London Lesbian And Gay Centre: The £1 Million Gay Folly

It all started so well. "In a hundred years' time, when I'm forgotten, the charter will still be seen as one of the most significant documents of its time", said Ken Livingstone in 1986, as he launched the Greater London Council's Charter for Lesbian and Gay Rights at the London Lesbian and Gay Centre. The five-storey building cost more than £1 million to open and was the biggest single project any public body had financed for the lesbian and gay community.

The centre was seen as one of the jewels in the crown of the Labour administration's policy of funding minority groups. At a time when lesbians and gay men reported suffering from workplace discrimination, street harassment and frequent arrests, the centre acted as an oasis for people to gather, socialise and express themselves. The centre also provided office space for gay organisations – bookshops, coffee shops, theatre groups – enabling them to grow and prosper. But six years after its launch, it closed in a torrent of political infighting and mounting financial losses, the clues of which are still found today in the Hall-Carpenter Archives at the London School of Economics.

Differences between queer people came to the fore within the microcosm of the centre, as debates over the inclusion of open bisexuals and S&M groups made headlines. Hit by the Conservative government's withdrawal of grant funding, spiralling debts and arguments over representation, the LLGC's vision for a harmonious community began to fall apart by the early 90s. On the 30th anniversary of its opening, we spoke to former management staff, volunteers and members about the centre's legacy and why so few people today know it ever existed... 

Vice.

'Let's open a lesbian and gay centre!'

''Why?'

'Erm...'

'You haven't thought this through, have you?'

'No. Sorry.' 

There were a million better, more useful, ways, to spend that money.

Ken Livingstone: Denies Being Sodomised

Blimey.

Peter Tatchell: Reaching Out To LGBT Muslims

Peter Tatchell is launching a new campaign to convince everyday Muslims to embrace LGBT rights, and improve links between the LGBT and Muslim communities.

The veteran human rights campaigner will hold a street stall outside Whitechapel tube station in East London this Wednesday, in a bid to reach out to the local Muslim community... 

Pink News.

Well done, Peter!

Hope no-one thinks this shows a patronising 'White Savior' mindset, and you think LGBT Muslims can't do this for themselves.

More details here.

This is a big 'yah boo sucks' to these silly people, eh?

"Clearly, Tatchell, whom I strongly defended against homophobia when he was selected as the Labour candidate in Bermondsey, has lost his political bearings and constructed a fantasy world in which the main threat we face, worse than the far right, is Islamic fundamentalist hordes."  

Former comrade Ken Livingstone, Tatchell's Islamic Conspiracy, Labour Left Briefing 2005.

Peter Tatchell, The anti-Muslim campaigner, Stelios Ioannou, IndyMedia 2007.

Peter Tatchell not only encourages Islamophobia – he defends the right of homophobes to incite hatred against the LGBT community, Bob Pitt, Islamophobia Watch 2011.

On Hate: A response to Peter Tatchell, Aviva Stahl, The Multicultural Politic 2013.

NB Please read the rebuttals and defences of Tatchell in the replies, and his own writings about Islam and Islamophobia on his website.

Quilliam: Queer Bedfellows

The big shock story breaking today has been that the EDL's founder and leader, Tommy Robinson - the racist hooligan properly known as Stephen Lennon - has quit his group the Whiteshits claiming, without a hint of irony, he was concerned it had become "too extreme".
The Guardian said; "His decision was announced in a press release from the counter-extremism thinktank the Quilliam Foundation, which said it had "facilitated" Robinson's departure and that of the EDL co-founder. Kevin Carroll, also from Luton."

Robinson and the Muslim group Quilliam are now said to be working together.

This sounds most odd, but did not surprise some who have been monitoring Qulliam's activities.
They have a history of making some very strange enemies and allies.

The Guardian's Seamus Milne expressed his concerns when the thinktank was founded five years ago; "These are good times to be in the "moderate Muslim" business. If you press the right buttons on integration and "radicalisation" and hold your tongue on western foreign policy, there are rich pickings to be had - from both private and government coffers." *

This proved prophetic.

The Quilliam Foundation has received millions from the UK Foreign Office and Home Office.
But for doing what?
Islamophobia Watch - which documents stories about those they believe are harming Britain's Muslim community - has run over 70 stories critical of Quilliam.
A wit of Wildean proportions might call them the Quisling Foundation.
Hahaha!
Fagburn wonders what one of today's leading "anti-imperialist" LGBT slash human rights campaigners has to say about this controversial group...

