RICHARD SMITH (@fagburn)
18.1.68 - 25.8.17

It is with deep sadness that we inform you of the death of our beloved DJ Wanker, Fagburn author, and Mark E. Smith Impersonator, Richard Smith on 25th August.

A memorial service will be held on Friday the 29th September.
If you would like to attend, or send a statement of love or annoyance please contact fagburn@safetycat.org

USA: Suicide Is Painless

This is such wonderful junk science I don't know where to begin.

Yes. its's from the vacuous bumhole that is Independent Voices.

Milo Watch: Oops!

The Times

Civil Partnerships: We Is Posher Than You

And not one fuck was given.

Piss off back to Bourgeoisville.

Peter Tatchell Watch: Question

Kill pious cunts like you?

Tom Daley Watch: Coughs

Mail Online

So how are the wedding plans going then?

PS Admittedly this is from Mail Online but I'm quite happy to go with it.

Peter Mandelson: Oh Mandy

Just a quick reminder that this gaylord is a colossal cunt.

Ted Heath: Crap

This really is first class horseshit.

Church Of England: Votes To Reject Controversial Same-Sex Marriage Thing That Nobody Else Cares About Anymore

In a shock move yet not shocking a move the more antiquated and pious members of the Church Of England has voted to persist with its reluctance to ban bear baiting, jousting, trepanning, the Industrial Revolution, slavery and flying on the unnatural EasyJet metal winged birds.

'Progress is bad,' said his royal highness the right hon Dr Justin Welby MB.

'Let us not speaketh about this great heresy again for another five years even if peoplle like watching the new-fangled TV and using electricy - the lightness of the devil.'.

'Now if we will you kindly excuse my, I shall now have to go and try and seperate another of my priests from a choirboy with a crowbarr.'

All: 'Praise be.'

'AMEN!' 

Sotto voce: 'I like your hat.'

''Thanks girl, it's Philip Treacy'

Church News: The Number Of The Beast

Dear Christian fool,

I know the meek shall inherit the earth and all that and your Holy Book recommends killing queers, but one must meeekly reply how it also forbids eating shelfish and ladies' not wearing hats in church on Sunday and so on etc.

But have you not noticed how it's also chockful of incest, paedophila, rape, murder, ethnic cleansing, infanticide, and genocide - all in service to you, you imaginary man in the sky.

Think I'll take my lessons in morality from somewhere else, if that's okay with you my love.

I really don't care if you'll let me get married to a fella in your stupid church.

All the best, as ever - from here to eternity

x

James Baldwin: On Fire

Guardian.

 Nice pic!

The line; 'His work fell foul of civil-rights-era binary racial and sexual politics' is student guff though.

The film, I Am Not Your Negro, opens the Human Rights Watch film festival in London on 9th March.

Stephen Port: Slipping Through My Fingers

Cause they  is incompetent and homophobic, mebbe?

On BBC 3 from tomorrow.

Straight Men: Help!

Independent.

So not interested, love.

Valentine's Day: Big! Beautiful!

Don't forget to stop off at the garage and buy the missus some flowers. x

PInk News: Dear Pot...

The complete lack of self-awareness here is too funny for words or even sentences.

'The Sun isn't the only tabloid to run ridicuolus LGBT stories...'

David Hockney: Retrospective

Sleeping Beauty, 1977, from Fag Ash Lil's Tate Retrospective.

Here's a long article about Hockney by Waldemar Januszczak from The Sunday Times.

She's 80 now, you know?

This Book Is Gay: Learn To Read

It's not a novel, you thick fuck.

Your daughter should disown you.

LGBT Museum: You're History

LGBT+ activists are calling for a London museum to remember the community’s history.

To coincide with the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of same-sex sexual intercourse this year, a petition has been started by the Queer Cabinet Brigade to encourage the creation of an LGBT+ history museum in London.

The activist group, who made headlines last year when they left pink cabinets at queer sites around the capital city, argue that there are “decades of political struggle” which remain “locked in the closet”.

They said: “Many places in London are prominent sites of queer history – places where queer people met and danced and organised and protested and cottaged – yet it is possible to walk through London and not be aware of how many streets contain queer stories

“We demand a permanent community space where LGBTQI+ history and culture can take root and be accessible to all. As a world destination and home to queer history and culture, London deserves one.”

