Poppers: The War Against Pleasure

Why is the government so anti-pleasure, particularly for gay men? Much of the drive to ban legal highs has come from the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), a rightwing thinktank that has consistently misled the public and government about the harms of legal highs. These claims have been refuted by DrugScience.

Much of the pressure to ban legal highs has come from the Centre for Social Justice, a right-wing thinktank

One of CSJ’s main attacks is on what it calls the “loosening” of laws on moral values in the past decades, leading to the erosion of the family. The acceptance of homosexuality is one of its main concerns. It is hard not to conclude that the government shares this opinion and that the poppers ban is in fact an attempt to deter – or even punish – men who enjoy having sex with men.

This is the conspiracy theory explanation, but we must also consider that the government is confused. It may think nitric oxide is the same as nitrous oxide. Confidence in its reasoning is not encouraged by the fact that at the first reading of the psychoactive substances bill, government spokespeople several times referred to a ban on nitrates, which are fertilisers, not nitrites.

Whatever the reasoning behind the popper ban, it is fundamentally flawed. Poppers should be removed from the psychoactive substances bill, though it would be much more honest to scrap the whole legislation as it is so lacking in justification and logic.

David Nutt, The Guardian.

Newsflash! Poppers Stay Legal In Tory U-turn, Mirror.

Will Young: My Shame

SINGER Will Young has opened up about how living with ’17 years of shame’ over being gay resulted in him turning to X-rated videos online.

The 37-year-old didn’t hold back as he spoke at National Student Pride 2016 at London's University Of Westminster on Saturday.

He said: “I was a love addict, I still am an addict, addicted to porn, certainly addicted to alcohol.

“I’d never been on a date without having at least two drinks before I’d left the house and I didn’t even notice that was a problem.” ...

The Leave Right Now singer explained: “I will keep coming back to shame because it’s such a fundamental thing.

“Until I conquered it I just kept having sex to fill the void, watching porn, shopping, anything, and I think we are told that as soon as we come out everything will be OK, but it’s just not the case.” ...

The Sun.

Think you probably like having a drink and watching porn, dear, not sure shame comes into it.

Maybe the real 'shame' is how gay men are taught to think of themselves as victims.

Crispin Blunt: The Problem

The problem with wanting politics to be more reflective of real life is that it inevitably leads to a bald, middle-aged man explaining to the House of Commons how party drugs help him to enjoy anal sex.

“I out myself as a popper user,” Crispin Blunt, the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, declared yesterday.

Fifty years ago such a statement would have indicated an appreciation of modern philosophy. Any politician who confessed to enjoying a hit of Popper was probably referring to one of Sir Karl’s critiques of teleological historicism. Those who were into the heavy stuff would take a snifter of Bertrand Russell as well.

Today, though, poppers are a chemical product popular on the club scene that have, as Keith Vaz explained, “a beneficial ... effect in enabling anal sex”. You learn something new every day. Or I do, anyway, being very innocent. I’m with Lyn Brown, Labour’s drugs spokeswoman, who said that until she took on the brief she thought poppers were “the little things with the string that we had at parties”... 

The Times sketch.

The piece is titled 'Crispin Blunt relaxes into role of raconteur of gay lifestyle'.

Ho ho ho!

Poppers: Blunt

Conservative MP Crispin Blunt, a former prisons minister, says he is a user of the popper recreational drug and that a proposed ban on its supply would be "fantastically stupid".
 

Respect for the law among users would "go out of the window" if there was a ban, he told MPs during a debate on the government's Psychoactive Substances Bill.

BBC News.

Legalise all drugs, not just the ones that help old gay Tories get bumfucked.

Everyone should be soveriegn over their own body!

But how refreshing for a Tory politician to be candid about liking sex and drugs.

PS Will Attitude be publishing a multi-page exposé of this chemsex menace????

Chemsex: It's Back!

Fagburn was worried that chemsex had fallen off the radar this year, so great to see this hysterical gibberish in Gay Star News!

Edit: See also Free syringes dished out to gay men amid concerns about 'sex drug' overdoses, by some nun in the Evening Standard, who didn't know anyone can get free syringes DISHED OUT (and fucking no-one injects GHB).