Oops!
Thankfully, Saint Peter has often reminded everyone that he is opposed to Islamophobia - despite numerous silly assertions to the contrary by Islamophobia Watch, and others on the left, that he often helps fuel it.
Tatchell often claims to be a brave lonely voice on the left speaking out against "Islamofascism".
Fomer comrade Ken Livingstone, among others on the left, have seen this as evidence of Tatchell's Islamic Conspiracy Theory.

"Clearly, Tatchell, whom I strongly defended against homophobia when he was selected as the Labour candidate in Bermondsey, has lost his political bearings and constructed a fantasy world in which the main threat we face, worse than the far right, is Islamic fundamentalist hordes.

"It is not surprising that this approach takes him into a de facto alliance with the American neo-cons and Israeli intelligence services who want to present themselves as defending western "civilisation" against more "backward" civilisations in the Middle East and elsewhere. In reality, as with racism in the age of colonialism, this Islamophobic ideology serves to anaesthetise western audiences to the crimes being committed to justify the seizure of lands in occupied Palestine and the invasion of Iraq."

Tatchell's been speaking out today - in a rare press release - about an apparent ban on gay men entering Kuwait, Qatar and other Gulf States.
[Edit: Apparently not quite so - see Scott Long].

Anyone know which of these are also bankrolling Quilliam?

The EDL has made much play of claiming they were pro-gay and one reason they were against extreme Islamism was because it was homophobic.
Will Tatchell and Robinson be sharing a platform about this soon?

Thankfully for Tommy Robinson, Peter Tatchell can always be counted on to "bravely" speak out.
Unfortunately, all too often, without thinking what it may serve, beyond his own ego. **

* For a documented list of Quilliam's links to right-wing organisations, services to imperialism, criticisms of other Muslim groups, and somewhat bizarre political positions read this.

** It seems no matter which country the New American Empire has declared this week's Global Enemy Number One, Peter is usually ready to do his little bit to help the war effort by further demonising them.
Here's a favourite claim he first made in May 1999 when NATO was bombing the fuck out of Serbia.

In some conquered villages, Serb soldiers rounded up the men and boys, stripped them naked, and forced the boys to fellate their fathers, and the fathers to sodomise their sons.

And did they bounce their babies on their bayonets, too?

Astonishing, Peter, astonishing...

The Spectator: Homophobes Of The Year

News reaches No. 22 that rising star of the right Milo Yiannopoulos, of Catholic Herald and tech-world fame, is to be nominated for Stonewall’s ‘Homophobe of the Year’. The news has come as a surprise to the flamboyant Yiannopoulos, who, despite arguing forcefully against gay marriage on Channel 4′s risible 10 O’Clock Live, has never made a secret of his own sexuality.
Then again, headlines such as ‘The lingering stench of gay marriage’, published after an appearance on Newsnight earlier in the year, may have contributed to the nomination. But the waspish columnist, recently dubbed the ‘pit bull of tech media’ by the Observer, need not worry about winning: Mr Steerpike understands that he’s up against Ken Livingstone.

Steerpike, The Spectator blogs.

After the "flamboyant" (!) Milo Yiannopoulos bemoaned his fate, Stonewall's Ben Summerskill took to Twitter to explain;
"Sadly both the Milo Yiannopoulos and Ken Livingstone fictions in this report were completely invented and unchecked by The Spectator."
But apart from that - great story!

PS Milo is a right-wing posh spaz, though. May this blogpost be the result of a queeny Tory spat of which we lesser mortals know nothing? Who can say?

Ken Livingstone: Pish

And piss.
London deserves better than that posh buffoon.
Goodbye, good man, and thanks for all you've done.

x

Ken Livingstone: Dogs Bite Man

"If I was courting the Muslim vote," Livingstone reasons patiently, "I wouldn't have put establishing the partnership ceremony at the forefront of my first term, would I? I go all around London advocating lesbian and gay rights."That's true, but only makes his infamous remark that the Tory party is now "riddled" with gay people all the more maddening. It's obvious he used the term ironically, mocking the party's traditional homophobes who would use the word to denote disgust. "I was making the point that not a single Tory MP spoke out in support when I introduced partnership ceremonies. But they only quoted half the sentence. Where's the bit that says: 'Isn't it wonderful?' I mean, it does actually change the context slightly."

Ken Livingstone interviewed by Decca Aitkenhead in The Guardian.  
This has to be one of the silliest episodes in British politics in recent times.
I'm surprised The Guardian still thinks it even worth mentioning.
Can one word taken completely out of context wipe out over forty years of gay campaigning? 
Just goes to show the Tory Party and much of our press is riddled with hypocrites and idiots.
Anyone who who says this was dog whistle politics deserves to be bitten by Coco (pictured above, recently).

• Read Ken Livingstone's LGBT Manifesto For London on his mayoral website here.

