Peter Tatchell Watch: I'm Free

The emails from the officer of the National Union of Students were unequivocal. Fran Cowling, the union’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) representative, said that she would not share a stage with a man whom she regarded as having been racist and “transphobic”.

That the man in question is Peter Tatchell – one of the country’s best-known gay rights campaigners, who next year celebrates his 50th year as an activist – is perhaps a mark of how fractured the debate on free speech and sexual politics has become.

In the emails, sent to the organisers of a talk at Canterbury Christ Church University on Monday on the topic of “re-radicalising queers”, Cowling refuses an invitation to speak unless Tatchell, who has also been invited, does not attend. In the emails she cites Tatchell’s signing of an open letter in the Observer last year in support of free speech and against the growing trend of universities to “no-platform” people, such as Germaine Greer, for holding views with which they disagree.

Cowling claims the letter supports the incitement of violence against transgender people. She also made an allegation against him of racism or of using racist language. Tatchell told the Observer that the incident was yet another example of “a witch-hunting, accusatory atmosphere” symptomatic of a decline in “open debate on some university campuses”...

The Observer.

A predictably disingeneous piece about Peter Tatchell.

As the article states this isn't about 'no-platforming', Peter here is just piggy-backing on a current hot topic to serve himself, something he's made an art of for the last 30 years.

Nor, rather obviously, has he been denied of freedom of speech or been censored.

One (1!) student panellist, Fran Cowling, said she wouldn't be attending as she thinks Tatchell's been racist and transphobic.

Perhaps, quite understandably, she just didn't want to be near this awful man?

It's surely more remarkable that other people are still willing to enter into serious discussion with this increasingly silly, erratic and ridiculous self publicist.

It is predictably hypocritical of Saint Peter to wibble on about free speech when, for example, he has argued for no-platforming of Islamic 'hate preachers' at the East London Mosque and the Muslim scholar, Dr Yusuf al-Qaradawi.

He's even had a book withdrawn for commiting the supreme crime; criticising Peter Tatchell!

He's tried to hound other people out of their jobs.

He supported the prosecution of a Northern Ireland bakers who didn't want to make a cake with a pro-gay marriage message on (until two weeks ago!).

He's even tried to have music and musicians banned.

Going crying to The Observer to complain about a young female student who'd dared to criticise him seems part of his infamous arrogant and bullying behaviour.

He must have known this would lead to her being harrassed online - presumably this was his intention?

It's hardly the action of some self-proclaimed champion of free speech.

But observers of Peter Tatchell will know all Peter Tatchell is interested in now is Peter Tatchell.

With his tireless and tiresome yet successful campaign of self-promotion in the media, by reducing a movement to himself, it is hard to think of anyone who has done more damage to furthering the cause of gay activism in this country.

Whilst most many gay men on the left now think he has become a liability, the likes of The Daily Mail declare him a 'national treasure'.

One would hope Peter will apologise for his disgusting behaviour - but when has Mr Vain ever done that before?

In the interests of 'free speech', if nothing else, can this odious mentalist 70s gay dinosaur now shut the fuck up and retire?

• Help I'm Being Persecuted: Hypocrisy and free speech, Scott Long 2015.

PS The second half of The Observer feature; a potted biography of Tatchell, where Saint Peter is credited for every advance in gay rights over the last 50 years, is so fawning, ridiculous and uncritical it could have been written by him.

Egypt: Love In The Time Of Grindr

Between 2001 and 2004, police entrapped hundreds, probably thousands, of gay Egyptian men over the Internet, in a massive crackdown. Since 2013, arrests of suspected LGBT people burgeoned again in Egypt; most victims were seized at home or on the streets, yet rumors circulated that cops had returned to the Web for entrapment. 

But there was no proof — till this summer. On June 8, police arrested a Syrian refugee in Messaha Square in Doqqi; they’d arranged to meet him over Growlr. An appeals court overturned his one-year sentence, but, flouting legal protections for refugees, the Ministry of Interior deported him anyway. A month later, seemingly under similar circumstances, Doqqi police arrested an Italian national who had lived in Egypt for six years. A court eventually dismissed the charges, but, under pressure, he left the country. 

The latest cases show not just foreigners but Egyptians are targets of the snares. Internet entrapment is cruel — and successful — because it feeds on solitude. The police arrest you not because you’re dancing at a party or cruising on the street, but because, on the apparent privacy of a flickering screen, you express a need. Your crime isn’t hurting someone but being vulnerable to hurt...

From a powerful piece, Entrapped! How to use a phone app to destroy a life, by Scott Long.

Russia: Far-Right Racist Publicity-Seeking Twat Arrested

And just as he wanted to be...

His millionaire boyfriend will pay it off.

On the noted anti-semites very dodgy ideology.

We must overcome these fascist stunts.

Egypt: What's Going On?

So they’re going to deport gay foreigners from Egypt. My phone started ringing a few mornings ago, reporters wanting comments: solicitous but always with a subtext of What’s going to happen to you?

I don’t know. The case involves a Libyan student whom police expelled from Egypt in 2008, after a complaint that he was gay. From back in Libya, he sued. This Tuesday, after seven years – the alacrity typifies Egyptian justice — an Adminstrative Court ruled that the Ministry of Interior did the right thing, under its power to”prevent the spread of immorality in society.” In fact, then, this isn’t a new policy. The court reaffirmed authority the state always had. Two years ago, for instance, a Polish citizen was vacationing on the North coast here with his Egyptian partner. The Pole grew seriously ill and had to be hospitalized. The nurses found their relationship suspicious and called the police. After several days under arrest, the Egyptian was freed; police deported the Pole, who was still in agonizing pain. I heard all about it at the time, but there was nothing we could do.