The group have suggested the former Magistrates’ Court on Bow Street as a potential location, describing it as “a space with a complex queer history of oppression and defiance”, although they’re open to other locations.


GT. 

Well it's a nice idea, but so are lots of things.

Like free space travel for all.

Have you checked whether it's actually wanted or viable?

Emmanuel Macron: La Vie En Rose?

French presidential candidate Emmanuel Macron has dismissed lurid online rumours that he had a gay affair.

Mr Macron, a 39-year-old married to his former high-school teacher who is 20 years his senior, told supporters his wife Brigitte "shares my whole life".

Any reports of a double life were not about him but his "hologram", he joked.

The claims emerged on a Russian-owned website as the centrist nudged ahead of a key rival in polls, less than three months before the presidential vote.

Addressing a rally in Paris on Monday, Mr Macron said the claims of a secret life were "first and foremost unpleasant for Brigitte".

"She shares my whole life from morning till night and she wonders how I could physically do it!" he said.

"If in dinner-party chatter, or in forwarded emails, you're told that I have a double life," he added, "it's my hologram that suddenly escaped, but it can't be me!"

The joke was a reference to far-left candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, who launched his presidential campaign in Lyon on Sunday - and appeared at a Paris rally simultaneously thanks to a 3D hologram....

BBC News.

Depressingly the National Front's Marine Le Pen's deputy Florian Philpott is deffo a gay.

Apparently, Macron is currently the front runner.

Art: Fart

Oh do fuck off, you prentious posh spaz.

Church Of England: Bona

A Church of England theological college has expressed regret after trainee priests held a service in the antiquated gay slang language Polari.

The service at the chapel of Westcott House in Cambridge was to commemorate LGBT history month.

The congregation was told the use of the lexicon was an attempt to "queer the liturgy of evening prayer".

But officials said it had not been authorised and was at variance with the doctrine and teaching of the church.

Polari is thought to have originated in Victorian London but fell out of use as homosexuality began to be decriminalised in England in the 1960s.

Its words, however, were brought to wider public attention in the same decade by comedian Kenneth Williams in the BBC radio series Round the Horne.
'Fantabulosa Fairy'

One person present at the service told BBC News it was led by an ordinand - a trainee priest - rather than a licensed minister.

The congregation was also made up of trainees.

While they had been given permission to hold a service to commemorate LGBT history month, a Church of England source said the college chaplain had not seen the wording of the service.

The translation was based on the Polari bible, a work compiled as a project in 2003 by the self-styled Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence.

The scripture and liturgy were printed on to an order of service.

An Old Testament reading from the Prophet Joel which says "rend your heart and not your garments, return to the Lord your God" was printed in Polari as "rend your thumping chest and not your frocks - and turn unto the Duchess your Gloria: for she is bona and merciful".

Instead of the traditional "Glory be to the father, and to the son, and the Holy Spirit" the prayer offered was: "Fabeness be to the Auntie, and to the Homie Chavvie, and to the Fantabulosa Fairy".

Services in the Church of England are legally required to be conducted using the church's approved liturgy.

The principal of Westcott House, the Rev Canon Chris Chivers, said the liturgy of the service had not been authorised for use.

He said: "I fully recognise that the contents of the service are at variance with the doctrine and teaching of the Church of England and that is hugely regrettable.

"Inevitably for some members of the house this caused considerable upset and disquiet and I have spoken at length to those involved in organising the service.

"I will be reviewing and tightening the internal mechanisms of the house to ensure this never happens again."

BBC News.

This is exactly like medieval churches only wanting the Bible available in Latin. 

Joe Meek: Golden Anniversary

Wayward pop genius and nutter, Joe Meek deaded himself fifty years ago today.
Shockingly the Express are the only paper to mark this.
This article is quite a good intro.

Owen Jones Watch: Written In A Hurry

Our OJ has been Googling.

Well done Owen!

Attitude: Bodies

Attitude - Making you anxious about your body by constantly telling you what the ideal body should look like.

I shall say no more lest some lovely man at Attitude makes death threats.