London Mayoral Election: You've Got To Do Gay Hustings If You Want To Get Along

"Stonewall is to host the London Gay Mayoral Hustings on 14 April, allowing the capital’s lesbian, gay and bisexual voters to ask candidates from the four main parties in London about their policies before the mayoral election on 3 May. The Hustings will be held at BFI Southbank from 11.00am to 12.30, and will be attended by Boris Johnson, Jenny Jones, Ken Livingstone and Brian Paddick..."

Stonewall blurb.
Why not pop along if you've got nothing better on that Saturday?
And, if you live in that London, don't forget to vote for Ken.

Update: Independent On Sunday go on the campaign trial with Brian Paddick. They don't seem too enthusiastic about him or his chances. The Lib Dems famously lost their deposit in Bradford on Thursday...

Daily Telegraph: Drop Dead

'Liberals of various descriptions make so much noise in British public life that it’s easy to overlook the fact that liberalism has run into deep trouble on the world stage. For an illustration, consider a joint interview given this week by Tony Blair and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

'Mrs Sirleaf is asked about the fact that homosexuality is illegal in her country. She replies: “We like ourselves just the way we are.” Pressed on the point, she confirms that she will not sign any legislation decriminalising “sodomy”.

'Mr Blair is a champion of gay rights, so you’d expect him to take issue with this statement. Not a bit of it. “The President’s given her position, and this is not one for me,” he says.

'Here’s another interesting vignette, again involving a Labour politician, but this time on his home turf. 'This week Ken Livingstone was accused by Jewish Labour supporters of telling them at a private meeting that since Jews tended to be rich he wasn’t expecting them to vote for him. In a letter published in the Jewish Chronicle, they also accused Livingstone of using the word “Jewish” in a pejorative manner. And this just weeks after he described the Tories as “riddled with homosexuality”.

'The Ken of the 1980s was painful to listen to, but I don’t remember him dog-whistling like that. In those days he was an ultra-liberal politician, the whining incarnation of rainbow ideology. What has happened'

 

Damian Thompson, The Daily Telegraph.

It's hard to know where to start with this crapola.

So you're criticising Ken Livingstone's non-existent homophobia while defending Sirleaf's actual homophobia?

Brilliant!

Evening Standard: Declining Standards...

'Labour’s candidate to be the next London mayor had been due to hold a lavish fundraising dinner with London’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community at the Grand Connaught Rooms next Monday, with tickets starting at £150, and tables at £1,500. But the venue has now had to be changed to the  Shadow Lounge, with tickets starting at just £10, while those wishing to show off can take up the VIP option at £50. Rather than a starchy dinner, comedienne Amy Lamé has been lined up as MC and Labour MP Stephen Twigg will be among the speakers.
'Livingstone’s critics say he is paying the price for saying last month that the Conservative party was “riddled” with homosexuality. Then there was his failure to support the White Swan gay pub in its fight with Tower Hamlets council, which wants to ban its strip night..'

The Evening Standard.
What utter BALLS. 
Not like the Standard has any form on telling lies about Ken Livingstone.

Ken Livingstone: Homobonobophobe Or No? The Great Debate Rages On

I have nothing interesting to say about this pointless distraction, which - let's face it - means fuck all to anyone, really.
Beyond that Boris Johnson's team must think you're a really useful idiot if you've fallen for it.
If you enjoy reading other people who have nothing interesting or original to say about this and other meaningless distractions, then pick last weeks' papers out of the recycling bin.
Boy, there's some real braindead goodies in there!
I apologise unreservedly for not adding further to this pile of luke warm ordure.
As I intend to tell the Leveson Inquiry on Tuesday.

And Finally: Here Is The Mad Christian News

Bong! Godless communists ban prayers at council meetings.
Bong! Gaystapo ruling on lovely Christian B&B couple upheld.
Bong! Archbishop of York gets hate mail from racist Satanist homosexualists.
Bong! Primary school hands out contraceptives like sweets.
Bong! Ken Livingstone says Blair gave MPs cabinet posts just for being total bumlords.
Bong! Several Daily Mail readers' heads explode - call for immediate government enquiry.
Bong! The newsreader's quite dishy, isn't he?
Bonk! I bet she'll be straight off to Chariots after this.
And finally, remember all evangelical Christians are quite, quite mad.
Goodbye.

Your actual Christian Institute Weekly News Round-up.