Things are much worse these days under Sisi. I sometimes seem insouciant about threats in Egypt, but I’m not. it’s just that the atmosphere of threat is general here. It affects every corner of your personality, yet it’s hard to take it personally, so wide is the danger spread.

...

Still: this story, the deportation story, went viral abroad. It’s strange because LGBT Egypt has not been in the international news much for months. When you deal with the media, you get used to its collective movements, puzzling as tidal motions when it’s too cloudy to see the moon, or the startled shuddering of gazelles racing in unison through tall grass. But other terrible things happened here recently. A man acquitted on charges of homosexuality tried to burn himself to death in despair. Police arrested an accused “shemale,” splaying her photos on the Internet. Egypt’s government threatened to close a small HIV/AIDS NGO because it gave safer-sex info to gay men. None of these got such press. The contrast is striking...

Scott Long reports from Cairo, as ever explaining what's really going on.

Now read on...

Boycott: Boycotts

Is boycott politics a boycott of politics, evading the responsibilities and demands that politics impose on us for an easy cyber-way out? Does our consumer power — that $800 billion [sic] gays spend annually at being gay — really make us stronger, more potent citizens? Or does it makes us less citizens, shut us into ghettos where we become what we do or do not purchase with our power? Does it foreclose more generous identities, more onerous but meaningful commitments, larger and more human solidarities?

Scott Long, from an excellent piece, Fashion Police.

PS Bandwagonesque.

JOIN US #BoycottDolceGabbana Fashion designers Dolce & Gabbana oppose gay marriage & same-sex parents http://t.co/0hV3g8Q6Ok @fakedansavage
— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) March 14, 2015

'US'??!!

And what will this achieve, Pete, or is it just another photo opp?

One has to admire how Saint Peter can not send a tweet without doing an @someonefamous. Pls retweet me, I'm a needy girl who seeks praise and followers.

#fuckyoursillyhashtags

Peter Tatchell: Twilight Of The Vicious Narcissus

The center has shifted in the debate about abuses against trans people and sex workers has now become an argument about grave abuses against Peter Tatchell, largely between him and him. I had no intention of writing another word on this; but then I read Peter’s self-defence. It’s headlined “Peter Tatchell: Twitter mob who vowed to kill me over transgender letter have it all wrong.”

This was intriguing. The idea of fanatical trans people (or sex workers) vowing murder was new to me, and I wanted to find the evidence. So I spent a few hours searching on Twitter for Tweets containing Peter’s name plus any of a thesaurus of threats (“murder,” “kill,” “beat,” “stab,” etc.); I also searched for a variety of Anglo-Saxon terms of abuse.

Well: that “Twitter mob” was no mob. So far as I see, Peter got exactly one Tweet that contained threatening language; it’s the one he’s cited and retweeted everywhere...

Scott Long, A Paper Bird.

The general consensus is that Saint Peter has now finally and completely lost the fucking plot.

Mr Vain has become a joke and an embarrassment to the gay left, and, may Fagburn humbly suggest, it's probably best to retire forthwith.

People are bored and angry with you reducing gay politics to your wonderful self for over 20 years.

If you really care about a progressive gay movement, step aside. 

Identity politics created army of vicious, narcissistic cowards http://t.co/pSfXRdKCxj I disagree with some of the language & arguments
— Peter Tatchell (@PeterTatchell) February 20, 2015

Irony overload! 

Egypt: Let My People Go

“This court finds the defendants innocent ….” That, or more or less that, was all anybody heard the judge say. The courtroom exploded. Lawyers cheered; journalists stood on the benches and joined the cheering; and the families, manhandled outside by the bailiffs before the hearing began, forced their way in through the doors and shoved the policemen aside in return: brothers and fathers shouting to the cameras that their kids were vindicated, black-clad women trilling the zaghrata — the triumphal ululation heard at weddings. It spilled into the halls outside. At one point the families and a few friends stood fists pumping in a circle, chanting “Our sons are men!” And there were cries of “Put Mona Iraqi on trial!” I’ve never seen anything quite like this in attending countless Egyptian trials over the years. We’d never felt anything like this. No one expected it. No one was prepared...

Scott Long writing from Cairo on his excellent blog, A Paper Bird.

Please read on - his blogposts about this case are a powerful, moving document.

I was going to say 'historical document', but as Scott shows, this battle is far from over. 

Egypt: If

Brian Whitaker in The Guardian.

Brian is The Guardian's former Middle East correspondent, and author of Unspeakable Love: Gay and lesbian life in the Middle East.

His blog al-Bab.com makes a refreshing change from the usual ill-informed twaddle spoken about this subject.

PS Read also Scott Long's Cairo-based reporting of this disgusting media-frenzy farce on, A Paper Bird.

HRC And The Vulture Fund: Making Third World Poverty Pay For LGBT Rights

The Human Rights Campaign (HRC), the largest US gay organization, is going international. It’s just been given at least $3 million to spread the word of marriage equality to benighted countries that treat gays badly. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. Its chief partner and donor in this project wants the people in those countries, LGBT folk included, to starve – their economies wrecked, their incomes shipped abroad, their resources squeezed and stolen to pay off odious debt. HRC is receiving its money for gay rights in the Third World from the man who “virtually invented vulture funds”: a form of speculation that’s one of the worst contributors to Third World poverty ever.

But if you’re poor and getting poorer, look on the bright side (as long as river blindness hasn’t got you, that is). You can still have a nice white wedding; and you’ll save on the food bill if your nation has no food...

Scott Long, A Paper Bird.

Now read on...

Egypt: 'Gay Wedding'

In Egypt any man can harass, brutalize, and rape a woman. It happens all the time. The State will ignore it for as long as possible; the media will say she asked for it. Just try a harmless expression of mutual, consensual desire, though. They’ll hound you to within an inch of your life.

