Study: Marriage By Gay Men Is Often To Mask Self-Esteem Issues

A study by the London School of Hyperbole and Hysterical Nonsense shows many gay and bisexual men use marriage in order to mask self-esteem or self-confidence issues.

Even though studies don't actually 'show' anything really, apart from the researcher's bias.

It is the first qualitative research in the UK into “gaymarriage”, or marriage under the influence of gayness.

Lead author Dr Adam Bore from Project Smegma said: “A vulnerable section of society is using marriage in new ways that is putting them at serious risk.

“Although our study shows that gaymarriage is uncommon overall, there is a need for specialist support for men who have thought about it.

"Like us."

Researchers analysed survey data from 12 gay and bisexual men in Soho and Islington conducted in-depth interviews with 3 gay men from the area.

The authors note that the visibility of gay marriage in the media may be normalising it. 

Sometimes they do it in buildings, researchers have also found.

Fagburn could not literally be arsed to check any of its so-called 'findings'.

The report concludes; 'If we say this is a problem - nay, a veritable rainbow atomic bomb gay tidal wave waiting to happen - can we have some more funding please?'

With apologies to Pink News.

But maybe some dudes get gaymarried just cause they want to - like when they have sex on drugs or have EVIL DEADLY CHEMSEX!!! - and there's no need to problematise or pathologise it?

And maybe we should all calm down a bit?

James Middleton: The Digested Read

Nice beard!

James has a beard too, not a shaggy Brad Pitt one but a regal affair, with up-swirling curlicues, which he likes “to twizzle”. He looks like Tsar Nicholas II (“God don’t, everyone keeps saying that,”) down to the heavy lids and pronounced eyebrows...

Like his sisters, he attended Marlborough College. “I didn’t struggle but I wasn’t at the top of the year, in fact I was pretty much at the bottom..."

For the past year, Middleton has been in a relationship with the presenter Donna Air. “Am I getting married? What a ridiculous question. Um, we’re enjoying our relationship as it is now. We’ve made no future plans, but then I couldn’t see myself doing marshmallows a year ago.

“If you’d asked me what I would be doing this time next year, it wouldn’t have been marshmallows because I hadn’t had the idea, so things can turn round quickly. But I’m 26. I’m young. She’s 34…” he struggles for a moment as if to remember, “or maybe 33.”

A gripping interview with James Middleton in the Evening Standard - the talented Master Middleton has a new instagram/marshmallow venture, Boomf!

Toby Young: The Sound Of Straight Hands Clapping

What can the Conservatives do to lessen their exposure to these sorts of scandals in future? The solution, I believe, is for all gay and lesbian Conservative MPs to come out in a very public, headline-grabbing way. Not that many of them are "in the closet" in the conventional sense of the term, i.e. leading a double life in which they're pretending to be happily married. Most are bachelors who are neither in the closet nor out of it, but in a kind of antechamber where they don't pretend to be straight but, at the same time, don't draw attention to their homosexuality either. Well, I think the time has come for them to draw attention to it. What has previously gone unmentioned, tacitly accepted within the party with a nod and a wink but not publicly acknowledged, should now be brought out into the open. And what better time for the pink ’n’ blues to come out than right now, when same-sex marriage has just become legal thanks in large part to the leader of the Conservative Party?
Oh do fuck off you patronising straight Tory winker.

People can do what they want, isn't that what you profess to believe (he said hypocritically).

Nigel Evans: Hmmm...

The Guardian.

Fagburn's two cents: This is all starting to look rather rum.

Actually, it looks like a Tory party stitch-up.

Channel 4: Can We Just Not?

This country doesn't need gay marriage, it needs a class war.

With guns.
To shoot grinning poshgays and their patronising 'straight allies' like this. 

Menziesgate: While Rainbow Flags So Bravely Flutter

According to the newspapers that reported the “revelations”, the private life of a low-ranking Conservative MP has “rocked” the Government and left the Prime Minister “stunned”. That would seem to be overstating the impact of the resignation of Mark Menzies, a figure who might count himself lucky to be considered a household name in his own kitchen...

