Daily Mail: Our Kinda Gays

They're soldiers and they're married!

Is it any wonder the Mail loves them?

PS Obviously the gay media are spunking in their overpriced underpants over this heteronormative hokum, too. 

Give me conformity or give me death!

Veterans Day: Peak Gay Media

Out.

Give me conformity or give me death! 

And in other patriotic gay news...

Advocate.

GAY USA! GAY USA!! GAY USA!!!

Gay Ads: Gay Dads R Us

Campbell's has released an ad for their yummy condensed soup.

And guess what? It's got two gay dads with their kid in!

Imagine! An advert with two gay dads and their kid!!!

It's not like that's the only type of gay men you see in commercials these days.

Thus, arguably, exposing the new homocapitalist-conformity-heteronormativity-consumerism hegemeony like a quick and easy naked lunch.

'Adorable... it will melt your heart!' said all gay media robots.*

Andy Warhol must be boiling over in his grave.

* Little parlour game: Google "Campbells gay" and "adorable" or "heartwarming" and then tell me one gay media that didn't use these sentimental virtual cliches. Huffpost Gay Voices went for the triple whammy, ending with the barftastic; 'If nothing else, they've succeeded giving us all the feels'. Sake.

Gay Marriage: This Ad Is Unticking All My Boxes!

Sorry BuzzFeed News, you lost me after 'gay republican soldier who wants to get married'.

But if anyone needs proof of how the gay movement has been hijacked by the gay right...

PS And how lobotomised would you have to be to care about 'Benjy the 'gay bull' may be bisexual', or 'Key West gets rainbow crossings'? FFS.

PPS And this week's Fagburn Award For Services To Clueless Thickitude goes to this moron at the Spectator blog who wonders if the legal highs blanket ban outlaws poppers will the Tories lose the 'gay vote'!!!

Gay Dad Watch: Won't Somebody Please Think Of Our Children!

Over the weekend, the New York Times published one of the most frustrating, yell-at-the-screen articles I’ve read in a long time. The piece, cheekily headlined “Chelsea’s Risqué Businesses,” explored an ongoing skirmish in Chelsea, a Manhattan neighborhood that used to be edgy and largely gay but that’s now mainly blanketed in the boringness of gentrification. The fact that no one actually thinks of 2015 Chelsea as particularly seedy, in a gay sense or otherwise, makes the battle—which apparently has sanctimonious gay parents trying to drive out gay porn/novelty shop owners in the name of the CHILDREN—all the more exasperating. But, as I explored in my recent long-form piece on the history and future of gay culture, the phenomenon of gay people attacking traditionally gay spaces and practices in the name of respectability is, sadly, nothing new. Indeed, it’s been the main mechanism by which much of the mainstream advocate class has tried to cajole “equality” from straight people in the wake of the first AIDS crisis...

J Bryan Lowder on great form as ever on Slate. Now read on...

There goes the neighbourhood etc etc.

Owen Jones: Unreal

One-dimensional uber-camp clowns, storylines centred on “being gay”, potential sexual menaces who want to get into the pants of straight men, lesbians whose sexuality makes them a challenge for men to turn: here are how LGBT characters often appear on our screens. But that’s if they even appear at all. According to a new study by Glaad – which campaigns for LGBT representation in the media – there has been a small increase in films with LGBT characters, but from a low base. Out of 114 films they looked at, released in 2014, 17.5% featured non-straight characters, up from 16.7% the year before. Many of these depictions were problematic, with only just over half passing the “Vito Russo test”, which measures the quality of the representations. (A film only passes the Vito Russo test if it includes a LGBT character, where they are not entirely defined by their sexual orientation or gender, and they have a significant impact on the plot.) ...

LGBT people are as complex and varied as anybody else. They are still all too often invisible on our screens, and portrayed simplistically and problematically when they do appear. That will only change when we overcome the general prejudices in society that still exist. But that’s not an excuse. The films and TV shows of today will surely provoke bafflement in the future: “Where are all the realistic gay, lesbian, bisexual and trans people?” they will ask. It will be a good question.

The Guardian.

You can't help feeling that Owen here is expressing his own fears and loathing about gay men; of the scary bad gays, the camp queens and the sexually rapacious, 'toxic' self-caricatures he wants to disown and distance himself from.

[I think OJ's self-imposed exile from the merry old land of gay is why this highly perceptive and intelligent writer writes such pedestrian guff about The Gays].

Why does he put "being gay" in scare quotes? Does Owen think it doesn't exist? Why shouldn't a storyline centre on this?

'A character being gay is often a storyline in and of itself,' he comments, 'surely we need characters who simply happen to be gay, rather than being defined by it.'

A statement that is every bit as banal and silly as it is clichéd. 