Let’s start with the video. It came out of nowhere, but by Saturday morning it was everywhere. That day — it was August 30 — I spent with some young, impeccably liberal Egyptians. They kept staring with stunned fixation at their smartphones, repeatedly hitting “play,” watching it go viral, wondering what was going to happen to the men. The YouTube comments could have told you what was coming: “They’re outside of prisons; they should worship God within them,” one outraged viewer wrote. That night I met with some of the men in the clip. One of them kept breaking uncontrollably into tears. They were trying to report the invasion of privacy, get YouTube to take it down. No use: By next day, it was on the website of Youm7 — the tabloid that’s been carrying on a homophobic campaign for months — and on TV. You think you are just a private person, contained in the fences of your skin; then suddenly you find you’ve escaped yourself, become a common spectacle and possession, a fetish cupped in the palms of everybody’s hands. No doubt this is why politicians and movie stars are so vacuous, stripped of self; but imagine sitting in ordinary obscurity and abruptly discovering you’re now an infinitely duplicable, circulating flash of light. “Mirrors and copulation are both abominable,” Borgeswrote — it was one of the aphorisms of his invented world of Tlon — “because they multiply mankind.” But that was before the Internet...

Scott Long, A Paper Bird.

Now read on...

Brunei: Star Wars 2

The celebrity boycott of Dorchester hotels over anti-gay laws in Brunei will be ineffective and “most rewarding to the individuals taking part”, the charity Stonewall has claimed.

Stephen Fry, Richard Branson and several A-list US stars have forsaken the luxury chain over its ties to the Sultan of Brunei, who plans to make homosexuality punishable in his country with death by stoning.

But they will not be joined by Stonewall, the gay, lesbian and bisexual rights charity, because it risks “turning the issue into a battle between gay people and the Sultan”.

Writing in The Telegraph Ruth Hunt, the charity’s chief executive, described the Sultan’s plans to introduce a strict Sharia code in his country as “an abomination” but said the charity would “only implement actions that we can calculate will have an impact”.

She said: “We’re renowned for our pragmatism and our belief that talking is usually more effective than protests – however satisfying protests may be, in the short term they’re often most rewarding to the individuals taking part.

“The crucial questions for Stonewall are whether there is a mandate for the boycott and would such a boycott work? We believe the answer is no, on both counts.”

The Dorchester Collection is owned by the Brunei Investment Agency and comprises 10 properties including the Beverly Hills Hotel, Hotel Bel-Air, and The Dorchester in London.

But Ms Hunt questioned the logic of targeting the hotel group, saying it was doubtful what influence Christopher Cowdray, its “somewhat beleaguered” chief executive, could realistically have on Brunei’s legal system.

“By turning the issue into a battle between gay people and the Sultan… we limit the opportunity for dialogue and put the lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people of Brunei at far greater risk,” she said.

Stonewall prefers to encourage change by working with groups such as the Dorchester Collection to ensure all their employees have fundamental rights at work, while supporting human rights groups with their work around the world, she added.

“The change we’ve seen here in the UK did not happen because of boycotts. It happened because a constellation of campaigners, individuals and companies committed changing the country.”

Daily Telegraph. 

Well said - couldn't have put it better my own fantastic self.

Though Scott Long has - here he is on how many have got it wrong about Brunei and boycotts. 

Now I'm not a professional psychic, but something tells Fagburn all Teh Gays who prefer knee-jerk self-serving posturing, media stunts and celebactivism to rational and effective campaigning won't like this one bit.

Maybe we should concentrate on things that might actually affect change, not just silly stuff that makes us feel good?

PS Admittedly, I'll look pretty silly if it turns out the Dorchester group are a major Stonewall donor. 

They're not are they...

Brunei: Relax, The Hollywood Stars Have Come To The Rescue!

Well-known champion of gay rights, the Daily Mail, who rather wonderfully have filed this in the Travel section.

'To stay at the Beverly Hills Hilton or to take a holiday in Brunei click here...' etc.

The Sultan of Brunei is worth an estimated $20 billion, so I'm sure he really cares about a few canceled bookings.

Anyway, let's get angry about a law in some horrid foreign country that will almost certainly never be enforced.

Some Hollywood stars, pictured recently making sad faces.

PS The Real Story Behind Brunei's Sharia Laws Isn't The One That Gay Rights Groups Are Telling You, Scott Long, PolicyMic.

It's clear that the Human Rights Campaign and other U.S. gay activists still haven't learned the importance of alliances, a blindness doubly alarming when projected onto an international scale. The current fetish for fast results and clicktivism only feeds into this. A quick boycott threat might bring down a Firefox CEO in a few days, but political change across continents takes patience and persistence and hard work, not hashtags.

Indifference to the broader issues at stake, to the fate of women in Brunei and to the work of feminists throughout the region, is disgraceful. It endangers LGBT Bruneians by turning the dispute over the Syariah code into a battle solely of "the Sultan vs. the gays." It damages regional women's movements by relegating their campaigns again to silence. This isn't international solidarity: It's international solipsism.

Uganda: Help

Museveni publicly waffled over the bill and was aware of its diplomatic repercussions, telling parliament to "also take into account our foreign policy interests." In private, he admitted that homosexuality had always existed in Africa, even as he secretly funded groups that whipped up homophobia. As one Western ambassador said of the president, "He may be mad, but he's not stupid."

But as foreign LGBT activists and western governments pushed to have the bill killed, it became the one Ugandan story making headlines, raising its stakes and transforming what was a potentially popular law into Museveni's political trump card. Distressingly, Ugandans began blaming their gay brothers and sisters for the negative coverage, thereby pushing the hand of the bill's supporters in parliament.