As a story, then, the Menzies Affair, as it will never come to be known, doesn’t matter much. As a case study in the state of our press and attitudes to sex and drugs, it is instructive. On drugs, it shows once again that the “war” against them is lost if their use is so casual at such a level – as if we did not know already that MPs and civil servants are as prone as the rest of us to a quick high, legal or not.

Still more depressing was the way the gay aspect of Mr Menzies’s alleged behaviour was dwelt upon. It was as if for a brief time the press had hired a Tardis and returned to the golden days of the 1980s and 1990s when the words “gay” and “MP” in the same headline would guarantee political destruction for the individual and a “sleaze” crisis for the Cabinet.

It was telling that this “story” broke on the weekend that equal marriage at last became a reality for many happy couples, with so few voices raised in dissent and so many raised in joy. Images of a rainbow flag flying on Whitehall were a powerful symbol of a brighter, more tolerant Britain. It suggests that the public wants to move on from “gay-baiting” and hypocrisy about drugs. It is a pity that parts of the media have not caught up with these new realities, and remain in a time warp of hypocrisy and prurience.

The Independent.

None more patronisingly gayister than thou...

The Times: Cartoon

By Morland.

Whatever their other politics, and me not really giving two real toots about gaymarriage, respec' is due to The Times for being the best defender of the gay marriage last year.

Daily Telegraph: Sir

SIR – To paint the Mona Lisa required Leonardo and his subject, Lisa Gherardini. If his studio had held two artists, or two Lisas, the crowd in the Louvre would have a blank wall to look at. Marriage is about a couple complementing each other in every way, not just in mutual satisfaction. It exists that we might be fruitful.

As a lifelong scientist, I fail to see how gay marriage can ever fulfil its name. Even in an age that widely wants to believe the opposite, I am evidently far from alone. I never will be; and science, like common sense, operates by logic, not prejudice.

George B Hill
Sandbach, Cheshire

Erm...

Mark Menzies: Like Leveson Never Happened

From today's Sun: Man had sex on drugs, quite enjoyed it bombshell!

It was quite like old times on the newsstands yesterday. Two Sunday red-tops took us back to the era of sleaze that bedevilled John Major's administration.

In other words, it was way before the nation, and the press, had heard of Lord Justice Leveson.

There was the News of the World - sorry, Sun on Sunday - with a splash headlined "Top Tory quits in rent boy scandal" plus, incidentally, an inside spread on "a blonde beauty" who "enjoyed internet sex chats with four Manchester United stars".

And there was the Sunday Mirror splashing on the same tale, "Tory MP quits in drugs & rent boy scandal". And this on the day when same-sex marriage laws came into force, duly celebrated on the paper's page 23.


The story concerned the resignation of Conservative MP Mark Menzies, parliamentary private secretary to the international development minister, Alan Duncan, after allegations made by a Brazilian male escort.

Both papers lay claim to exclusivity, but that little local dispute between the titles is far less interesting than the editorial agenda that convinced each of them of the story's importance.

You might have thought it inappropriate nowadays to expose people for their (alleged) gay relationships. You might have also thought it inappropriate to accept the word of someone who has sought payment for that (alleged) relationship. Doesn't the term "rent boy" seem oddly archaic in 2014?

You would probably concede that the (alleged) involvement of drugs just about gave it a public interest justification. But only just, given that the level of proof appears less than convincing.

I sincerely hope that this isn't the beginning of a trend.

Roy Greenslade, Guardian Media blog.

Quite, but this new trend surely began with the Christopher Jefferies and Paul Flowers witch hunts?

If you're gay, it's always hunting season, and you are the quarry.

Update: Two (2) more stories on this boring nonsense which affects no-one in The Sun today.

Tom Daley: Madness

This is in the ever-reliable Daily Star, so Fagburn sees no reason to doubt it.

But for the love of Chomsky... NO!

Even our Tom can't be that much of a tart.

PS This is deffo happening, though.

Woop!

Tom & Sophie could be reality TV's Will & Grace - or Jack & Karen....

Tom Daley Goes Global.

Update: GRRR!

