Gay Icons: Cover Me

Attitude was launched in 1994 with Boy George on the front, and its cover remains a bastion of men in pants at a time when straight titles are increasingly coy about putting scantily clad women on theirs. The diver Tom Daley appeared topless after coming out in 2014, while the rugby player Gareth Thomas posed naked and nuzzling his boyfriend a few months later. Elton John and David Furnish celebrated their wedding on it in 2005, albeit fully clothed. Even Oscar Wilde has been inducted into the Attitude covers hall of fame.

Being chosen for it has become something of a status symbol among straight stars too. Where once the title had trouble recruiting hetero celebrities, now the Attitude cover has the power to define careers as well as cultural mores. There is a certain pride in being a gay icon...

The spot has become PR gold, changing perceptions of how even people who aren’t gay see those who appear on it. Justin Timberlake, George Clooney and Tom Hardy have all done it (in a wife-beater vest, lime green shirt and silken pyjamas respectively). Ed Miliband was a pin-up in May 2014, although he only removed his tie.

“There’s a sincerity test you have to conduct, so that you don’t just become part of people’s marketing strategy,” says the cultural commentator Paul Flynn. “Some readers are against straight men with their clothes off on the cover, but the men in pants aren’t going anywhere — they sell better.” ...

The Times.

I've often argued that any journalist that uses the fatuous term 'gay icon' knows nothing about gay culture.

It's a term no gay man ever uses in conversation, just an extremely elastic media fiction.

This journalist confuses 'Has appeared on the front cover of Attitude' with being a 'gay icon'.

Needless to say it was not written by a gay man.

And that graphic is so hideously unsexy, it can only have been designed by a straight man.

PS Ben Cohen a 'gay icon' still - LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL!!!

PPS And in another tribute to gay fuckwittery BBC News magazine have got an article about rainbow tossing flags.

Vester Flanagan: Hate-Flag Found!

From the hilariously right-wing Breitbart.

PS Pure evil! 

PPS Gay Crime And The Media The cover-up!!! The even more right-wing and loopy The American Thinker.

Facebook Rainbows: Take Down Your Flags

It’s now easy, popular and politically expedient to raise the rainbow flag for marriage equality, since 60 percent of Americans support it. But being an LGBT person is still difficult. In some states, it’s still legal to be fired or evicted for being gay. And the gay marriage ruling won’t end the crises of homelessness, harassment and suicide suffered by LGBT people. A record number of LGBT people, especially trans women of color, are being killed and HIV rates are still astronomically high among gay and bisexual men.

Covering your profile picture in rainbow colors doesn’t change any of those truths. Some have argued that this kind of “slacktivism” promotes awareness, motivates people to take action and could subtly persuade opponents of same-sex marriage to change their views. But a 2014 study suggested that people who make these token displays of support often do it simply to boost their own public images without making any real sacrifice to benefit the cause...

The co-opting of symbols and movements is not unique to Facebook’s rainbow-flag campaign. Throughout history, the powerful have taken credit for social progress they did not participate in, or, in some cases, actively fought against...

Facebook did not invent co-opting, but it allowed it to happen en masse this week. It gave an unprecedented number of people the power to claim understanding of a struggle they do not actually know. When millions of people cloak themselves in a symbol without understanding what it means, they dilute that symbol’s power.

Peter Moskowitz, Washington Post.

Bit pious, but kinda yeah.

PS The 26 million people who've put up a rainbow flag online will be thrilled to know Facebook is using them to spy on you.

PPS Radical Faeries and trans activists against Facebook's ban on adopted names.

Rainbow Flag Watch: Slight Over-Reaction

From the insanely right-wing Breitbart.

Rainbow Flag Watch: And Not One Fuck Was Given

The Guardian.

Yay! Let's put up a crappy rainbow flag!!!

Take that homophobes!

Rainbow Flags: At Last!

One of four Cabinet ministers not to vote in favour of gay marriage, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond is heading for another spectacular fall-out with the pink community.

I hear that Hammond has ordered British embassies not to fly the rainbow flag to mark this summer’s gay pride marches.

And, unlike last year, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in Whitehall will not fly the striped banner, the symbol of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender movements.

The Union flag always takes priority,’ says a spokesman. ‘It is flown from the FCO’s main flagpole at all times. It is never substituted for another flag. It is the FCO’s long-standing policy to fly the Union flag, national flags and the flags of Overseas Territories.’

Before Hammond was made Foreign Secretary last July, numerous embassies, including Paris, Oslo, Tel Aviv and Santiago, flew the rainbow flag...

Daily Mail.

If true, this is wonderful news. [Edit: Sadly and SHOCKINGLY, it is more Daily Mail 'File Under Bollocks'].

Quite why British embassies - like police stations and town halls - indulge in this patronising wankery is beyond me. 

Perhaps the government could consider banning rainbow flags completely?

PS 'The pink community'! LOL!!!

Update: Why has Pink News' story on this disappeared? How odd! Or Orwellian...

'Page not found'.

Uganda: Pointless Gesture Draws Widespread Praise

In what's been widely hailed as the most patronising and pointless gay 'protest' since the last one, a wealthy American businessman has planted a rainbow flag at the summit of the highest mountain in Uganda, Pink Star News can reveal.

I'll write that again while its full import sinks in; he planted a rainbow flag on top of a mountain in Uganda!

Neal Gottlieb, a US ice cream manufacturer, claimed he was protesting a draconian new anti-gay bill.

Apolitical gay journalists around the world have been left shrieking with glee and shaking with excitement like so many big wobbly pink blancmanges.

Mr Gottlieb was seemingly unaware of the appalling imperialist symbolism of a wealthy white man planting flags on African territory, and declaring; “Your country’s highest point is no longer its soil, its snow or a summit marker, but rather a gay pride flag waving brilliantly."

On the top of MOUNT STANLEY!

Or of how this self-publicity stunt could be counter-productive, and hurt gay Ugandans struggle.

Nor of the existence of homophobic laws in the USA that he could actually hope to affect change.

As no-one could possibly know this silly act had happened, Gottlieb, wrote an open letter to Uganda's president Yoweri Museveni, which he sent out to the gay media in a press release, thoughtfully attaching a photo of himself and a plug for his ice cream company.

Because nothing shows how much you care about the fate of LGBT people in Africa like PR stunts telling people to buy your ice cream.

More Fucking Rainbows: Kill Me Now!

An actual ad on Gay Star News!

See also gay jeans that turn rainbow!

At least the latter has a trace of irony while robbing you blind.

The banalification and commodification of gay life is now complete - you may return to your homes.

The Independent: And The First Fagburn Award For Inspired Gay Picture Research Goes To...

The Independent.

Russia: More Patronising Shit From Ver Liberal Elite

Because only putting a rainbow-coloured letter in your corporate logo can set us free...

The Guardian.

Warning: Rather predictably this naff, unfunny fillum contains leading gaybores and nonsense-machines Stephen Fry and Saint Peter Tatchell.

New Statesman Twitter account.

Update: Why rainbows are taking over Twitter - Guardian Technology. ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Nick Clegg: I Have A Dream!

"I look forward to one day seeing the rainbow flag fly over every government building".

Nick Clegg, quoted in Pink News.

Err, just one small question, Mr Clegg - why?

PS Pink News has just published yet another piece about how Margaret Thatcher secretly really loved The Gays.
Based on a quick interview with gay Tory MP, Conor Burns.
Every stupid thing he says and lie he tells goes unchallenged, like it's a profile in Hello! magazine.
I give up!
Don't you think your readers deserve better?