Should activists and Western governments not have decisively lent their support to the beleaguered LGBT community in Uganda? Of course not. But outsiders struggled to grasp that their rancor over the law was inconsistent with a long silence during Museveni's increasingly dictatorial 28-year rule and his flagrant corruption, disregard for human rights and suppression of opposition parties, problems that made life difficult for all Ugandans. None of those issues presented the viral-friendly morality play of an apartheid-esque law...

Ultimately, as Jocelyn Edwards writes, it was the gay bill and Museveni's cynical ploy to "distract from an acute governance deficit in the nation" and build a "flimsy smoke screen for Uganda's more pressing problems" that made headlines.

How LGBT Activists Accidentally Helped Pass Uganda's Anti-Gay Laws, Samuel Oakford, PolicyMic.

By intervening in the heavy-handed way they have done, western governments have helped turn the issue into more than a vote winner for Mr Museveni; he has broadened the row into a nationalist cause, with Europe and the US laying themselves open to the charge of hypocritical bullies.

Not for the first time donors have been outsmarted by a wily politician whose grasp of African geopolitics is far more acute than theirs. Having failed as the world’s policeman, the west needs to think before becoming a self-appointed monitor of Africa’s morality.

The West Lays Itself A Trap Over Uganda’s Anti-Gay Laws: Donors should have shown a better grasp of local politics, Michael Holman Finacial Times.

See also 'Rescuing' gay people from Africa is no answer to homophobic laws - An internet fundraising campaign to help LGBTI people ‘escape’ to the west is at best both palliative and patronising, Melanie Judge, The Guardian.

First Do No Harm.

PS And here's Scott Long on the the latest misreporting of a 'gay' news story about Iran by the American right.

Uganda: Dear David Aarnovitch Et Al, Please Read This!

The question of cutting Donor AID has arisen. Our position on this is very clear. We do not support General Aid Cuts to Uganda. We do not want the people of Uganda to suffer because of the unfortunate Political choices of our government. However, we support Strategic Aid Cuts to specific sectors, such as the Dutch Government’s decision to withdraw funding from the Justice Sector. We encourage urgent review of Aid to organizations and government institutions that have failed to demonstrate respect for Human Rights and those that have been actively supporting this bill. We DO NOT support cuts in support to NGO’s and other civil society institutions that offer life saving health services or other important social services to the People of Uganda.

Updated guidelines on how National, International and Regional partners can support Ugandan LGBTI Persons and their allies

Thanks as ever to Scott Long. x

Video Time 2: What's Love Got To Do With It?

All Out have made a predictably stupid and pukey video imagining What If A Gay Olympian Won At Sochi?
Well, I guess they've gotta spend all that money they get on something.
"The Russian government just made it a crime for gay people to show their love in public", the video claims, falsely.
All Out's press release admits this claim is untrue - or rather says it is "unclear" ie it's not what the new propaganda law actually says.
When there are so many anti-gay things going on in Russia, why say you're against something that hasn't happened?
The video imagines a female ice-skater who gets a gold medal but can't kiss her girlfriend in celebration.
Imagine if a gay man won an Olympic gold medal and thanked and embraced his boyfriend!
Just like Matthew Mitcham did in 2008, you mean?
US TV networks edited out all mentions of his then boyfriend, Lachlan Fletcher.
And what reassurance is the trite title and message here, Love Always Wins, when gay and bisexual men are being beaten up after being found through gay sex sites on the internet?
Similarly the new law against "propaganda of non-traditional sexual relations to minors" - and the rhetoric behind it - seems most concerned with propagating the myth that gay men prey on kids.
It is a grave tactical error to reduce this campaign to gay love, when Russian homophobes keep going on about gay SEX.
If we base our arguments on mendacity, tomfoolery, and most of all on prudery - and willingly submitting to our castration as gay men - they have won.

Remember: If you think this short film is a load of silly old sentimental wank that only serves Western power, that means you DON'T CARE and are WORSE THAN HITLER!
All Out believe there is "an anti-gay war waging in Russia" right now.
Well, it's always good to keep things in perspective.
And if history has shown us there's one sure-fire way to stop a war, it's by asking people to click on an e-petition.
Or alternatively why not ask some celebrities to wear a crappy t-shirt?
That'll learn 'em!

PS Human Rights Campaign - America's largest/wealthiest gay organisation - has come up with the inspired "campaign" to get famous Americans to support LGBT Russians by wearing a t-shirt.
HRC have been given $3 million to spread the gay word across the world.
Scott Long writes on HRC and the Vulture Fund: Making Third World poverty pay for LGBT rights.

Immigration: Us V Them

While they wait, some for up to 16 years, asylum seekers languish in housing condemned by the committee as, in some cases, "appalling". Not just a shambles, degrading also. The committee was rightly outraged by testimony from gay and lesbian asylum seekers, some of whom were required to go to extraordinary lengths to establish sexuality. Having exhausted all reasonable ways of making a case, a few resorted to handing over photographic and video evidence of "highly personal sexual activity". Is this a system we can be proud of? The anti-war slogan comes to mind: not in my name...

Hugh Muir in The Guardian, after the Tories announced they were "getting tough" on immigration and asylum, yet again.

Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to 'detect' gay people and stop them from entering the country

Daily Mail, October 7th.

The Mail story was widely reported as above (their own has since been updated).

It is a gross distortion.

As Scott Long has reported, no-one in Kuwait - or Qatar - has proposed some new "gay test" for tourists.

Rather; "The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

The "gay test" fiction was reported in the international LGBT media and elsewhere.

Please let Fagburn know of any you see who have published a correction or an update on the story, ie one that is actually accurate.