Paul Flowers: 'Still At It'

I hate The Sun so much.

Best wishes Paul.
x

PS And in the Mail Janet Street-Porter writes - badly; 'Admitting you're a sinner doesn't let you off the hook'.

Mark Twain: The Mysterious Stranger

Fin.
Happy dreams. x

Gay Wedding: Inspirational

I'm fine with this.

You?

PS It's in the Sport, you idiot, it's almost certainly made-up!

David Cameron: Writes Exclusively For Fagburn

Hello the gays!

This weekend is an important moment for our country. For the first time, the couples getting married won’t just include men and women – but men and men; and women and women. 

But not men and dogs, which would be wrong.

After all the campaigning – not least by readers of Fagburn – we will at last have equal marriage in our country. Put simply, in Britain, which technically does not include Northern Ireland or those funny Channel Islands, and even Scotland for now, it will no longer matter whether you are straight or gay – the State will recognise your relationship as equal.

Yes, you are recognised by the state.

So whoopeefuckingdoo!

Now, I may have done some bumming at Eton, but now I have a beautiful wife, Sam. 

Have to point that out. 

I am deffo not gay.

But gay people are great - from the tortured computer boffin Alan Turing to the lovely Clare Baldling MBE.

Can't think of any others right now.

Graham Norton?

But anyway, gay marriage, hurrah - and don't forget to vote for me, even if you can't afford food, never mind a big gay pink wedding cake.

I would say 'let's raise a toast', but thanks to my cunty class war government you'll be more likely to make some toast.

David Cameron is the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Leader of the Conservative Party. He didn't write this, one of his SPADs did. 

Fagburn: Mother's Day

Thank you for having me, and for everything after.
x

Sunday Times: Gay Marry In Haste...

Because every public event must now resemble The X Factor, a number of couples were competing to star in Britain’s first gay marriage: each wedding had an official waiting in a side room to press a button that connected to the general register office, which I imagine lit up to the sound of Let It Go as each marriage rang through.

But how to decide which wedding would truly embody this new phase of equality? How many gay points for having Peter Tatchell as a witness (Islington), for example? Or for holding your wedding in Camden (Camden)? For having the London Gay Men’s Chorus sing Come The Day (with hand gestures) as celebrity keyboardist Rick Wakeman, composer of Henry VIII On Ice, operated one of the biggest pipe organs in the country (the South Bank)? In the end there was no contest. Brighton has been gay since before Islington was born...

The Sunday Times.

Wake me when this nightmare's over.

If I see another photo of some grinning smug poshgays I swear I'll do time.

PS Except we can see their faces now, so maybe that's another MILESTONE for gay rights. 

Gays In Sport: Swings, Roundabouts...

An amusing sidebar to a Sun article about the LGBT Arsenal supporters, the Gay Gooners.

Breaking: Newspaper Prints Photo Of Gay Couple's Faces!

Albeit almost insufferably posh looking ones.

The Economist: Where's Our Heads At?

Same-sex couples could marry in England and Wales from March 29th http://t.co/BTeXnvaxtl pic.twitter.com/kUREEXJxFQ
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 30, 2014

Fuck gay marriage, we'll be liberated when you show our faces.

For shame?

The Sun: Man Has Sex Shock!

A man has had sex, The Sun On Sunday can exclusively reveal.
After the Sunday Mirror exclusively revealed it a bit earlier.
The man gave a sex worker he wanted to have sex with some money, and then they had sex.
Sex is bad.
Gay sex worse.
Paying for it is like the seventh circle of Hell.
Even though it's not illegal or immoral.
Boo to sex, we say!
Resign! etc etc.
I thought men like that killed themselves.
Why can't he get gaymarried like nice, normal Tory gays?
Fin.

PS The Public Whip give him 100% for supporting gay rights in parliament. So what is point?

PPS Apart from the fact Fagburn once outed him as... a bit of an idiot.

Gay Marriage: The Excitement Mounts!

No-one bothered to reply, so Guardian Witness (!) posted this thrilling photo of a crappy rainbow flag limping at Bournemouth town hall.