Trade: Last Dance

Considering the recent club closures, and the increasingly identikit options that are left, that an ordinary night out in London might entail club-hopping around Soho, scooting across the central line to an east London warehouse rave and then ending up at a club in a disused toilet until lunchtime the next day feels like something from an alternate universe. Or just plain made up.

But that’s exactly what used to happen when Trade began in November, 1990. It was London’s first legal carry-on party, which raged at the now-defunct Turnmills in Clerkenwell from 3am every Sunday, and kickstarted an intrepid after-hours clubbing scene that would last two decades. Masterminded by Laurence Malice, it was billed as a gay club but it attracted a diverse crowd and, thanks to its DJs like Tony De Vit, became famous for pushing the breakneck hard house sound (“he took techno and basically camped it up a bit,” says Malice).

At the time, most clubs ended at 2 or 3am and after-hours parties were illicit, even dangerous. The Aids epidemic had also erupted and Malice wanted to create a safe environment for gay men – with a pumping soundtrack. “It was a ridiculously homophobic time,” says Malice. “No one knew what Aids was about so you would have guys leaving clubs at 3am and they wanted to meet, get off with people, whatever, and they were being attacked.” It’s why Trade’s assorted audience was so important. “I wanted straight people to show that gay people are not a problem – that we can mix.”

This inclusivity is one of the most significant aspects of Trade’s legacy, inspired in part by acid house’s togetherness rather than the attitudinal, fashion-focused clubs of the 80s. “It was a crazy group of characters from different walks of life: rent boys, trannies, working girls, muscle marys, industry people,” says regular Trade DJ Smokin Jo of the club’s clientele. “It was such a mixed bag and that added to the fun. It wasn’t a serious night full of musos, it was everyone there with their hands in the air going crazy.” An article first printed in 1994 in Gay Times, now republished on digital dance music anthology DJ History, perhaps sums up Trade’s significance best: “Here there’s a real sense of belonging, of community,” says its writer Richard Smith. “Coming here did me at least as much good as coming out.” ...

Kate Hutchinson, The Guardian.

That article by Richard Smith really is brilliant!

Trade The Final - billed as the last ever Trade - is at Egg London, Sunday October 25th.

Trade: Often Copied, Never Equalled - an exhibition on 25 years of Trade - is at Islington Museum from Friday.

David Hudson writes about the end of Trade here.

Guardian online ran a guide to gay London last week, not sure why.

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

Mirror.

How refreshing.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr Chris Jessen: Unembarassing Bodies

Daily Star On Sunday.

'Gay man goes on Grindr shock!'

Wanting new D is not a crime, taking drugs shouldn't be.

Grow up.

PS 'It's embarrassing...' No, it's not, you like cock.

Update: Ivan Massow's predictably thick reply...

George Michael: Gotcha!

GEORGE Michael has secretly been in rehab for a year battling an addiction to lethal crack cocaine.

And today his cousin’s wife Jackie Georgiou reveals how the singer, 52, was a bewildered, drug-addled wreck when he checked into a Swiss clinic.

Jackie Georgiou, wife of George’s cousin Andros, said his family feared he was killing himself with crack, cocaine, alcohol and marijuana before he finally agreed to their pleas to undergo rehab last summer.

And she said of George, who is still being treated by the £190,000-a-month Kusnacht Practice a year later: “He was smoking crack. Before he went away he got to the point where he would be shaking, saying ‘I need it’...

The scumtastic Sun On Sunday.

Hmm...

Note how they had to go to 'his cousin's wife' to find a relative who'd sing.

I understand this is The Sun's front page story, they didn't release it to #tomorrowspaperstoday etc as they didn't want other papers to nick their 'world exclusive' for their print editions.

Of course, George Michael trumps even Michael Barrymore as our tabloid's favourite gay pantomime villain (dame?).

If true, running this story would be the least helpful thing to do.

Update: Statement to the Mirror from George's PR...

"Whilst it is our general policy not to comment on private matters, we would in this instance note that these highly inaccurate stories have been apparently provided to the press by the wife of a very distant family member, neither of whom has had any dealings with him for many many years.

"It is therefore unsurprising that they are so incorrect.

"Beyond this we have no further comment to make as the matter is now in the hands of Mr Michael's lawyers."