At the time of typing, despite polite requests from many individuals, I know of none.

[Edit: Towleroad gave the earliest and most transparent correction I saw. More usually, where the real story was printed, they were mendacious, and the fact that they had published a garbled version before disappeared down an Orwellian Memory Hole].

Thanks to @undersided

Qatar: What's (Really) Going On (In Kuwait)?

I first noticed it yesterday on Pink News, the UK’s G-and-sometimes-LBT news website: a new horror from the Persian Gulf. “It was revealed that Gulf Cooperative Countries introduced new rules to ‘detect’ and ban gay people from entering the country.” 

It doesn’t take long for any story about Arabs and sex to go viral. In this case, given that Qatar is hosting the 2022 World Cup, the headlines hitched a ride with anxieties over the Sochi Olympics, and turned into warnings about threats to sports. 

Peter Tatchell leapt in headfirst, proclaiming that “FIFA now has no option but to cancel the world cup,” because “gay players and spectators will be banned from attending.” The story was soon in the Daily Mail: “Gulf states to introduce medical testing on travellers to ‘detect’ gay people.” Russia Today picked it up (probably hoping that they could lure Jamie Kirchick to move his strip show to Al Jazeera). Of course it spread all over Twitter...

Scott Long, Kuwait’s “medical screening for gays”: Truth, fiction, and why it’s not a “gay” issue.

Things are once again a bit more complicated and very different from the usual screaming from certain queer quarters.
Forgive my clumsy summary, but in fine; there is no new law, someone from the Kuwait health department mentioned in an interview the already existing medical screenings of new foreign workers, and proposed these could also check for "the third sex" - this is about ongoing moral panics about migrant labour, and transphobia (it is unclear what, if anything, he proposes doing about "tests" for homosexuality, if that were possible).
This story's distortion and over-excitable transmission, as ever, says much about our own Islamophobia and Orientalism.

"So let’s be clear: this is a matter of employment screening – of people coming into the Gulf to live and work, people who already have to undergo medical testing on arrival. It’s not a screening for every arrival at the airport. It does not mean, as Tatchell claimed, “that gay players and spectators will be banned from attending the football world cup.” Whatever Dr. Mindkar has in mind, the sacred anuses of fans and footballers will be exempt, unless they plan to settle down and get jobs as gardeners or drivers in the Gulf after the games are through..."

The idea that the bottom inspectors will be examining every man entering the Gulf states is a ludicrous fiction.

Update: Scott Long updates this story...

"The Kuwait Ministry of Health has proposed tightening genetic tests for immigrant workers in order to prevent transgender migrants from entering the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] job market."

The Guardian: Another Good Week For Gay Hysteria

WARNING: I WOULDN'T BOTHER READING THIS, IF I WERE YOU. IT'S FAGBURN BEING BORING ABOUT A RATHER BORING ARTICLE! BUT THAT'S KINDA THE POINT... *

Today the Guardian returns to the Russia/Pasta anti-gay Axis of Evil.
Thank you for fearlessly bringing these two subjects to our attention while so many others have been so silent.
In an online article Nancy Goldstein declares; It's Another Bad Week To Be Gay.
Why's that then, Nancy?
"There's been an unusually high volume of international bigotry and bad news to put up with this week."
Unusually high?
Cripes!
What's happened?
You probably haven't heard anything about this, but apparently the boss of some big Italian pasta company said he wants their TV ads to only feature straight families.
Fascist!
It gets worse.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has said they are "convinced that Russia will respect the Olympic charter, which prohibits discrimination of any kind".
Quislings!
And these demonstrate "an unusually high volume of international bigotry"??? [1]
Where on earth have you been?
Fagburn's surprised Nancy Goldstein didn't go for the hysterics' hat-trick and bring in the "offensive" (!) Inflatable Gay Best Friend, but I guess her story was filed too early to cover that great "outrage."
Frankly, I can think of many far worse weeks for us, but do go on...

Nancy: When not grinning she weeps for the world

She begins with that evil spaghetti monster, Guido Barilla, who said something about The Gays that both she and I disagree with.
How fucking dare he not agree with us?!
There has now been - inevitably - a call for a boycott of Barilla pasta, by people so infected with bourgeois consumerism they confuse (not) shopping with political action.
Welcome to the brave new world of gay "passive-activism"; if it makes you feel good, don't do it.
For the more dedicated LGBT inactivist there's an equally inevitable AllOut petition to get Barilla make an advert featuring a gay family." [2]
As ever, the promise of freedom is just a click away.
Should we now not buy anything that doesn't have a token fag in a TV ad?
How much do you feel your life has been diminished - and the forward march of gay liberation halted - by not seeing a gay dude in a stupid TV commercial today?
On a scale of one to fuck-all?
Do our collective queer dreams now aspire to nothing greater than being sold stuff by someone who looks a bit like us?
What a fortunate, wonderful life you must have had if you think this is what oppression looks like.
It's often stressed that Mr Barilla also said he doesn't agree with gay adoption - I wish he did, I wish everyone did, but they don't. [3]
Some people are bigots, get over it!
Again, should we boycott anything and everything made by a company where the CEO has daft outdated reactionary views we don't like?
I can't imagine finding much political common ground with many multi-millionaire company directors.
And how deluded and naive would someone have to be to get angry when they realise corporations aren't moral agents?
Or that their Capo di tutti capi isn't a saint?