Verily, this is a day England (and Wales) shall never forget!

Thought For The Gay: Jean Paul Gaultier

Jean Paul et ils grand-mère, Marie.

He thinks his grandmother might have steered him towards being gay. “I don’t think you are born gay. But I needed to be loved, like everyone else. And my grandmother, she lost her first child, a girl called Solange, when she was 14. And I saw some letters Solange wrote to my grandmother, and I saw that she finished them with a heart. So then, when I wrote to my grandmother, I put a heart — only because I wanted her to love me more. And maybe I reminded her of Solange. I never wanted to be a girl, but to please her and to have more love, it was the only way. She was very open-minded. When I was about 14, she gave me a book about a gay man and told me, “Read that book, and you will see — they are sick but they are nice people, be good to them.” Of course I don’t agree that gays are sick! But I think she always imagined that I could be very nice with them. At first I flirted with girls, but it didn’t go on. And later, when I was 17, 18 — because I didn’t have my first experience till I was 20 — I was thinking if Dior was gay and if St Laurent is gay, maybe if I work in fashion that means I am gay too?’

Lynn Barber meets Jean Paul Gaultier for the Sunday Times.

The Fashion World Of Jean Paul Gaultier From Sidewalk To Catwalk is at The Barbican from April 9th.

Fagburn interviewed JPG - struck me as the loneliest man I've ever met, felt I couldn't leave.

Daily Express: It's The Question We're All Asking

Daily Express.

Two lovely young fillies there.

Marriage: Exciting Local News!

GAY Wiganers have now missed the chance to be among the first in the country to get married.

Same sex weddings became legal today.

But the borough’s register office at the council confirmed that no couples had signed up within the deadline to take advantage of the new legislation allowing same sex lovers to legally tie the knot.

Wigan Today.

Brian Sewell: How Queer!

I am queer – an old-fashioned term with which I am more comfortable than gay, which seems a silly and unsuitable word for my predicament. I have always been queer – my first enlightenment when I was eight. I have never lied about it, never denied it, but I did learn to dissemble, which is why I think of it as a predicament, a menacing situation...

It goes on.

The anti-gay marriage Telegraph has not one, but two touching videos of some poshgays getting gaymarried. Exciting times!

Amanda Platell: Comedy Fucking GOLD!

A wedding day is always a special occasion and especially so, of course, for the first homosexual couples marrying today.

I wish them every happiness for the future. But that does not alter the fact that I still disagree with the concept of gay marriage.

No doubt I’ll receive a barrage of abuse for even admitting as much. For surely the saddest legacy of the whole gay marriage debate is how it has brought about the most appalling bigotry — not against homosexuals, but against those who oppose the new law.

For evidence of that, you only had to watch BBC Question Time on Thursday. One audience member, Marilyn Barmer, was booed and hissed for even having the temerity to ask: ‘Why do we need to change the definition of marriage that has existed for thousands of years, when equality already exists?’

A perfectly reasonable question, you might think. Yet from the outraged response of the audience, it was as if she’d been proposing the execution of every first-born. Others who echoed her views were similarly subjected to jeers, sneers and contempt.

I can’t help wondering if that’s the reaction the BBC — our self-appointed Ministry for Political Correctness — sought to provoke by hosting the show in Brighton, the gay capital of Britain...

Textbook stuff by Amanda Platell in the Daily Mail.

Marriage: And On This Day

So some poshgays got gaymarried.
And all the wet liberal straights be like; 'Wooh! Gays can get married!'
And all the other gays be like, 'Meh'.

The Independent: Was It The Indy Wot Won It?

Oh do fuck off, you patronising liberal crap machine.
How is starting a silly, pointless Equal Partners e-petition you soon dropped like a stone mean you 'campaigned hard'?

Andrew Pierce Watch: Blah Blah Blah

'Writing as a gay Uncle Tom myself...' etc etc etc.

Gay Marriage: Until Death - Or Another Cock - Do Us Part

A BuyKurious/Fagburn co-production. x

Marriage: 10 Imminent Catastrophes

This is what ver gay media should be doing.
Funny and wise.