Dazed: Chemsex

“I’ve been politely asked to quieten down and get on with it – which I can fully appreciate – since I was probably sharing my thoughts on animal cruelty while simultaneously attempting to give someone a blowjob” explains James, a 23 year old actor from London. He is describing his experience of chillouts, an emerging subculture featuring drugs and group sex amongst urban gay and bisexual men, principally in London but, increasingly, across other cities in the UK.

Gay chillouts are often an event in and of themselves (rather than an after-party) and they aren’t for smoking weed and comedowns: the purpose is to get high. As James’ anecdote encapsulates, it’s a strange confusion of the social and sexual – where drugs can allow groups of strangers to be both gregarious and gratified without some of the awkwardness such anonymity might produce. The other slang term used for this, now adopted by clinicians and health workers is "chemsex"...

From a thoughtful, non-hysterical and largely non-judgmental article on Dazed online by Sean Faye, which looks at the chemsex scene as much a social as a sexual activity. A rare break form the usual 'They're fucking themselves to death!' narrative on this. Though he appears to conclude we should be starting knitting circles or something.

PS This study by Sigma Research has just been published by the BMJ. The Dazed article only mentions some rather partisan 'staistics'.

Drugs: Ban Everything!

Even by the standards of modern legislation, the psychoactive substances bill is startlingly inane. It seems to ban any substance which can cause a mental or emotional reaction. As must be obvious, that's almost everything in the world. Did this taste remind you of your mother's cooking? It's a psychoactive substance. Did it bring you a moment of happiness? It's a psychoactive substance. The government is about to ban almost everything...

Ian Dunt on politics.co.uk on a spectacularly dumb piece of tabloid-friendly populist drivel.

Where will it leave, say, poppers?

It's so ill thought-out surely the legislation will collapse under the weight of its own contradictions?

What stupid idea will they come up with next?

Oh, mandatory age and ID Checks if you want to watch porn!

PS Vice clarifies that it's all based on a load of bollocks...

You know those legal highs that the government is about to ban en masse because they kill two people per week? They don't kill two people per week, or anything close.

Wednesday's Queen's speech, the first airing of a fully Tory parliamentary programme since 1996, included an unprecedented blanket ban on selling new psychoactive substances.

The announcement was met with various responses. Most importantly, a briefly-amusingVine of the Queen set to an Avicii 2011 Trance Energy lightshow drop. But alsowarnings that the ban turns centuries of British legal tradition on its head, and plenty ofTwitter users saying that the 97 deaths from legal highs in 2012 pales in comparison to the thousands of deaths linked to booze.

But for anyone with even a fleeting interest in the issue, the pertinent response should have been: Why is everyone in this story about banning legal highs talking about 97 deaths, when that figure is largely composed of drugs that were not legal at the time people died from taking them?

The dramatic "97 deaths" figure has travelled well, being quoted by the BBC, the Press Association and the Daily Mail, among others. While yesterday was bad news for the guys selling Bob Marley weed grinders and "Adihash" T-shirts, it was very good news for a right-wing think tank founded by Iain Duncan Smith called the Centre for Social Justice, or CSJ

The CSJ has a strong evangelical Christian bent and is extremely influential in the Tory party. They have been pushing for a blanket ban for a while, so for them yesterday's news was a major victory. The think tank's lead man on legal highs, Rupert Oldham-Reid,hailed the proposed law in an article for Conservative Home, quoting everyone's favourite figure for legal high deaths, or something close to it. "Most tragically, in the last Parliament, the number of deaths associated with 'legal highs' has gone from one per month to over two per week," he wrote. The influence of the CSJ was also seen in a BBC piece published earlier this week, which declared: "Research from the Centre for Social Justice showed that there were 97 recorded deaths from legal highs in the UK in 2012."

Except there obviously weren't...

David Hockney: The War Against The Curtain Sniffers

Nice buns.

He waves his cigarette at me. “Do you smoke?” he asks, as if challenging me to a duel. I find myself apologising for having stopped, and he looks at me with a disappointment bordering on contempt – though he seems slightly pacified when I ask for a whisky.

“Bohemia was against the suburbs, and now the suburbs have taken over,” he says. “I mean, the anti-smoking thing is all anti-bohemia. Bohemia is gone now. When people say, well wasn’t it amazing saying you were gay in 1960, I point out, well, I lived in bohemia, and bohemia is a tolerant place. You can’t have a smoke-free bohemia. You can’t have a drug-free bohemia. You can’t have a drink-free bohemia. Now they’re all worried about their fucking curtains, sniffing curtains for tobacco and stuff like that.”