Mark Gatiss Watch: It Should Have Been Me

Mark Gatiss is telling me how he met his husband. It was 17 years ago and Gatiss was making The League of Gentlemen while Ian Hallard wasn’t long out of drama school. It wasn’t showbiz that brought the pair together, though. They met online, which was not the sort of thing you broadcast back then. “There was a genuine stigma in those days,” says Gatiss, “which has completely vanished now. We didn’t tell our families – I said we’d met at a party or something like that, because it was still a bit odd.” ...

Guardian.

I often think Mark Gatiss would be the perfect boyfriend. Eating beans on toast whilst watching old tapes of hammy films while he gives an hilarious running commentary.

Bishop Eddie Long: Praise Be!

Long took his own advice to heart. He drove a Bentley, travelled in a private jet and lived in a $1.4 million house in Atlanta, where he grew the New Birth Missionary Baptist Church from a few hundred congregants to 25,000 in one of the most affluent African-American suburbs in the country, with millions more watching services on television.

According to an Atlanta Journal-Constitution report from 2005, he established a tax-exempt charity that made $3.1 million in donations from 1997 to 2000 and paid him more than $3 million in salary, benefits and property use. He engaged a tax lawyer who made a video called How to Maximise Your Clergy Salary and Benefits Package. Long was unapologetic...

As well as holding trenchant views on the role of women, Long railed against homosexuality. It was all the more eyebrow-raising, then, when four young men filed lawsuits alleging that Long coerced them into sex. It was claimed that the bishop acted as a spiritual adviser and father figure to them and was generous with gifts, then engaged in sexual acts with them on trips once they reached the age of consent.

Long denied the allegations. “I am not a perfect man but this thing I’m gonna fight,” he told his congregation, to a standing ovation. “I feel like David against Goliath.” In 2011, Long reached an out-of-court settlement with his accusers; the details were not made public. His wife, at first planning to divorce Long, stood by him, but the image of the church and its leader never fully recovered.

The Times.

The notion that homophobes are secretly gay is such a tired old trope, but you know...

Ellen: When You See People In Need You Help Them

I love you so much.

Costa Book Award: This Book Is Gay

A “searing, magnificent” depiction of a gay relationship during the bloody founding of modern America, described by judges as “one of the most wonderful depictions of love in the whole of fiction”, has won the Costa book of the year award.

Sebastian Barry won the £30,000 prize for his novel Days Without End, making him the first novelist to win the prize for a second time. He previously won the Costa book of the year, regarded as one of the UK’s most prestigious literary awards, for his novel The Secret Scripture in 2008.

After being named the winner at a central London ceremony, Barry thanked the judges, saying: “You have made me crazy happy from the top of my head to my toes in a way that is a little bit improper at 61.”

Barry deftly explores notions of national identity and self-renewal as two young soldiers find intimacy amid the horrors of war.

Days Without End, praised in the Guardian as “a work of staggering openness; its startlingly beautiful sentences … so capacious that they are hard to leave behind, its narrative so propulsive that you must move on”, follows the life of Thomas McNulty, a migrant in the 1850s who flees the Irish famine.

Leaving a country behind that is “starved in her stocking feet. And she had no stockings”, McNulty reaches America and embarks on a soldier’s life, first fighting Native Americans and then against armies in the civil war. Barry, who has said he was inspired to write a book containing a gay love story after his son came out, also focuses on McNulty’s romance with fellow soldier John Cole, and their adopted Native American daughter, Winona.

Speaking after receiving the award at a ceremony in London, Barry said he had just spoken to his son Toby on Skype. “That was an award in itself,” he said. “I couldn’t hear anything, technology can’t overcome the great literary buzz.”

Having previously said his children refused to read his books, Barry said that Toby had now read Days Without End, which is dedicated to him. “He said to me, ‘You’re not gay, dad, but you’re an ally. And I like your book.’”

Guardian.

Ain't read it - probably never will.

Ain't been to a Costa neither.

Coronation Street: A Gay Is Gay

No idea who this is, but yeah great.

Pardon: Meaningless

Thousands of gay and bisexual men found guilty of decades-old sexual offences in England and Wales have been posthumously pardoned.

The enactment by the government of the so-called Alan Turing law means about 49,000 men will be cleared of crimes of which they would be innocent today.