Aaron Day - Fagburn salutes you!

PS But please don't turn into Buzzfeed LGBT where all we get is endless lists.

Mirror: Timeline

Have to say this fing in the Mirror is pretty well done.

Apart from the fucking photo of some more disembodied gay hands at the top.

Makes a nice change from the usual 'hopeless posh straight intern has a quick Google'.

Tom Parry - Fagburn salutes you!

PS See also Ruth Hunt in the Sunday Mirror - apparently now no longer acting CEO of Stonewall - on why there is still much to be done.

BBC News: That Gay Marriage Report In Full

'At midnight tonight the gays and the homosexuals will be able to get gaymarried. Just like normal people. Let's go over to Penelope Pitstop to find out more...'

[Amusing musical intro of 'Get Me To The Church On Time', seemingly oblivious to the fact that gay couples still can't get married in churches].

'Hi! I'm here with David and David. You're getting gaymarried tomorrow, aren't you?'

'Yes, we are.'

'And what will you be wearing? Who's the woman here?'

'Sorry?'

'Ok, congratulations. Now in the interest of BBC balance I shall ask Dr Clive Goebbels from Christianity Now! what he thinks about the gay marriage.'

'These disgusting sodomites are all scum and must be rounded up and shot in the face, like it says in the Bible.'

'Thank you, Dr Goebbels.'

'And next on BBC News Nick Griffin comments on the Stephen Lawrence enquiry, for balance...'

The Hidden Cameras: Ban Marriage

*sigh*

Mail Online: From The Message Boards

Even the Mail is excited about all The Gays getting married!

Mail Online readers not so keen. :(

Like mass immigration we never voted for it, its been imposed on people without their agreement and anybody who dares to object is labelled homophobic. At some stage like immigration people will come out of the closet and voice their concerns.

Just because something is legal does not make it right.

I find that this is an example of the minority gaining the backing of the law and the majority is being ignored. We are now becoming a country that every one has human rights as long as you are not in the majority, while I say that your business you can do as you wish, please be aware the law is on your side, but I still have a right to have an opinion. Not unless someone is allowed to start the Fourth Reich.

Yet another victory for a minority over the unasked majority.Dare to raise a voice to object and be labelled homophobic,a term as derogatory as any used to describe homosexuals,so much for equality.

I'm moving to Russia.

It's not really a marriage. It's just PC nonsense. There is already civil partnerships so why this? I'm cancelling my membership of religion.

Florists must be coining it!

Considering the over-population sterile unions are probably to be celebrated.

Marcus Ewert: The Teenage Boyfriend Of The Beat Generation

Ewert in Ginsberg's bed.

To hear him say it, Marcus Ewert was a young man on a mission. In 1988 he was living in suburban Atlanta, just another isolated gay teen who spent much of his free time dreaming of a way out. Unlike other boys in his predicament, though, the then-17-year-old was ambitious and strategic. He was desperate to immerse himself in the literary scene, and being a fan of the beat writers, he zoned in on two of its most prominent figures: Allen Ginsberg and William Burroughs.

“Allen and Burroughs were still alive and they were both gay, and in their work it was pretty explicit that they liked teenage boys,” says Ewert, now 43. “Allen has all these poems about sleeping with boys in Naropa, which is where I realized I could go to meet them. So, I was like, Perfect, I know what to do. …Allen and Burroughs teach there? You don’t have to tell me twice.”

...

“I’d worked out this little phrase that I wanted to say to him: ‘Hello, Mr. Ginsberg, my name is Mark Ewert, and I would like to make you breakfast, lunch or dinner sometime,’” he says. “The idea was, Oh, that’s cute, I’m going to be making him a meal. That’s nice, everyone likes that. It sounds very sweet and devoted, and kind of implies that I’m going to make you a meal the morning after.”

Vocativ.

Mr Ginsberg once made a pass at  Fagburn, btw...

Attitude: 20 Years, 5 Covers!

Better get your disco rollerskates on if you want to snap up the Ed Miliband one.

Gay Marriage: Thank You Saint Peter!

New Statesman.

