Gaze: What Goes On

If I say the words "gay culture"', what do you think of? Pride parades with muscle boys in leather hot pants? Kylie Minogue? Antiquated drag queens miming to Shirley Bassey? 
A recent piece in The Huffington Post described Grindr as an example of "gay culture". For those unfamiliar with modern gay dating rituals, Grindr is an app which enables men to track the locations of potential sexual partners. First launched in 2009, it now claims to have four million users worldwide...
Is this what passes for gay culture these days? An app which offers the quickest, easiest way to arrange sexual hook-ups? If Grindr really is an example of gay culture then is dogging an example of "straight culture"? And if not, why not?
Britain's lesbian and gay community has made massive strides in recent years. We have an equal age of consent, employment rights and a whole raft of legal protections we didn't have a decade ago. Soon the UK will even follow in the footsteps of countries like Spain and South Africa and grant same sex couples the right to marry.
So where does that leave gay culture? For many people, gay culture begins and ends with the gay scene. There are gay magazines devoted to it, and gay people who devote their lives to it. And compared to many countries, we have a gay scene we can be proud of. But all is not well in this rosy pink world. The impact of drugs like GHB has led to numerous deaths on the London gay scene. Next month, the Royal Vauxhall Tavern in the capital is hosting a panel discussion to address the problem. The fact that it's presented by someone called Sleazy Michael gives some idea of the target audience...

Paul Burston on Guardian online launching his new online magazine, Gaze.
Haven't see it yet, but hope it's not just more of the usual "anti-gay" sniffy gaybore queens expressing their contempt for ordinary gay men.
Does sound like it from this, though.
The scene!
Ugh!
Sex!
Ugh!
Drugs!
Ugh!
Gay men!
UGH!!!
How terribly, terribly common and vulgar.
Hurrah for high culture and cultural elitism and snobbery!
At last... a magazine where silenced and side-lined homophobic, trans-hating journalists like Julie Bindel and Julie Burchill are given a voice!
They've also been boasting in pre-publicity Andrew Pierce, the Daily Mail's house-trained gay Uncle Tom is onboard.
FFS!
What are any of these people beyond reactionary controversialist fame-chasing over-inflated egos?
Paul Burston - an ego so big it could cancel out the Sun - says; "We wanted to tackle issues one doesn't generally read about in the lesbian and gay press. For too long, gay people were defined by the expectations of heterosexuals – and we ended up in a ghetto, with a narrow view of the world beyond."
Erm, do you want a list of articles in the gay press saying this?
It'd be pretty long - and rather boring - and they date back to the dawn of the gay press.
And in-no-way is that cover above childishly provocative and suggestive that this mag might be Islamophobic.
(Edit: Admittedly the article could be another "On being gay and Muslim" one - as much of a gay media cliche as all those "the last taboo" ones about - shock - gay rappers).
Anyway, hurrah for bourgeois hegemony masquerading as dissent!!!

"What’s culture? Culture is just a general term for everything that goes on" - Noam Chomsky.

"Culture is ordinary" - Raymond Williams.

"Gay culture's not an oxymoron, you moron. Cause culture's just what people do" - Richard Smith.

PS "Sleazy Michael" - Michael Peacock - bravely fought and won a landmark libertarian case on gay porn last year, so why's he being slagged off?
And the number of deaths related to GHB is tiny - so why bang on about them, unless you want to fuel Daily Mail-style drugs hysteria?

Obscenity: Put Your Hands Together...

"I welcome the news that a jury have returned not guity verdicts in a landmark obscenity trial before Southwark crown court on Friday. However, despite the jury's unanimous decision, the legislation under which the trial was brought is still effective law.

"The defendant, Michael Peacock, was charged with distributing DVDs featuring male fisting, urination (watersports), and BDSM. Peacock ran a gay escort site called Sleazy Michael and advertised pornographic  DVDs for sale on the website Craigslist. He was charged under the Obscene Publication Act 1959 (OPA) with six counts of publishing obscene articles likely to "deprave and corrupt".

"While some of the sexual acts depicted in the DVDs are legal to perform, such as fisting and urination, the representation of them is potentially criminalised under the OPA. The Act features the contentious and ambiguous deprave and corrupt test, whereby an article (for example a DVD) is obscene if it tends to and corrupt the reader, viewer or listener.

"As the recorder, James Dingemans QC, emphasised in his summing up, it was a matter for the jury to decide whether the acts depicted were obscene if they "deprave and corrupt" the viewer. He also emphasised that: "in a civilised society lines must be drawn".

"However, the OPA has become an anachronism in the internet age. While previous cases speak in terms of pornography being covertly accessed by men in "rugby clubs" and at stag parties; now it is readily available to people of all genders, orientations and social classes. Hence this jury's verdict - in the first contested obscenity trial in the digital age - which seems to suggest "normal" members of the public accept that consensual adult pornography is an unremarkable fact."

Myles Jackman via Obscenity Lawyer.