Wartime code-breaker Mr Turing was pardoned in 2013 for gross indecency.

Statutory pardons will also be granted to people still living who apply to have their convictions removed.

The pardons were first announced last year and have now been officially rubber-stamped after the Policing and Crime Bill received Royal Assent.

The men were found guilty of committing now-abolished offences while in consensual relationships...

BBC News.

Hello, I am dead, but thanks.

Yes, yes , yes, it was utterly meaningless.

Owen Jones Watch: I'll Take Both Of You On

Hic.

PS Oops. The right royal row is here.

Gay Star News: Freedom Defined

That's freedom is it, standing round in your pants?

The West is the best!

Christ, Gay Star News is shit.

Florian Philipott: Racisme Gay Chatte

A profile of Marine Le Pen's far right hand man - and yup, he's a fag.

We need guns.

Vanessa Redgrave: Happy 80th Birthday

#

Tom Daley Watch: Or Forever Hold Your Peace

Not gonna happen...

PS Also includes a Q&A about Shirley Temple Black, swimming trunks, food, fans (not the one he had online winky-wanks with), and the wedding (that's not going to happen).

Edward Heath: Wasting Police Time

Detectives investigating lurid abuse allegations against Sir Edward Heath have interviewed key figures at Private Eye – because the satirical magazine joked about his sexuality 40 years ago.

Police even visited the current editor, Ian Hislop, to ask what he knew about the former Prime Minister, despite the journalist being a teenager during the period under investigation.

Officers have also tracked down former Downing Street staff to ask them if young men were ever sneaked into Number 10.

Wiltshire Police’s controversial inquiry into Heath – Operation Conifer – has now cost taxpayers almost £900,000, with 17 people still working on it, despite growing demands for it to be shut down.

However, Chief Constable Mike Veale has apologised to MPs and peers for the operation being launched in front of cameras outside Heath’s former house.

It comes after The Mail on Sunday revealed how an expert brought in by police to assess claims that Heath had been linked to a network of paedophiles who held satanic orgies, dismissed them as

In the latest example of what has been branded a farce, Wiltshire Police rang former Private Eye editor Richard Ingrams earlier this month because the journal often made jokes at the expense of Heath when he was PM from 1970 to 1974.

Unmarried Heath had been jokingly dubbed ‘Sailor Ted’ in a reference to rumours that he was gay.

‘The policeman said he wanted to know whether I had any information on Mr Heath,’ said Mr Ingrams.

‘I said, “You’re talking about jokes.” They’d obviously looked through old copies of the Eye to some extent. There were plenty of “Hello, Sailor” type of jokes.’

He added: ‘I told the policeman there was a general subject of speculation about whether the Grocer [Private Eye’s nickname for Heath] was gay or not. He had a dislike of women. He was very rude if he was sat next to women at lunch parties, just ignoring them completely.

‘It did all look like he was gay. But I never heard any evidence of paedophile rumours. It’s a waste of time and public money.’ ...

Mail On Sunday. 

Sake. 

PS Richard Ingrams is a homophobic shitbag.

Mail On Sunday: Up The Duff

If you read the story, you'll find this headline is bollocks.

Basically.

Naturally, Britain's leading transphobe Julie Bindel is up in arms - and in cahoots with the Mail On Sunday.

Philip Glass: Eighty Sixed

Six hours of Philip Glass on BBC Radio 3 to celebrate his 80th birthday.

Even more here.

You don't get that on Classic FM.

Milo: A Season In Hell

Fuck off Milo.

A man protesting outside a talk by MY was shot last week. Judging by the minimal media coverage this is clearly far less serious than a neo-Nazi getting suckerpunched.

PS Here's a great long essay on Milo and alt-right by George Michael (not that one).

John Hurt: 1940-2017

One of our finest actors.

One night in the late 70s ITV re-broadcast The Naked Civil Servant. It must have been after it won every television award going. My mum let me stay up to watch it. I wasn't even in double figures yet. Tellingly my dad had gone out.

I was in awe. I'd never seen anything like it, he could have come from space. I thought he was so beautiful, and yes, so brave. The scene that haunted me was the taxi driver refusing to take him when it was clear he was about to get queerbashed by a bunch of thugs.  An epochal evening in my childhood.