Bit of a scoop here - Russia now hangs gay men

As there has been such an absolute avalanche of anti-gay hate this week, Goldstein swiftly moves onto the IOC statement.
Apparently; "Surpassing even Barilla's unique blend of homophobia and cynicism".
Which, seeing as the former was a relatively mild bad thing to say about The Gays, wouldn't be difficult.
She quotes the Olympic Charter, "Any form of discrimination with regard to a country or a person on grounds of race, religion, politics, gender or otherwise is incompatible with belonging to the Olympic movement".
Adding; "It also compels the IOC to "fight against" and "take action against" what the charter calls "discrimination of any kind" [4].
The IOC seem only to care about discrimination at the actual Olympic games or in sport [5], but could Goldstein give me one example of a host country - future or past - of the Olympic Games or Winter Olympics without "discrimination of any kind" or with a perfect record on human rights?
London 2012 - we didn't have equal marriage, for one boring thing.
Beijing 2008... err, need I go on?
Goldstein also seems blissfully unaware that the Olympic Charter also states;“No kind of demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda is permitted in any Olympic sites, venues or other areas.”( Section 50:3).
The new Russian law outlawing "gay propaganda" is thus rendered irrelevant by this.
Technically, you can't protest about anything anyway - even if it's something as banal as painting your toenails in the colours of the rainbow.
Remember Mexico 68?
She blames Sochi's commercial sponsors; Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Visa, Procter & Gamble...
Presumably if we ask them, or don't buy their junk, these nice big businesses will save us.
We're here, we're queer, and we're not going shopping for your useless crap unless you sponsor Alburquerque Pride! [6]

Why is The Guardian publishing this shit?

Goldstein knows there are other ways to protest, of course.
Strangely, her sole example is a protest at the Metropolitan Opera in New York this week.
The Met's great crime?

The bastards didn't dedicate a performance of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin to Russian LGBTs.
Don't they care???
Inside, an American man shouted at two Russian performers; "Your silence is killing Russian gays!"
What, literally?
This was cruelly ironic, as many US/UK campaigners never listen to what Russian LGBT campaigners say anyway.
eg All those Americans screaming for boycotts, when almost all Russian campaigners say they're pointless and counterproductive.
They are all but invisible, inaudible to the likes of Queer Nation NY and Goldstein. [7]
Because we in the west know what's best for the likes of them.
Orientalism redux!

Oh look! Some actual LGBT Russians campaigning!

There were two protests in Russia last week - far more important, meaningful, brave and inspiring than shouting in front of some wealthy Americans.

How much coverage did you see in the news?
There was some about a protest by Nikolai Alexseyev - partly because he always press releases the international media - photos of self attached (remind you of anyone?).

The protest in Moscow against homophobia in schools was completely ignored.
But then their aims were communicating with their fellow Russians, making connections with other struggles, and challenging the authorities - not the real heavy-lifting of getting their name and picture in the New York Times.
Goldstein does conclude by mourning the death of the Russian gay campaigner, Aleksei Davydov. [8]
I'm ashamed to say the name hadn't registered with me, probably because he was an unperson in the western media when he was alive.
Yet he is now brought back to life after death by those who have all of a sudden realised Russia does bad things to the gays.
The readers' comments after this article are - as ever - as depressing as fudge.
Backwards bastards! Boycott! Ban! Boo hoo! Squish squish! *sad face* etc.
But if someone has read and believed all the stories about Russia recently, you can't really blame them for unthinking they're building Belsen on the Volga.
Some people dared to ask why either of these two minor stories are thought so very important and so terrible in the general scheme of global gay misery that they warrant such space.
The endless, voluminous, shoddy coverage about gay life in Russia is sinister, and suggestive of another agenda.
The manufactured feigned outrage over Guido Barilla's unremarkable remarks and the silly, unfunny joke that is the Inflatable Gay Best Friend is ludicrous and embarrassing.
Both can only be seen by any rational person as little, localised outbreaks of mass hysteria.
Beware the pink pearl-clutchers and pitchfork-wavers.
Both are frightening phenomena the media should be exposing, not colluding in.
¡Ya basta!

THANKS IF YOU MADE IT TO THE END OF THIS. I DID WARN YOU IT WAS GOING TO BE BORING. BUT THE POINT IS THAT THE ARTICLE REFERRED TO IS POINTLESS. BUT THEY'LL PUBLISH ANYTHING IF IT CONFORMS TO AND FURTHER FEEDS THE CURRENT CLIMATE OF GAY HYSTERIA. FAGBURN HAS FOUND THIS WEEK SO "BAD" HE WILL NOW MAKE A GAY BEST FRIEND DOLL OUT OF BARILLA PASTA AND DEFECT TO RUSSIA. до свидания! ARRIVEDERCI! GOODBYE!

* I politely pointed some of these errors and inconsistencies on The Guardian messageboard - bizarrely a moderator removed them.
Whilst I'd like to say I had really kicked it to The Man, I fear this is what happens when bored interns moderate your forums.
See also 'G*y' on Tesco Direct...

Gay Star News: Tilda SWINDON! Who he?

1. Of course, sexing up a story is standard practice in the mass media. Try pitching an article saying things haven't changed much recently, and nothing really bad has actually happened. Best to make people believe the shock-horror hype.
2. I've been told you're more likely to see the ghost of Mussolini's mistress selling stuff in an Italian ad, than a gay man anyway.
3. She quotes without question professional hysteric, Michael Aravosis of the ever-so patriotic AMERICAblog, source of a translation of the interview, and also, curiously, of endless stories about LGBT Russia. Mike's faith in capital is so fanatical he thinks boycotts are the answer to all #teamgay's problems.
4. I can't find this in the - admittedly very long - charter. Nancy, can you let me know where it is? Ta.
5. South Africa was banned from the Olympics in 1964, not because of the apartheid system, but specifically because they refused to "renounce racial discrimination in sport and opposed the ban in its own country on competition between white and black athletes."
6. See this recent Slate feature by J Bryan Lowder on the gay movement's obsession with consumer boycotts - and corporate endorsements, Barilla Chairman Doesn't Like Gay People: So What?
7. Queer Nation NY is a new group who, tellingly, are making lots of noise/publicity about homophobia in Russia, but not about homophobia in New York.
8. Scott Long has written an obituary of Aleksei Davydov, who he knew, and worked with.
Tris Reid Smith has written movingly for Gay Star News about Davydov - "inspirational" "hero" etc.
Makes you wonder why he never mentioned him when he was alive? 
See also their header about this and Tilda Swindon above.

