Homonecrovictimoly: New Word

Noun: The silly and implausible belief that gay men are systematically arrested or even executed just for being gay in any country in the world.

EG Bogus 'human rights' groups trying to get funding, and *boo hoo squish squish sadface* journalists..

PS Does anyone really believe you'll get stoned to death for bumming in Brunei?

Pink News: The Most Tenuous Excuse For A 'Gay News Story' Of All Time II

Pink News. giving Gay Star News a run for their money.

Sorry, in what possible way is this of interest or relevance to your readership?

What is point?

The author of this, Joseph Patrick McCormick, took over from Scott Roberts as editor of Pink News on Monday...

PS PN are also milking this incredibly important Brunei story this week. Zzzzz...

Daily Mail: Come On Kate, Show Us You Care!

The Duchess of Cambridge has broken a worldwide celebrity protest after secretly attending a wedding at a hotel owned by the controversial Sultan of Brunei.

The 32-year-old slipped in and out the underground car park of the Dorchester Hotel inside a blacked-out people carrier - in the hope her presence would not be noticed.

The Mayfair hotel has been the focus of a worldwide boycott backed by the likes of Stephen Fry, Anna Wintour and Sir Richard Branson, all of whom have voiced their opposition to harsh new Islamic laws in Brunei that have increased the punishment for homosexuality to death by stoning...

Daily Mail.

Cause our beloved Royal Family are normally such great moral agents - and they never support dodgy regimes and tyrants, yah?

Remember all their snubs to the 41 Commonwealth countries where homosexuality is still illegal?

No?

This must have caused some brains to explode at yesterday's editorial meeting at Mail HQ.

'Why has gorgeous Kate not joined the vacuous celebrity boycott of this nasty foreign-type who we don't like either?'

'You'd think this silly little rich girl would be a shoo-in for this upper class revolt.'

Only in a highly depoliticised (gay) culture could something like this be thought to be of any consequence.

The Sultan meets the  in-laws. Your turn next, Kate!
UK arms exports to Brunei.

Brunei: Upper Class Revolt

Anna Wintour, the editor of US Vogue, has announced she cannot "in good conscience" stay at Le Meurice Hotel during Paris Fashion Week and will sleep elsewhere; exactly where is unreported, but I am placing a bet on Le Bourget Airport Hotel. Her announcement does not come in a misfiled TripAdvisor review, in which she dismisses Le Meurice's beds as "too golden", or the hotel as "criminal avarice" at €5,800 a night for something called a "prestige suite". Instead we have a principled stance, perhaps the first US Vogue has mounted, against the Dorchester hotel group.

This group runs many lovely hotels and is owned by the Sultan of Brunei, who wants to establish sharia law in his kingdom and stone gay people to death. This does not sit well in some circles, and because fashion is full of followers, the fashionable – including Gucci and Richard Branson – are following Wintour to Le Bourget. When Branson screams immorality, one has to worry. How far will they all get on this shared journey? A good conscience can take one to strange places. Perhaps they will pop up on a Disney cruise with Daffy Duck.

The boycott (they are calling it a boycott) takes place when two just as lovely Paris hotels – Hôtel de Crillon and the Ritz – are shut for modification of their golden beds, etcetera, so the damp pillows of Le Bourget Airport Hotel therefore loom for fashionable heads. This is something of an earthquake. Fashion, it seems, has finally embraced progressive politics in the only way it can conceive of. Do not judge: they are busy. (Chanel, alone, presents six collections a year, including cruise wear.) Will it change the sultan's mind, or will this have the same impact as not riding your bicycle past your teenage lover's house any more?

The Guardian.

Go stay at the Ritz, you clearly have no problem with that being owned by a beheading billionaire Saudi prince.

Oh, les bourgeois!

Fuck them and their fatuous fashionable cherry-picked posturing.

PS Some pesky facts about Brunei and western hypocrisy.

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.

Stephen Fry: Take That Brunei!

Pink News.

That'll teach 'em.

Is there an e-petition, yet?

As Pink News and others reported on Tuesday this hasn't been introduced, that's been delayed.
And there isn't some new 'Stone the gays law', they're revising the entire penal code to match daft Sharia law nonsense, and so are introducing the death penalty for a tranche of acts; including blasphemy, extra-marital relations and adultery.
It's gruesome, but I seriously doubt anyone will be executed for any of these.
Brunei has the death penalty for various crimes, but it comes under the category Amnesty call 'Abolitionist in practice'
ie They haven't actually executed anyone for anything since 1957.
I'm no expert on the country, but it's unlikely this will change.
Several countries have a death penalty for gay sex - we would know if they were regularly enforced, or if some 'gay genocide' was going on anywhere.
When men are executed all evidence available to reliable human rights researchers invariably suggests it was for male rape - or, as in the most famous case, of two Iranian youths who were charged with raping a younger boy.
Of course, anti-gay laws have an impact beyond their actual enforcement, so it's good to protest, but let's not be gayist hysterics over this.