How kind of the famously modest Mr Peter Tatchell to take credit for single-handedly giving us gay marriage.

Simon Callow: For Weddings (GEDDIT???)

When I went to work at the National Theatre in the late Seventies — fully 10 years after the legalisation of sex between men — if I ever wrote or spoke about the man I was then living with, it was censored or repressed, either by the ever-vigilant press officer (“Simon, I can’t allow you to destroy your career”) or by the press itself, which helpfully refused to report any admission of homosexuality — they didn’t want to be told, they wanted to find you out. Never mind whether what they were doing was legal or not, they wanted to expose people. Even as late as the Nineties, Nigel Hawthorne, frail and frightened, was confronted on his doorstep, in his dressing gown, after being nominated for an Oscar, his filthy secret revealed to all the world: all these years he had been living quietly and happily with a male partner. Partners was the word now, a useful phrase, to be sure, nicely neutral — you could be business partners, after all, partners in a law firm, partners in crime, wha-hey!

Simon Callow writes on gay marriage and cultural change for the Evening Standard.

The Standard has a rainbow in its masthead today. Wha-hey!

Fuck ATOS: Fuck Nato, Fuck It All

UPIK News: On Gay Marriage

UPIK News.

Meanwhile the real Nigel Farage warns; 'We are opening a very big can of worms here...'

Thanks to Edward Reach. x

Marriage: You (Still) Need Hands

The poll of 1,007 (presumably straight) people showed one in five British adults would not go to a gay wedding if invited – out of protest. The survey by BBC Radio 5 live also found men were nearly twice as likely to stay away as women.

Well, bully for them. There are probably millions of reasons why some Britons won't go to a gay wedding if invited: they could feel out of their comfort zone; they wouldn't know what to expect; they may cite religious reasons – and the most childish of all, straight men may worry that being surrounded by a bunch of gay men, drinking and having fun, could end up with lots of unsolicited 'offers' coming their way.

Or it may just be plain homophobia and bigotry.

Telegraph.

A much-loved classic from the gaymarriage stock photo library, here.

Strange, the Torygraph's vehement opposition to the Same-sex Marriage Bill seems to have fallen down an Orwellian memory hole.

Mirror: Mirror

Mirror Online photo gallery!

Zzzzzzzzzzz...

The Krays: Phwoar!

From The Krays From The Cradle To The Grave.

Here's young master Reggie relaxing at his local  East End lido with friends (Ron not pictured).

This limited edition photographic scrapbook appears to have been published last October, but both the Mail and the Mirror have run puff pieces.

Marriage: Thanks For Nothing

It is a rare law that costs nothing to enact and which increases the sum of human happiness. This weekend one such law will pass into statute when it becomes legal for gay people to marry. A process that began in 2005, when the first civil partnership was signed in Belfast, has moved quickly on to its next stage.

Social legislation of this kind is usually a confirmation of a change that has already happened rather than a prelude to it. The set of liberal measures that made the name of Roy Jenkins as Home Secretary between 1965 and 1967 were largely of that kind. Government legislation set the seal on a flowering of a more tolerant attitude towards abortion, divorce and homosexuality.

The virtues of the estate of marriage are clear and well-known. The stable union of two people is a social good that it seems wrong to deny on the ground of sexual orientation. However, there are not many laws that gain the consent of everyone and the Government has been appropriately sensitive to the objections from religious institutions that have been granted exemption from discrimination laws should they not wish to conduct homosexual marriages.

In strictly legal terms, gay marriage does not extend much beyond the existing legislation, which confers civil and social benefits on civil partnerships. The point, however, is the symbolic commitment to equality before the law, which means the legislation will sit alongside the reforms of the Jenkins years as a testament to the more pervasive liberalism of British social attitudes.

This has been a difficult period to be in government. Money has been scarce and the task of clearing the deficit has been harder than originally thought. Gay marriage was not a popular cause for David Cameron to pursue within his own party. He deserves praise for doing so.

The Times.

Marriage: Goodbye To All That

The Daily Telegraph, hilariously.

And at the stroke of midnight all gay cake toppers will turn into real gay couples...