Does anyone 'simply happen to be gay'? What would be the point of having such characters in popular culture?

Perhaps OJ does not really want 'realistic' portrayals of gay people? 

Rather he wants them - and us - to be normal and boring, joyless and sexless, indistinguishable from straights.

Just like...

PS On GLAAD's headcounting, box-ticking, stopwatch watching not very useful surveys.

PPS On Owen Jones and the demonisation of gay men.

Sunday: People

Elsewhere in the Sunday papers, it's GAY OK! if you just want to be rich enough to buy a flash car, a husband and kids!

Hollywood: A Normal Man

The problem isn’t just about the lack of gay characters and gay movies, it’s about the portrayal. Hollywood sees gays as the kind of camp caricatures you’d find in Modern Family and Adam Sandler movies – not “normal”. One of the best gay movies ever made, A Single Man, by fashion designer turned filmmaker Tom Ford (himself a gay man) plays homosexuality as inconsequential. It is almost entirely irrelevant to the characters and how they lead their lives...

Sam Moore, New Statesman. 

Hard to know where to start with this one.

Err, yeah, if only the gay characters in Hollywood movies weren't quite so... gay.

Camp queens? I say BOO!!!

How in the name of buggery is homosexuality 'inconsequential' in A Single Man?

Did you not notice that it's the story of a gay man whose long-term boyfriend's died, who starts obsessing over a hot younger man?

In what possible way is their sexuality 'almost entirely irrelevant to the characters and how they lead their lives'?

Oh, and being queer is not 'normal', love - that's kinda the point.

Next week: Why oh why did they have to keep going on about that black fellow's race in 12 Years A Slave?

James Wharton: Poster Boy

James Wharton, the poster boy for the Army's changing stance towards homosexuality during 10 years of service as an openly gay man...

Independent On Sunday.

He's the gay soldier that got gaymarried* - who claims he was rescued by Prince Harry.

And a joyless anti-sex prude to boot.

The poster boy for the heteronormative gay right, more like.

*Sadly now divorced. 

The Guardian: And A Very Informative Article About Rimming...

As many groups across the globe have worked to stop the [metaphorical anti-gay] violence, both systemically and socially, we have seen the urge to desexualise gay men in the mainstream representations of them and make them into fathers, your neighbor, your best friend or your mailman.

This push to make gay people “just like you!” is commonly referred to as heteronormativity – or the act of making subjects fit into the gendered nuclear family and ideals associated with it. And through this process, sex becomes a distant memory. It’s put on the back-burner, and for a group whose identity is founded in sexual differences, maybe it shouldn’t be.

Maybe we should be talking about the sex gay people are having because, when we do, we figure out that they are actually not all that different – without having all of us move to the suburbs.

From the data we know that men, straight and gay and everything in between, can derive pleasure from butts – their own and other people’s. We know that women can, too, with over 43% of women having participated in analingus according to that same 2010 academic study. And according to the most recent report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, straight people don’t just like analingus – they like going all the way: 44% of men, and 36% of women, reported having had penetrative anal sex...

Always illuminating to see what Guardian Unlimited readers are actually reading...

Love Is Strange: Stranger Still

Love is Strange is an intermittently wonderful new film about an ageing Manhattan couple who get hitched almost 40 years into their relationship, only for their suddenly straitened circumstances to force them to live apart for the first time. It’s a gentle and perceptive comedy-drama, so it’s rather a shock to find that the US ratings board, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), has given it an R rating.

Short of the dreaded NC-17, which prohibits anyone under that age from seeing a film, this is the severest classification a movie can receive in the US. The R denotes that a picture contains material unsuitable for the under-17s, but stops short of banning that audience. Children can still be accompanied to an R movie by an adult, as I first discovered when I watched the violent horror-comedy Scream 2 in New York accompanied by the sound of a child several rows behind me begging his mother for more Reese’s Pieces.

The MPAA’s ratings website insists that several instances of profanity in Love Is Strange have earned the film its rating. But a likelier reason must be that its main characters are both men. They are played by two seasoned performers, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. These actors are not required to enjoy anything more passionate on screen than a peck on the cheek and a cosy (but fully clothed) cuddle. But it is precisely the undemonstrative normality of their relationship that seems to have inflamed the notoriously prickly and conservative ratings board...

A thoughtful piece by Ryan Gilbey, the New Statesman's (very good) film critic, in the Guardian on the Love Is Strange US ratings hoo-ha.

