Rent Boy Tory: Any Guesses?

Mirror.

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.

Private Eye: Cartoon Time

From the new Private Eye.

Also contains some stuff about Christopher Jefferies, Paul Flowers, Mark Menzies and Armistead Maupin.

This issue's gayness is overflowing!

Toby Young: The Sound Of Straight Hands Clapping

What can the Conservatives do to lessen their exposure to these sorts of scandals in future? The solution, I believe, is for all gay and lesbian Conservative MPs to come out in a very public, headline-grabbing way. Not that many of them are "in the closet" in the conventional sense of the term, i.e. leading a double life in which they're pretending to be happily married. Most are bachelors who are neither in the closet nor out of it, but in a kind of antechamber where they don't pretend to be straight but, at the same time, don't draw attention to their homosexuality either. Well, I think the time has come for them to draw attention to it. What has previously gone unmentioned, tacitly accepted within the party with a nod and a wink but not publicly acknowledged, should now be brought out into the open. And what better time for the pink ’n’ blues to come out than right now, when same-sex marriage has just become legal thanks in large part to the leader of the Conservative Party?
Oh do fuck off you patronising straight Tory winker.

People can do what they want, isn't that what you profess to believe (he said hypocritically).

Menziesgate: While Rainbow Flags So Bravely Flutter

According to the newspapers that reported the “revelations”, the private life of a low-ranking Conservative MP has “rocked” the Government and left the Prime Minister “stunned”. That would seem to be overstating the impact of the resignation of Mark Menzies, a figure who might count himself lucky to be considered a household name in his own kitchen...

As a story, then, the Menzies Affair, as it will never come to be known, doesn’t matter much. As a case study in the state of our press and attitudes to sex and drugs, it is instructive. On drugs, it shows once again that the “war” against them is lost if their use is so casual at such a level – as if we did not know already that MPs and civil servants are as prone as the rest of us to a quick high, legal or not.

Still more depressing was the way the gay aspect of Mr Menzies’s alleged behaviour was dwelt upon. It was as if for a brief time the press had hired a Tardis and returned to the golden days of the 1980s and 1990s when the words “gay” and “MP” in the same headline would guarantee political destruction for the individual and a “sleaze” crisis for the Cabinet.

It was telling that this “story” broke on the weekend that equal marriage at last became a reality for many happy couples, with so few voices raised in dissent and so many raised in joy. Images of a rainbow flag flying on Whitehall were a powerful symbol of a brighter, more tolerant Britain. It suggests that the public wants to move on from “gay-baiting” and hypocrisy about drugs. It is a pity that parts of the media have not caught up with these new realities, and remain in a time warp of hypocrisy and prurience.

The Independent.

None more patronisingly gayister than thou...

Mark Menzies: Like Leveson Never Happened

From today's Sun: Man had sex on drugs, quite enjoyed it bombshell!

It was quite like old times on the newsstands yesterday. Two Sunday red-tops took us back to the era of sleaze that bedevilled John Major's administration.

In other words, it was way before the nation, and the press, had heard of Lord Justice Leveson.

There was the News of the World - sorry, Sun on Sunday - with a splash headlined "Top Tory quits in rent boy scandal" plus, incidentally, an inside spread on "a blonde beauty" who "enjoyed internet sex chats with four Manchester United stars".

And there was the Sunday Mirror splashing on the same tale, "Tory MP quits in drugs & rent boy scandal". And this on the day when same-sex marriage laws came into force, duly celebrated on the paper's page 23.


The story concerned the resignation of Conservative MP Mark Menzies, parliamentary private secretary to the international development minister, Alan Duncan, after allegations made by a Brazilian male escort.

Both papers lay claim to exclusivity, but that little local dispute between the titles is far less interesting than the editorial agenda that convinced each of them of the story's importance.

You might have thought it inappropriate nowadays to expose people for their (alleged) gay relationships. You might have also thought it inappropriate to accept the word of someone who has sought payment for that (alleged) relationship. Doesn't the term "rent boy" seem oddly archaic in 2014?

You would probably concede that the (alleged) involvement of drugs just about gave it a public interest justification. But only just, given that the level of proof appears less than convincing.

I sincerely hope that this isn't the beginning of a trend.

Roy Greenslade, Guardian Media blog.

Quite, but this new trend surely began with the Christopher Jefferies and Paul Flowers witch hunts?

If you're gay, it's always hunting season, and you are the quarry.

Update: Two (2) more stories on this boring nonsense which affects no-one in The Sun today.

The Sun: Man Has Sex Shock!

A man has had sex, The Sun On Sunday can exclusively reveal.
After the Sunday Mirror exclusively revealed it a bit earlier.
The man gave a sex worker he wanted to have sex with some money, and then they had sex.
Sex is bad.
Gay sex worse.
Paying for it is like the seventh circle of Hell.
Even though it's not illegal or immoral.
Boo to sex, we say!
Resign! etc etc.
I thought men like that killed themselves.
Why can't he get gaymarried like nice, normal Tory gays?
Fin.

PS The Public Whip give him 100% for supporting gay rights in parliament. So what is point?

PPS Apart from the fact Fagburn once outed him as... a bit of an idiot.