 1318. Are we still really using gay jokes in 2012 as a cheap alternative to truly cutting edge satire? It doesn't even look anything like the act being suggested to lend it any semblance of humour. I had assumed that as well-educated folk you might be able to rise above such crass and shallow jokes but perhaps you still enjoy tittering at the mention of fags and boarding school?
Please grow up. I do not buy Private Eye for its fart and poo jokes.

David Ruddock.

Letter to Private Eye.
Eh?
I can't think of any gay sex act the above photo resembles - and I like to think of myself as something of an expert.  

Scotland: Gay Caketopper News

Two editorials today celebrate how Scotland will probably introduce gay marriage by 2015.
'The rest of the UK must follow Scotland's lead' says The Independent. 
'Scotland the brave' announces an uncliched The Guardian - actually quite a good piece.
In an article The Telegraph lies; "Gay marriage to be legalised in Scotland despite two thirds of people opposing change" - the reverse is true.
They also illustrated it with the now obligatory gay cake toppers photo, above - cause we can't show an actual gay couples faces, can we?
The i front page opts for the old "two men holding hands, but you can only see their hands" standby. 
It's rapidly become a media cliche to invoke analogies of "gay Gretna Green" marriages - I'm not sure if this would work in practice, but then I haven't checked it either. 
Whatever, if gay marriage is introduced in Scotland, continuing to outlaw it in England and Wales will become untenable. 
Whether the collapsing coalition will do anything about it is a different question...

Gay Marriage: Let's Do The Math!

Despite the smaller spend per couple, same-sex unions are a boon to the wedding industry – and to New York as a whole. Same-sex marriage brought in $259m worth of economic benefits over the past year, according to the mayor, Michael Bloomberg.
"Marriage equality has made our city more open, inclusive and free – and it has also helped to create jobs and support our economy," Bloomberg said on Tuesday. The city released figures showing that some 8,200 same-sex marriage licenses have been granted in the past year – nearly 11% of the total...

The Guardian.
Okay, $259million divided by 8,200 is... $31,585 per gay marriage.
That's more than £20,000 of your English pounds.
Does anyone believe this crapola?

Heterosexual Awareness Month: Right Here! Right Now!

Sorry, I'm a bit late coming to this, but I wish them well.

PS It's a joke, you big dummy.

David Cameron: Speech To The Gays

A transcript of David Cameron’s speech to the LGBT community at Number 10 Downing Street on 24 July 2012.

“I just wanted to say three things to you tonight. First of all, this party is really a celebration of the immense contribution that lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people make in every part of our country, in the arts, in media, in sport, in business, in finance – but mainly the arts, cause they're so creative, aren't they?"
"This is something I personally feel very passionately about.”
"And I mean that most passionately and personally."
"Marriage is great, isn't it? We should all get married. Gay, straight, whatever - just get married.
“It’s something I feel passionately about and I think if its good enough for straight people like me, it’s good enough for everybody and that’s why we should have gay marriage and we will legislate for it, maybe make it compulsory.
"This is something I personally feel very passionately about. And passionately personally. 
“And I know there’s going to be some big arguments, many of them too boring for words.
“I run an institution – the Conservative Party – which for many many years got itself on the wrong side of this argument, it locked people out who were naturally Conservative from supporting it by being run by a bunch of homophobic right-wing shitbags.
“Of course this is very, very complicated and difficult issue for all the different Churches, but I passionately believe that all institutions need to wake up to the case for equality, and the Church shouldn’t be locking out people who are gay, or are bisexual or are transgender from being full members of that Church, because many people with deeply held Christian views, are also gay. They all get off on looking at Jesus on a cross in his pants FFS.
“The third point I wanted to make is, changing laws is important, legislating is important. But what is equally important – arguably now what is more important – equally equally - is actually equally going to be changing culture… whether it’s on the football field, or in the rugby dressing room; I have mentioned the rugby dressing room because this particularly troubled my thoughts when I was at Eton.
"This is something I personally feel very passionately about.
"Passionately, personally, platitudinally.
"Thank you THE GAYS for coming here and shoring up our right-wing class war coalition.
"Gay marriage - fuck yeah!
"PS We've stopped your benefits,"

Chick-Fil-A: Muppets

Factory farming, animal murdering, minimum wage paying huge corporation isn't run by very nice people shock.