We could at least admire the MPAA’s honesty if it admitted that Love is Strange has been guilty of “excessive normalising of a loving homosexual relationship with no punishment or prolonged unhappiness for either party”. Mainstream cinema has tended to like its gay characters either tormented (Brokeback Mountain), comical (The Birdcage), dead (Milk) or dying (Philadelphia). The couple in Love is Strange fall into none of those categories. Except for an instance of homophobia that forces one of them into unemployment, their sexuality passes without mention. It is only the MPAA that has made it an issue. The BBFC has gone for the slightly softer option of a 15 rating, again because of a few instances of strong language, though this also feels a tad harsh. I don’t recall the air turning blue when I saw Love is Strange at the Berlin Film Festival back in February.

Well, yes and no.

The idea that the MPAA or the BBFC took umbrage at the humdrum normality of the gay relationship in Love Is Strange - ie how closely it approximates to a sexless mundane straight marriage - something argued by several gay journalists, is just plain daft.

An inversion of what is the culturally acceptable invert, if you will.

Conversely, as we've seen with Modern Family, conservatives seem to rather like these de-gayed and rather dull gay men.

Those who desire nothing more than domesticity - which is essentially the plot of Love Is Strange.

Or, as David Cameron famously put it at the 2011 Tory Party Conference; 'I don't support gay marriage despite being a Conservative, I support gay marriage because I'm a Conservative.'

Crying HOMOPHOBIA! here is surely an over-reaction to an over-reaction. 

PS Ryan wrote a hilariously pointless feature in the last Sunday Telegraph about being miffed that he and his boyfriend weren't asked to buy some romantic red roses by a flower-seller while dining in a restaurant at a Croatian holiday resort.

Again, whilst the woman seemingly not considering that they might be a couple could be thought of as a heterosexist assumption, but it's probably pushing it a bit to label it HOMOPHOBIA!

Modern Family: Conservative Family Values

The show is a significant one for more reasons than simply audience numbers and critical acclaim. Created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the team behind Frasier, it’s a show that is pushing television boundaries and, in its own quiet way, changing political viewpoints. Right wing conservatives, including Mitt Romney and his wife, are said to be fans and, in a recent survey, Republicans ranked the show third in a list of their top 15 shows, while Democrats didn’t rank it at all. All rather surprising, given the inclusion of a gay couple with a baby as one of the family units.

“This is probably a little overwrought, but I do actually think the writers are making the world a better place,” Burrell says earnestly. “It’s one of my favourite things about the show. I love it when I talk to conservatives and they’re describing all three couples, and they never mention that one of them is gay. That’s the brilliance of the writing. In a completely unaggressive, apolitical way, they are showing this couple as completely normal dealing with ordinary stuff. The banality of it is the most revolutionary thing.

“I think if you turned around and asked that same conservative person how they felt about gay marriage, that probably hasn’t changed for them, but the seed has been planted none the less. It’s progress and it’s the coolest thing.”

Daily Telegraph interview with Ty Burrell, who plays 'cool dad', Phil Dunphy - and won an Emmy for it last night.

Have I got this right? A TV show that stars a heteronormative gay couple - 'married with child', clearly defined 'him and her' roles - is more popular with American Conservatives than Liberals? 

You amaze me!!

PS Modern Family won its fifth consecutive Emmy for Outstanding Comedy Series yesterday.

And The Normal Heart won the Emmy Award for Best Televsion Movie, somewhat predictably.

PPS Half a decade of Modern Family's upper-class fantasies, Mic.

Sam Smith: The New Normal

Sam Smith is a rarity in the pop world, and not in the way you might think. He's young, with a soulful voice beyond his years, but that really only makes him the male Adele. No, what makes Smith different is that he's openly gay at just 22 – rarer in contemporary culture than you might think.

More than that, Smith is an openly single gay man in pop culture [sic], which doesn't seem that surprising until you think of all those who came out before him. The Neil Patrick Harris and Matt Bomer types come out with secure partners, while the Jonathan Groffs and Zach Quintos generally keep their romantic lives very private. Not so for Smith; the young Brit is quite happy to spout his opinions about relationships and dating.

Unfortunately, those opinions have so far been poorly phrased at best, and boorishly wrongheaded at worst. The most recent of these involved Smith bashing dating and hookup apps like Grindr and Tinder, saying that they're "ruining romance" in a recent Metro interview. Smith found his current beau through more traditional means – so he wondered, why can't everyone else?

Your average 22-year-old gay guy shares plenty of half-formed opinions over brunch mimosas. But when Sam Smith dishes these hot takes out, he does them in an international media interview. If he wants to push forward on this path, he's certainly free to do so – but he should probably know what he's getting into first.

In May, after releasing the decidedly queer video for "Leave Your Lover" featuring a gay love triangle, Smith came out publicly. In an interview with Fader, Smith explained that his album In the Lonely Hour was about his unrequited love for another man, and described himself as "comfortable and happy" with his sexuality.

But then he continued: 'I’ve been treated as normal as anyone in my life; I’ve had no issues. I do know that some people have issues in life, but I haven’t, and it’s as normal as my right arm. I want to make it a normality because this is a non-issue.'