Russia: The Empire Strikes Back!

L: Bad but unboring Russian activist holds easily comprehensible sign, Moscow, September 25; R: Good but boring Russian activists hold signs nobody cares about, Moscow, September 24. Police equally unimpressed.

John Aravosis published an article about Nikolai Alekseev’s latest Moscow protest on his blog today. It’s interesting how he excuses doing this. He objects to other media covering Alekseev (“I’ve noticed some top gay ‘news’ sites continuing to go to the anti-Semite Alexeyev for comment”) but not to himself covering Alekseev. He squares the circle by pretending that Alekseev wasn’t behind the demonstration (“it’s unfortunate that the protesters included in their group known anti-Semite, Nikolai Alexeyev“) when of course Alekseev didn’t simply happen along for the ride, he organized the whole thing. It’s all a bit like: I didn’t want to show you Britney Spears’ privates on my blog, people, it’s just that they walked right onto my computer screen.

The truth is, it’s much more sexy and clickworthy, from an American perspective, to run photos of Alekseev holding an catchy English-language sign (no Google Translate needed!) and getting chased by police, than photos of other Russians holding up Russian slogans about substantive things like the fate of Russia that only Russians care about. It would be nice if Aravosis would admit this — and admit there’s a symbiotic relation between the Alekseev lust for controversy and the Aravosis lust for blog hits. It would spare us all the denials...

Bull-fighter Scott Long - the writer and campaigner who's worked together with LGBT Russians for Human Rights Watch - writes perceptively, yet again, on his excellent blog, A Paper Bird, on the strange priorities of the US/UK media in the debate about LGBT Russians, and the hypocrisies of the likes of AmericaBlogGay's Michael Aravosis - brave champion of the far-right, racist and Zionist, Michael Lucas.
In a companion piece yesterday, In Russia They Resist Too, Long asks why a one-man shouty interruption at an opera house in New York "in solidarity with LGBT Russians" got so much media coverage here, while a protest in Moscow against homophobia in schools got next-to zero.

"There was a demonstration in Moscow too yesterday – even if nobody in New York paid much attention. You can demonstrate in Moscow: the LGBT and democracy movements in Russia may be in retreat but are not silent or submissive. This is important to understand, since the tendency now is to paint them as pure victims who can’t say anything for themselves."

Note also how on the day of the #Russia4Love protests earlier this month, an action outside the Russian Embassy in London, and ones in other cities around the world, got massive coverage - while the infinitely more meaningful and important protests in 14 Russian cities by your actual LGBT Russians was ignored.

Scott Long reprints this photo from the NYC Met protest and comments...

"We all know Pastor Niemoller’s moving message. Yet here it isn’t true. They didn’t come for the gays first. Putin came for the Chechens first (actually, Yeltsin did before him); for the journalists; for the odd oligarch and whistleblower; for the punk rock feminists and the environmentalists; for the protest marchers; and then, somewhere down the list, he came for the gays. Where were we when the truth-seekers were slaughtered, when Pussy Riot went to prison, or when Grozny burned? Would things be different now, if some of that emotion had been transmuted into actions back when the right-wing thugs were mainly killing black people; or when the “foreign agents” law was first bruited about; or when cops were beating up Muscovites in the street after a faked election?"

All too often we have seen acts of "It's all about ME!" solipsism masquerading as acts of solidarity.

To complete a stunning, damning quintent* of recent articles, Long writes here about the sudden volte face over fallen idol Nikolai Alekseev, by those who knew of his dodgy political leanings and anti-semitic outbursts, but were silent about them until he began criticising the tactics of US/UK campaigners...

"[who] had all the evidence years ago of the man’s instability and hatred. It’s important to tell the truth. It’s important, because the Alekseev story reveals a lot about the potential pathologies of gay activism: the cult of celebrity, the belief in saviors rather than social movements, the way Westerners project their desires and fantasies onto other countries. Why did Doug [Ireland] and others keep promoting Alekseev, and actively denigrating other Russian activists? They damaged the whole Russian LGBT movement in the process. They shouldn’t get off the hook. And we need to learn lessons from how they went so wrong..."

Quite.

And finally.. Fagburn read today about a fundraising and awareness event, To Russia LGBT With Love, held in London next month - where apparently all money raised is going to the Peter Tatchell Foundation - ie to Peter, who pays himself £29,000 a year from kind donations - and oddly not to LGBT Russian groups, who surely need it more.

If true it would make the whole event look ridiculous and hypocritical, and another example of "The West knows best" gay cultural imperialism we witness above.

I've asked the organisers to confirm this, and will let you know when they reply...

A very nice man from Dalston Superstore told me they haven't decided which charities yet, and they're now working on organising video speakers from Russia.

* "Queer Quislings": Getting Russia Wrong and Top Guns: Last Words On Johnny Weir.