The Scotsman: And In Other News...

You've only got yourself and your sordid so-called "lifestyle" to blame if you die, bumders.
Please let Christian stupidity win the day.
Thank you, and god bless.

PS The MP he death libeled was David Cairns. 

Tom Daley: Diving For Britain

It takes a special kind of genius to make a documentary about Tom Daley that's a bit boring.
Well done the BBC!

T'Internet: Is It A Bad Thing?

Does the internet do more harm than good to the gay community?
Asks BBC News website  in a silly piece of declinism.
Some old nonsense about a supposed homophobic backlash against Frank Ocean and Oreo Cookies.
Eh?
The only sense is talked by Joel Simkhai, founder of Grindr.
"I don't know where I would be if I didn't have the web."
"Maybe I would be 'closeted' longer, maybe I would be married with a woman, there are millions of men that have married women because they couldn't come out.
"For me, the web was so helpful to that process. It empowered me to say 'I'm not different', that's what the web gave me. I suspect it gives that to a lot of people."
Quite.
Imagine the sea of possibilities the internet opens up to gay teens - and all that porn, too.

Laura Jane Grace: Snore!

Good for you!
Can't think of anyone who gives a flying fuck - even if they know who you are - but they put you on the front cover of G2.
It's basically the same thing as the Mail and the Sun do, where someone being trans is a story in itself.
They're paraded around like something from a freak show, with a few "So brave" platitudes thrown in.
In other patronising music news... a black man you've never heard of may be gay (Lead review and interview).

Olympics: Excitement Mounts

Apart from the diving and male gymnastics obvs.

Daily Telegraph: Old

Grassroots Tories urge David Cameron to ditch Lords reform and gay marriage and focus on economy
David Cameron is being urged by local Tory party officials to ditch unpopular policies like Lords reform and attempts to legalise gay marriage, and focus all his efforts on boosting the economy. 

Daily Telegraph.
God, this is getting OLD!
Here's Satan's cockmuncher-in-chief, Melanie Phillips, repeating this garbage in The Daily Mail.
A government can do more than one thing at the same time; start a new class war and introduce gay marriage - it's not plate spinning.

Morrissey: Love Music, Hate Palestinians

Haaretz.

Is this the world's most amoral man?
When will you DIE?

Sunday People: Press Release Masquerading As News

"I've just made up a ludicrous press release no-one will believe."
"Do you think anyone will fall for it?"
"No, anyone with an IQ over 40 will just laugh at its preposterousness. Would even the wildest guesstimate of the number of gay men in the Olympic Village claim it's greater than, say, than the number in Manchester's gay village on a Saturday night?"
"Hmmm... you're right. It would also be really easy to check how many men on Grindr actually are in the Olympic Village."
"Maybe Britain's worst tabloid, the Sunday People will run it though."
"Pink News will probably reprint it."
"It's funny, they keep running puff pieces about Grindr, a fool might think they're angling for advertising."
"And written by "James Park", who doesn't exist, but is rather obviously Pink News' owner Ben Cohen."
"Result! Pub?"

Hans Kristian Rausing: Pain

And I wander the streets of Chelsea
Dishevelled, bedraggled.
A billionaire tramp.
Dreaming about embracing somebody's body who I love.
We all live our lives stumbling into oblivion.
We are all often shameless stupid reckless -
given half the chance.
And yet you all find such joy in my pain.
This happens every day in Hackney and yet
you don't give a fuck about that.