Does he think gay life has become more conservative in recent years? “Yes. I suppose it’s that they want to be ordinary – they want to fit in. Well, I didn’t care about that. I didn’t care about fitting in. Everywhere is so conservative.”

Would he have ever wanted to marry a man? “No, no, no,” he says with utter distaste. Would he have wanted children? “No,” he says, with equal conviction...

Great words from a great profile of the great man by Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian.

The young David knew two things from an early age: that he wanted to be an artist and that he liked boys...

If you ask me, gay life hasn't become significantly more conservative, despite the best efforts of so much of the gay media to get gay men to conform to a hetero norm; work, consume, marry, breed, get rich, get off Grindr, stop taking drugs blah blah blah...

PS Though some gaybores clearly don't need to have this thrust upon them, see these Pink News reader comments. Maybe they was born that way?

Update: I'm delighted that David Hockney thinks gay men have become boring - Artist David Hockney says today's gay men have become boring and just want to fit in. There's no bigger sign that they are winning the battle for equality, says Cristo Foufas. Telegraph online. FFS.

Thought For The Day: Andy Bell

People who want fame want to be loved by everybody. They get the adoration and think, “Aha! This is the answer to all my problems.” Then all of a sudden it’s gone – and you’re left with a gaping hole.

Observer Magazine.

Probably not the first time Andy's been left with a gaping hole.

Andy also talks about drugs ('I was a greedy pig'), HIV and plastic surgery.

I guessed the drugs thing many years ago when I interviewed Mr Bell in a posh hotel room, and he kept going to the bathroom every ten minutes.

SNIFF!

Evan Davis: On Drugs

The Independent.

“The gay community has less discipline because it doesn’t have kids to go home to, and slightly more disposable income, and then add to that that when these things catch on they tend to have a momentum.”

“Once gay people start taking drugs, they’ll take more drugs because it’s socially infectious and one person will take them, then another. I just think it’s something gay people have to watch out for.”

Further proof that drugs can do terrible things to the brain - mainly to people who don't take them.

The quotes come from an interview in the current issue of Attitude.

Matthew Parris: On Drugs

Why was I babbling about soup kitchens? Only minutes had passed — I knew that because it’s about five minutes to Temple in London by minicab from the laboratory I had just left near Russell Square. Yet surely my researcher and I had been in the cab for half an hour and surely his worried silence had lasted all that time? Dalí-like, the clock had gone all rubbery.

With some heightened sense of mood I knew he was worried: worrying that he should have warned me off. And here I was now, babbling about soup kitchens and due at my partner’s place for dinner with his boss in an hour, and my mind kept stalling and all idea of time had gone elastic. How was I going to hold it all together when I couldn’t hold my own train of thought for ten seconds?

This was my lowest point. I was truly stoned and it wasn’t amazing and it wasn’t cool, it was just horrible. I felt stupid, I was battling to keep control and didn’t want anyone to know.

The Times.

Johann Hari: Mea Culpa

When I heard that Johann Hari had written a book about the war on drugs, two immediate concerns sprang to mind. The first was whether anyone would trust a word he wrote...

Decca Aitkenhead profiles leading gay liar and fantasist Jonhann Hari for The Guardian.

For a quick reminder of Johann's fantastic lies see his website.

Paul Cahill: Gay Cop Drugs Shame Etc

A TOP gay police officer awarded the MBE has been arrested on suspicion of supplying drugs.

Chief Insp Paul Cahill was found slumped over the wheel of his car by passing cops.

A stash of hardcore Class A drugs was allegedly found during a search of the vehicle and of the 43-year-old Metropolitan Police officer.

He was also arrested on suspicion of driving while unfit through alcohol or drugs and taken to a South London police station.

More of the Class A substance was allegedly seized in a search of his home.

The decorated officer — given his gong in 2004 for services to diversity in the force — was bailed until next month pending tests...

The Sun On Sunday.

He became a gay icon [sic] when he appeared on the front cover of Gay Times in full sergeant’s uniform in 1997, the year after he had been the victim of a homophobic attack.

He was also chairman of the Gay Police Association for more than a decade.

He made his mark by working as a liaison officer with Soho’s vibrant gay community [sic. Perchance only the Mail could use such wonderfully clueless and patronising terms].