'You can not touch me now. I am one of the stately homos of England.'

'It’s about the tenderness of the individual as opposed to the cruelty of the crowd' - John Hurt

Thanks mum, and thank you Mr Hurt.

'I told Mr. Hurt it was difficult for actors to play victims, but he has specialized in victims. When he stopped playing me, he played Caligula, which was only me in a sheet. Then he played The Elephant Man, which was only me with a paper bag over my head.' - Quentin Crisp.

Yes o yes, the noble outcast, refusing to hide, braving the mean streets of London.

Thought For The Day: Douglas Coupland

I know a few drag queens, and the thing about drag queens and the Queen is that they’re both very much about power. It always amazes me how people misconstrue drag identities for transvestism. Transvestism is an almost entirely straight thing, where guys want to dress like women yet still have straight sex. Drag queens, on the other hand, are largely about power and creating a vivid powerful persona. A drag persona elevates you out of a world that marginalised you, and hooking up isn’t the end game. Some of the toughest people I know are drag queens, and I’d love to see the Queen having tea with them. She’d have a great time, I think: I see you have a very good tuck. Lemon or cream?

Douglas Coupland, dreaming of the Queen in his always great column in FT Weekend magazine.

PS Fascinating UK media fact: The Financial Times is the only newspaper that has a special two-day weekend edition, along with... the Morning Star.

Summit: Donald And Theresa Sitting In A Tree

Ugh!

Did Mrs T agree to put up the money so Trump can build a wall to keep out Muslim refugees fleeing war-torn Syria to get free abortions?

And people ask me why Lee Harvey Oswald is my only hero...

National Pride March: Pointless

A gay activist from New York has announced plans for a mass LGBT protest after being inspired by hundreds of thousands of women who marched in Washington DC last week.

David Bruinooge from Brooklyn, NYC, posted plans on Facebook for a march in the capital on June 11, in response to fears within the LGBT community that President Donald Trump’s administration threatens equality rights.

Mr Bruinooge, who works in television, told the Washington Blade: “I was watching the events [of the women’s march] unfold on TV and I was very proud and inspired by all the women, the strong women in our country who were kind of taking this to the street and getting their voices heard.

“And in the back of my mind as an openly gay man I thought the gay community should be doing something like this to follow up on the momentum,” he added...

The Independent. 

This is so juvenile.

Apolitical piggybacking

'They've had a march so why don't we have one?'

'What's it going to achieve?'

'Erm...'

I hope no-one turns up to this wanky exercise in collective narcissism.

Grindr: The Hours

Guardian.

Could have stopped that after the first four words.

AMIRIGHT!!???

I don't, though.

Cause I don't have a smart phone.

Or a sex drive tbh.

Nothing's piqued my interest or ire today so I'm going to the beach.
x

PS Queerty are doing a poll asking readers' how many hours a day they spend on 'hook-up apps'. Where do they get their ideas from? Oh, and their re-design really is quite awful.

Picture Of The Day: All In All You're Just Another...

Holocaust Memorial Day: Remember

So bored and sick with pointing out that saying thousands of gay men being imprisoned - as they were in Britain and America - is equivalent to millions of Jewish people being killed is morally obscene.

Some people just love masquerading as victims.

Chelsea Manning: Ungrateful TRAITOR

Chelsea Manning is an "ungrateful traitor" who "should never have been released from prison", President Donald Trump has said on Twitter.

Manning, who was convicted of leaking documents to Wikileaks in 2010, recently had her sentence commuted by former President Barack Obama.

The transgender US Army private, born Bradley Manning, said in an op-ed that Mr Obama's legacy was not bold enough.

Mr Trump took to Twitter to criticise her for calling Mr Obama a weak leader.

"Ungrateful TRAITOR Chelsea Manning, who should never have been released from prison, is now calling President Obama a weak leader. Terrible!" he tweeted...

BBC News.

LOL!

Here's the article by the ungrateful TRAITOR.

PS Trump can't overturn her commutation, so don't have nightmares.

Piers Morgan: Tabloid Scum

Via Pink News.

PN have now got Benjamin Butterworth on the books.

Beats working for Richard Desmond.

Julian Assange: But You Don 't Understand, This Is All About Me

Me, me, me!