The Scottish Sun: Comes Out

SO why are the Churches so petrified of gay marriage that they are demanding a referendum on it? Is it really such a threat to civilisation
Some claim that because parenthood is fundamental to marriage and gays cannot conceive, it should not be allowed.
So what’s next — imposing divorce on heterosexual couples who cannot conceive?
Not so long ago the same Churches taught that slavery was an institution supported by God. They ignored all the things the Bible said about the equality of mankind. 
‘Good’ Christians in favour of slavery used a handful of passages from the scriptures to justify slavery, and today some find verses to apply to gays, without acknowledging that they are based on a culture that is no longer relevant to us....



Quite good piece in The Scottish Sun on Christian lunacy/hypocrisy.
Illustrated - but of course - with two gay men without faces.

Tom Daley: Not Gay!

The Daily Mail continue to doggedly pursue their bizarre fantasy that Tom Daley couldn't possibly be gay.
Frankly, I've got more chance of going out with him.
Meanwhile Virgin Media has other ideas...

Thanks to Mike. x

Oscar Wilde: Home

"The home of Oscar Wilde, wit, playwright and gay icon, is coming to the market. In this tall, red brick house in Tite Street, Chelsea, he wrote all his most famous plays, became a fin-de-siècle celebrity and faced his spectacular downfall...."

The Daily Telegraph.
I don't like to be pedantic - well, I do obviously - but Oscar Wilde went away to write his plays.
Lady Windermere's Fan was written by Lake Windermere (hence the name), A Woman Of No Importance was written in Norfolk, An Ideal Husband was written in Goring-on-Thames (hence Lord Goring), The Importance Of Being Earnest was written in Worthing (hence Jack Worthing), and Salome was written in France (hence it being in French).
And he famously was at the Cadogan Hotel when he faced his spectacular downfall. 
You've also spelt Dorian Gray wrong.
And any journalist who uses the term "gay icon" is a patronising idiot.
You can buy Oscar's "home" here - only it's not his actual house, just a converted flat.
Apart from that, a great article and a masterpiece of research.

Scouts: Honour

On my honor I will do my best
To do my duty to God and my country
and to obey the Scout Law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
mentally awake, and morally straight.

Boy Scouts Of America oath. 
Their website defines being "morally straight" (!) as; "To be a person of strong character, your relationships with others should be honest and open. You should respect and defend the rights of all people..."
Boy Scouts Of America has decided to maintain its ban on gay scouts and gay scout leaders. 
Hard to think of any other organisation getting away with this in 2012 - apart from churches, obvs.
I wonder what Baden Powell would have said?
Mind you, he'd probably be too busy wanking over strong young lads in shorts.
Irony!

Pride: Crisis Talks

A meeting has been called in London to discuss the sorry state of Pride articles in the gay media.
"I don't understand it, they just keep repeating the same tired old tropes year after year," said Ben Gaylord, 23.
"It's all 'bloody drag queens, people showing their bums'".
John Fuckwit added; "I like it when you read an article saying it should get more political, cause I've never heard that before."
Peter Pinner, 47, said, "Maybe it's time for the gay press to stop running boring articles about Pride, we've heard it all before."

Patrick Smugtwit: Introducing Our New Columnist

Peter Tatchell's a national treasure, isn't he? Various other wet liberal banalities. Gay marriage - I say yes! I never went to public school or nuffink, though. I read something in The Daily Mail, but didn't bother checking it. Imagine if they said that about Muslims. Can you make sure you print my photo? Blah blah blah.

Thank you.
Patrick - who has won several awards for being insufferably smug, vain and boring - will be writing a column on hot gay topics of the day every Friday.

BBC: Here Is The News

What can we learn from the week under the microscope this month? BBC News At Ten featured predominantly political and finance-based issues with male experts, and even when the topics broadened to include, for example, gay marriage, male interviewees were used for every aspect of the story.

Broadcast.
Not sure why gay marriage is seen as "chicks' stuff", but not "political issues", but there you go...

The Independent: Who Cares?

Servicemen and women allowed to march in uniform at San Diego's Gay Pride Parade

The Independent continues its almost Herculean effort to only print random stories about THE GAYS that are of no real interest to British readers - gay or straight - by running a story about San Diego Pride.
I get the feeling they just pick these out of a hat.