Ken Livingstone: Riddle Me This

Did you know Ken Livingstone hates The Gays?
Although in the last thirty years he's almost certainly done more for the LGBT community than any other British politician, apparently he's a fifth columnist who's despised us all along.
I found out this today from some of our tireless and long-standing allies, the Tories.
Late this afternoon the New Statesman published on its website some extracts from a forthcoming interview with Ken Livingstone.
As ever, he is frank and often funny whether talking about Boris Johnson, Margaret Thatcher or Rupert Murdoch.
But the interviewer, Jemima Khan, also brought up his "private life".
A pulled quote reads;

"We [Boris and I] both have five [children]. I can admit to all mine.
"[The public] should be allowed to know everything, except the nature of private relationships - unless there is hypocrisy, like some Tory MP denouncing homosexuality while they are indulging in it."

Pressed by Khan about his use of "Tory MP", Ken responds:

"Well, the Labour ones have all come out... As soon as Blair got in, if you came out as lesbian or gay you immediately got a job. It was wonderful... you just knew the Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else is."

Fagburn agrees with all that.
But apparently he outed himself as a secret homophobe by using the word "riddled".
Riddlegate - as no-one calls it - seems to have begun around 5pm when Sophy Ridge tweeted one line from the piece - "Ken Livingstone on Tory MPs not being open about being gay: "The Tory party was riddled with it like everywhere else" - and a link to the NS.
Who is Sophy Ridge?
She's a political reporter on Sky News.
Oh, and she used to work for the News of the World - a now defunct tabloid not exactly known for its support for gay rights or the Labour Left.
In fact, Fagburn seems to remember them regularly attacking Livingstone over his support for gay rights.
Things blew up when this was picked up by Guido Fawkes (he gives a nod to Ridge) - a Tory blogger not exactly known for being pro-gay (his readers are often brazenly homophobic - have a look at the comments after the post).

Ken's Gay Gaffe

"With his usual tact Ken has told the New Statesman that he believes the Tory party "used to be riddled with it like everywhere else". What was this it. Gay people?
"There is never much doubt how people feel when they use the expression "riddled", but for the avoidance of that let's see what the dictionary says:

'Riddled: Fill or permeate (someone of something), esp. with something or someone), esp. with something unpleasant or undesirable.'

"Guido has to wonder how this is going to play at the LGBT London for Ken fundraising dinner in March."

You may have noticed the "quote" from Ken is getting shorter and shorter.
According to BBC News; "Angie Bray and Mike Freer, Tory MPs in London, wrote to the Labour leader, Ed Miliband, urging him to ensure Livingstone's remarks were retracted. Bray said: "These are the sort of offensive remarks we hear all too often from Labour's candidate for mayor."
Purely in the interest of balance here are some in-no-way offensive remarks by Boris Johnson; "Slowly Labour is winning the battle it really cares about, the Kulturkampf, adjusting what can be said, and what cannot be said… Homosexuality is to be taught in schools." The Spectator, April 29th, 2000.
"If gay marriage was OK – and I was uncertain on the issue – then I saw no reason in principle why a union should not be consecrated between three men, as well as two men; or indeed three men and a dog." Friends, Voters, Countrymen, 2001.
A spokesperson for Ken Livingstone said; "Ken is clearly saying the advance of lesbian and gay people into politics is unequivocally a good thing.
"He has fought for equality for gay and lesbian people throughout his life, and the fact they are represented in all major political parties is a sign of the progress that has been made."
All of which is as obvious as rain - unless you're a complete idiot or a right-wing goon with an agenda.
This is the most stupid, hypocritical, irrelevant manufactured outrage Fagburn can remember since the last one.
How ironic that the last part of Ken Livingstone's New Statesman interview reads:

What is your greatest boast?
"That I am still here after 30 years of unremitting media hostility."

Ken Livingstone: He Did Say That

The story of the man with the newts, and scourge of Maggie Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, is actually more nuanced and more interesting. In the early 80s, as leader of the soon-to-be-dissolved GLC, Livingstone pursued an agenda for equality for gay people and other minorities that is now the norm. (Who would have thought that a Conservative prime minister would have told his party conference he was proud to be supporting gay marriage?) The London boss was denounced for all of that, as he was for embracing Irish republicans – only for the Labour government, a decade later, to welcome Martin McGuinness as Northern Ireland's deputy first minister...

John Kampfner reviews Ken Livingstone's autobiography You Can't Say That for The Observer.
Mr Livingstone has always strck me a thoroughly decent chap.
I remember when he first became an MP he gave such a powerful and moving speech in the final debate about Section 28 - one of thew voices of dissent - that I sent him a fan letter.
And he sent a very sweet letter back...

Pink News: Straight Tory News

The Tory-loving shitstorm of an excuse for a gay news outlet that is Pink News - written by a thick straight person - has just come out in support of another right wing goon.
What a surprise.
'Ken Livingstone’s an old retread, says gay deputy London mayor'
I bet he said "retard", you big "retread".
AAARGH!!!

Update: More Tory-loving crap from Pink News here!