Mail Online.

It's people like him who gave policemen a good name!

Although Fagburn wouldn't want Chief Inspector Cahill to give him a lift home, he respects anyone who 'does a full George Michael'.

PS He was on about £60,000 a year, so I doubt he'd have to resort to petty drug dealing.

London: Possible New Night Mayor Threat

Evening Standard - exclusive!

Just when you think we've seen the last of this Tory goon, like T2 he appears.

Does anyone remember Ivan's appearance on Question Time?

He came across as even thicker than Adam Rickitt.

Update: During a Gaydio radio interview he goes on a bananas rant about all those disgusting gays and their drugs and their unsafe sex and those 'slamming' parties he read about somewhere.

Only Mayor Massow can save London from this tidal wave of gay filth!!!

PS Mail columnist Susan Vine attacks anti-poverty campaigner and food writer, Jack Monroe, for being a lesbian mum; 'No one forced her to have a child. Indeed, if she was in anyway uncertain of her sexual orientation, arguably she should have taken greater precautions...'

Sarah Vine is the wife of Michael Gove - Gove used to share a bachelor pad with Massow.

Can dots be drawn here?

Update: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!

Telegraph: Spot The Difference

In real life, although I am neither a glamorous oldster or into make-up and squealing confidences, I have always had happy relaxed friendships with gay men and never felt a squeak of misogyny. If anything, on a personal level it can be easier to have a friendship (certainly in single youth) when both sides are pretty certain that it needn’t lead anywhere more intimate, and that neither side hopes so. And since both groups have known hassle at work from stiff-necked harrumphing bosses and macho twits, that can create a bond, too. So there was something baffling about McGowan’s outburst; it is years since Stonewall and Outrage explicitly set their face against misogyny.

But looking back across the years, and outside the comfy media-liberal consensus, it must be admitted that there have been mutual hostilities, and that in a few stony unreconstructed hearts they may endure...

Libby Purves, Daily Telegraph.

And while it’s great that McGowan has such a nuanced insight to what gay men do and think about (take drugs and how much they hate women, respectively), I’m not sure how many more of us it will win round to the feminist cause. There’s a debate to be had about whether gay men should get more involved in this, though there’s also a difference between not actively campaigning for women’s rights and women-hating.

But I’ll say one thing for being accused of misogyny: it makes a change from the stereotype of the fluffy, harmless Gay Best Friend which is, somehow, still a thing in 2014. “Are gay men really misogynist?” asked one acquaintance, who shall remain anonymous, upon reading McGowan’s ill-judged comments. “I thought they loved women?”

Being told that all gay men hate women is wrong and offensive, but at least it moves us away from the truth universally acknowledged that a single gay man in possession of a fabulous wardrobe must be in want of a sassy girlfriend to talk about boy troubles, go shopping, order sushi with, etc. etc...

Theo Merz, Daily Telegraph. - a good piece, perhaps surprisingly.

Can we please stop pretending gay men are a uniform pink blob?

Drugs Kill: Rational Debate

Green MP Caroline Lucas has said "fear of the tabloids" has driven UK drug policy for the last few decades.

A group of backbenchers from all parties are urging the government to review the "failing" Misuse of Drugs Act, in a debate brought by Ms Lucas.

It comes as the Home Office publishes two separate reports into different approaches to drug misuse around the world and legal highs in the UK.

The Home Office has said it is not considering any shift in drugs policy...

Ms Lucas said successive governments had consistently refused to take an "evidence-based approach" out of "fear of the tabloids", while Labour's Paul Flynn said drug policy since 1971 had been "evidence-free and prejudice-rich"...

BBC News.

Well said, Caroline.

And well done to Norman Baker, the Lib Dem Home Office minister, for stating the obvious; the drug laws don't work. *

Surprisingly, this was broadly welcomed by the papers.

But fear not, narcophobes, a leading politician makes an intervention like this every few years, and nothing ever changes.

* Much of this debate has been around reducing drug use. Fagburn is all for reducing drug harm, but can't see why reducing having fun is a goal we should be pursuing.

PS If you're interested in evidence-rich and prejudice-free reporting on drugs and drug laws - and challenging media hysteria and lies - please read David Nutt's website, DrugScience.

Thankfully, the gay media never indulges in fact-free scaremongering about drugs...