Russia: Another Country

Today gay America is mightily pissed over this video.
RUSSIA BOO HISS!!! etc etc.
Can you believe it!?
Nobody knows who made it - or if it was actually made by Russians, anyone could have thrown this old cobblers together on a laptop in half-an-hour. 
Although only an idiot would see one crappy little homemade video as being representative of an entire nation, it is offered up as further evidence that Russia today is exactly like Nazi Germany/Apartheid South Africa (delete as hysterical) - comparisons that are as morally obscene as they are ludicrous - and uniquely evil in how it treats gay people.
But its "arguments" - that homosexuals are carriers of disease, die early, want to rape your kids (that's why they want to adopt them), and are taking over the nation etc etc - are exactly the same sort of nonsense that American rightwing and/or Christians regularly come up with (eg the charming booklet below).
Indeed, many of its "facts" are lifted straight from this American Christian tract.
And it acknowledges a laughable "study" by anti-gay Catholic loonbag, Mark Regnerus, who claimed one in three kids adopted by gay men were sexually abused - again an American.
Perhaps then the video tells us as much about the sickness in the American body politic?
Just as how the new "gay propaganda" law so closely echoing Britain's Section 28 says much about our own moral low ground.
Can't happen here...

The video was "newly discovered" - and posted on YouTube (purely coincidentally!) - by the rightwing self-styled "liberal" gay blogger, John Aravosis, who runs AMERICAblog. - their touching patriotic slogan: 'A Great Nation Deserves Equality'.
Aravosis - "I got involved in gay politics 20 years ago in order to win the right to serve in the military, have a job, and get married..." - is the source for many of the scare stories about Russia's anti-gay "pogrom", along with Radio Liberty, Radio Free Europe, and Voice Of America - all are rightwing propaganda media funded by the American state.
They are usually obediently repeated, unquestioned, unchecked - for in the current climate anyone can get away with writing any old bollocks about Russia.
The credulity of so many people to these media reports is thoroughly depressing, but sadly - as a cursory look through this blog shows - this is endemic to our culture.
I wouldn't be surprised to read in the gay media soon that; 'PUTIN EATS GAY BABIES!', with the usual caveats; "allegedley", "reportedly" etc.
Aravosis is so angry about what's happening right now he's started a subsite, Gay Russia.- a veritable mine of disinformation.
(The only other hot topic he thinks deserves its own subsite is "Putin's puppet" Syria).
Note how the two other loudest voices shouting about the plight of LGBT Russians are the far-right Zionist porn mogul, Michael Lucas, and the equally politically dodgy HomoCon/NeoCon, Jamie Kirchick, who famously hijacked a live TV debate about Chelsea Manning to rant about Russia while wearing rainbow "suspenders".
(Dan Savage who instigated the Boycott Sochi campaign - against a vodka that's not actually Russian - is seen as a "progressive" - but his last major foray into international politics was the "lefty" and liberal-bashing, 'Say YES To War On Iraq').
Seems the gay right are still living out their Cold War wet dreams.

Anti-gay propaganda from America the beautiful

The latter act - or rather self-publicity stunt - by James Kirchick is surely the neo-imperial mindset defined - where someone literally ignores the great crimes being committed by their own country, and fumes about those of its power rivals.
As is the tendency by westerners to think they know best about what to do, while ignoring what LGBT Russians are saying.
(Note also how often neo-colonialist Orientalist rhetoric appears that Russians are "backward", "uncivilised" etc - ah, the thankless western gay white man's burden). 
Witness what happens whenever someone on a messageboard points out LGBT Russian groups have asked people NOT to boycott.
Simply stating this obvious and important fact can get you compared to a holocaust denier.
An oft repeated post is some variation on "This is exactly how Hitler started!" - as preposterous and offensive as saying any discriminatory legislation is the first step on the road to Auschwitz, and as silly as saying drinking Earl Grey tea will inevitably lead to heroin addiction.
[Edit: It's just as common to be accused of supporting Putin or being a homophobe, if you challenge or correct an untruth here].
The debate has become so debased - and so many commentators are so indoctrinated, so oblivious to facts - it often seems pointless to enter into any discussion.

Yesterday, John McCain, the Republican party presidential candidate, slammed the Russian bogeyman in a widely-circulated op-ed.
He - but of course - highlighted how; "They write laws to codify bigotry against people whose sexual orientation they condemn."
This is somewhat odd, to say the least, as a senator McCain has always opposed any gay equality initiatives.
Ever get the feeling you're being used?
Perhaps it was a joke, and he was being ironic?
For he also wrote; "[Putin] is not enhancing Russia's global reputation. He is destroying it. He has made her a friend to tyrants and an enemy to the oppressed, and untrusted by nations that seek to build a safer, more peaceful and prosperous world."
Could any rational, intelligent, informed person hear an American politician saying any of that without risking dieing laughing?

Manufacturing Discontent

Sophisticated political satire.

It is heartening and moving that so many people in the west are angry about the oppression of gay people in Russia, and are expressing solidarity.
Though it often seems like an outbreak of whipped-up mass hysteria, akin to 1984's Hate Week, usually expressed in "passive activism"; actions that are pointless (clicktivism), and/or counterproductive (boycotts).
Or like a little outburst of over-emotional collective insanity much as that we witnessed when Princess Diana died.
All too often this does not look like some queer political re-awakening, but further proof of the depoliticisation of our culture.
But people can not be blamed for reaching for their pink pitchforks and torches when they've been subject to the sort of avalanche of media misinformation we normally only witness in wartime.
It is foolish and politically blind not to question why this has now become such an issue - warranting endless, blanket coverage, to the virtual exclusion of other countries' often far worse gay rights abuses - at a time when tensions between the US and Russia are at their most heightened since the Cold War.  
And it is obvious that the increasingly hysterical, hyperbolic and hypocritical "debate" has been hijacked, and is being used - meaning our struggle for gay rights is being used - as rightwing propaganda, by demonising a declared enemy in service to American hegemony.
USA! USA! USA!