Today's show is brought to you by the word normal, folks. Used in a sentence: "Sam Smith desperately wants to be considered normal." ...

Kevin O'Keefe, The Wire.

Justin Sayre: Don't Take The Sex Out Of Homosexuality

It's gay comedy gold cause it's true!

• The International Order Of Sodomites.

Thought For The Day: Michael Alig

“Once it’s kind of been accepted all around I wonder if it will even hold any excitement anymore, because we’re becoming as boring as straight people.”

HuffPost Live interview.

Broadcast Saturday, but gubbins 'ere missed it - thanks to Queerty.

Don't forget boys and girls, Michael Alig is a BAD GAY!

If good gays want to kill someone they join the US Army.

PS UND! Das Rolling Stone interview!

Gay Soldiers: Yes Sir, I Will

Gay soldiers are great
Cause they could almost be straight
And they protect the US military-industrial state.
And that's why gay soldiers are great.
Serve power.
Don't think.
Then everything will be rinky-dink-dink.
Yes sir!

His tweets about how he ditched him when he found that he'd been cheating seem to be deleted...

Down with gay fetishisation of state power and neo-imperialism!

Your sexual fantasies deserve better.

Wank for peace!

Camp: And The Damage Done

In his perceptive [sic] analysis of gay men's attitudes to camp (What Alan Carr taught me about gay men's prejudice, 21 April), Owen Jones suggests that an aversion to it is a form of self-loathing. But for many of us struggling to come out in the 1970s and 80s, it was camp itself which represented self-hatred. Comedians such as John Inman and Larry Grayson personified everything that I did not want to be. They were almost a third sex: grotesque pantomimic creatures, willingly collusive in the mocking laughter of the TV audience. My generation of activists wanted to show people that we weren't all hairdressers or ballet dancers, just ordinary blokes who worked in factories and offices and drove trains and buses...

From an actual letter someone bothered to write to The Guardian.

God, there are some top-flight gaybores out there.

Who wants to be 'ordinary'?

And all the poshgays be like; 'Oh Owen, you're saying what we're all thinking.'

'I also hate the gays cause the gays hate the gays, yeah, that makes sense.'

PS Pink News readers continue to gaybore for England.

Gay Marriage: Now Be Good!

As inexorably as night follows day and push comes to shove, so the words ‘Tory’ and ‘scandal’ seem destined to conjoin with ‘Brazilian’ and ‘rent-boy’. Yet the main response to the allegations about Mark Menzies MP last weekend was neither laughter or condemnation, but pity. The tone was similar to that recently adopted by Jeremy Paxman when interviewing the disgraced former Co-op chairman Paul Flowers. How sad, it seemed to sigh, in this day and age. Is there anything we can do?

Well yes, in fact: it has just been done — and among other things it is likely to prove this sighing a phase. Because although there certainly was a time when gay people could be the objects of pity, viewed as tragic individuals weighed down by society’s unjust attitudes, all this has changed. The most recent change is that since last weekend gay men and women are now allowed the right to full and equal civil marriage in Britain...

Douglas Murray, The Spectator.

Britain's leading right-wing magazine tells The Gays to keep it in their overpriced underpants.

Honey Maid: This Is Wholesome

This is not a joke. Repeat - not a joke!

An alternative view...

No, I think you'll find if you look it's the pukiest gay hokum ever-made.

James Wharton: Screw Your New Normal

A former soldier and prominent LGBT rights campaigner has called for the closure of gay saunas claiming they promote homophobia and threaten to undermine gains in equality made over same-sex marriage.

James Wharton, who served alongside Prince Harry in the Household Cavalry, said places that encouraged gay men to meet for sex encouraged potentially risky behaviour and had been linked to a “disproportionate” number of drug fatalities.

Writing in the magazine Winq he said: “Sex saunas need to be history. The time has come to close them down.”

Mr Wharton said that for gay lifestyles to be accepted as “the new normal” the community needed to avoid frequenting such establishments which he called “thorns in our side that mark our community as different for the wrong reasons.”

The Independent, obvs.

James Wharton - a gay soldier who got gaymarried! So that's a double win! - represents everything that shows why the gay movement is now fucked to buggery.

I don't want to join the army.

I don't want to get married.

I rejoice in not being 'normal'.

Your heteronormative petty bourgeois settlement just makes me want to puke.

So screw you sideways - but not in a 'sex sauna' cause they is bad.

And a pox on those like you who get off on telling other people what to do.

We shall be sovereign over our own minds and bodies, if nothing else.

Isn't being a hired killer 'potentially risky behaviour', you unbelievably thick right-wing fuck?

And in no way was your book a load of nonsense!

Oh do fuck off.