Spectator: In Denial

Although the Western gay press has understandable historical qualms about Christianity it also has a history of dismissing any and all concerns about Islam. So in the wake of Orlando the gay press was filled not with pieces warning gay people about Islamic gay-hate, but pieces going out of their way to warn people against linking the massacre to Islam or Muslims. In particular there was a flurry of articles warning gay people not to become ‘haters’. Which is only the gay version of a wider Western sickness. You got attacked? Be careful you don’t become a bigot now.

At the weekend I picked up a copy of the UK gay magazine Attitude – a sort of post-Orlando memorial edition – which showed nothing had changed. The aim of the edition was not just to avoid treading on any sore Islamic toes, but to deliberately avoid the subject of Islam. Well these people, as Martin Amis once said in a related context, are disappearing up the fundament of the people who want to kill them. They should enjoy it while it lasts. The fact that a majority of British Muslims want being gay in Britain to be made illegal strikes me as a salient and troubling fact even if I can’t seem to get anyone else interested in the point...

The Spectator.

أوه اللعنة قبالة لك مهبل الجناح اليميني.

Spectator: Sex Matters

Oh dear.

Dusty: Irony

Reviewing a new book about the life of Springfield, which speculates about the singer’s sexual orientation, Roger Lewis wrote in a Spectator review published earlier this month: “Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin.

“Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go bobbing for apples.”

‘Dusty: An Intimate Portrait’ has been written by author Karen Bartlett. It speculates about the musical icon’s much talked about relationships with women.

Quoting extracts of Bartlett from the book, Lewis continued: “It is thus a tragedy that Dusty Springfield’s whole existence was blighted by her orientation, which explains ‘the silence and secrecy she extended over much of her life, and her self-loathing’.”

Lewis wrote: “One glance at her chin should have revealed all – but the Sixties was not a fraction as liberated and swinging as people now assume.”

At the end of his review, Lewis concluded: “But did Dusty really have an affair in Mustique with Princess Margaret? If I am sceptical it is only because Hanoverians have small chins.”

Pink News.

Roger Lewis is one of Britain's funniest humourists - but, as ever, we see wit and irony are completely wasted on the thick and stupid.

Here are some other book reviews he wrote for The Spectator - if you can't see he's taking the piss you're brain dead.

PS This is a complete non-story planted by Pink News' top gay Tory friend, Iain Dale, who published the book.

Tory Boyz: History, Boys

The play’s historical sections are hampered by the character of the ambitious young Heath. He proves intractable on stage. An intelligent, laconic, elusive and entirely humourless mummy’s boy, Heath never reveals himself. Nor does the play threaten his defences or present him with choices that would force him to open up. My guess is that Graham has been bewitched by late-vintage Heath, the Incredible Sulk, who glowered like a toad on the green benches for three decades.

But Heath in his heyday was refreshing and approachable. For starters, he was called Ted, like some bloke down the pub. His signature attribute was his bonhomie. Everyone in the country could impersonate him. You just had to roar with laughter and let your shoulders trampoline up and down. Compared with the shifty and neurotic Wilson, he was attractive and colourful (yachtsman, maestro), and he gave the impression of being fun to be around. But in this play Heath shows no trace of psychological complexity. He’s like Billy Bunter impersonating a cagey swat. And the script reaches puzzling conclusions about the evolution of the Tory party. If anything, it seems that life was easier for gay Tories in the past. When the closet was the only place to be, that’s where the shrewd politician stayed. And Heath had plenty of time to rehearse credible answers to tricky questions. As I recall there wasn’t much talk of his homosexuality in the 1970s. All the gossip centred on another notorious bachelor whom everyone ‘knew’ was gay: Prince Charles.

The Spectator, the house journal of you-know-who, reviews James Graham's updated Tory Boyz at the Ambassadors Theatre, London.

That "z" is annoying, isn't it?
Almost as annoying as those three grinning poshos in that photo, though maybe that's the point?

"You blue-rinsed bitch!"

Blurb! In the wake of the deep Conservative divide exposed by the recent vote on gay marriage, National Youth Theatre brings its hit production back to the West End after a sold out run at Soho Theatre in 2008. Tory Boyz is a bold and astute political comedy that takes us behind the scenes of the corridors of power at Westminster where saving face and avoiding scandal is the order of the day.

PS The Torygraph wet their Calvins and gave it five stars!

Marriage: The Dog Lovers' Party

Looking forward, as one always must, I wonder if the law will eventually be changed to allow one to marry one’s dog. Until now, this would have been considered disgusting, since marriage has been a law revolving around sexual behaviour, and sexual acts with animals are still, I believe, illegal. But, as this column has pointed out, the unintended consequence of the same-sex marriage legislation has been to take sex out of marriage law. Civil servants, unable to define same-sex consummation, omitted it. So marriage, from now on, can mean no more than the legally registered decision of two people to live together while not being married to anyone else. The justification for this is ‘equality’, buttressed by the idea that love must carry all before it.

People often love their dogs very much and want to spend their life with them. So why should they not, chastely, marry them? It will be objected that animals are not people and are therefore incapable of informed consent, but this is an example of what the animal-rights gurus call speciesism. Besides, anyone who lives with dogs knows that most of them do not suffer from commitment-phobia or incline to desertion, substance-abuse or reckless spending. They make excellent life-partners. No doubt some old bigots will claim that marriage is a uniquely human institution, but it won’t take long to find enlightened vicars who believe that human and canine dignity is in a very real sense enhanced by recognising inter-species unions. Soon celebrities, tired of human relationships, will hold dinky solemnisations with their chihuahuas, and eager Conservative modernisers will tweet their approval. Anyone who suggests that the whole thing is barking mad will be in breach of Public Equality Duty and denied a career in the public services.

Charles Moore, former editor of the Daily Telegraph, authorised Thatcher biographer, and anti-gay marriage obsessive, writing in his Spectator column.
A new career as a Swiftian political satirist surely awaits the thinking-man's Richard Littlejohn.

• The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill returns to the House of Lords on Monday 8th July for its doubtless fun-packed Report Stage.
Obviously, any homophobic Lords will be swayed by this hilariously shit new Instagram "campaign" by Gay Star News.

PS ^^^ Election poster for Auberon Waugh standing for the Dog Lovers' Party in the 1979 general election to make a satirical point about former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe - albeit one that was actually funny.
Waugh, a Tory anarchist, was once sacked by The Spectator for making a joke, co/incidentally.
Happens to the best of us.