Alan Bennett: Yes, Again!

Lovely interview with Alan Bennett by Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian - one of the best I've ever read with him.
A lot of it centres around how much Bennett has changed since coming out fully in Untold Stories in 2005.
Despite saying his life view is "not cheerful", he seems quite contented now, and it seems to have affected his work as well.
Hattenstone - but of course - ends by saying he's a national treasure, half-joking I guess.
'Great, I say, perhaps we'll stop thinking of you as a national treasure now, and more as a dirty old man. His thin lips part and he laughs that totally joyous laugh again. "Hahahahaha! "Well, that's good. Yes, dirty old man. I don't mind that. No. Quite happy with that."
Bless.

Richard Littlejohn: Gay Men Are Paedophiles

Richard Littlejohn has equated gay men with paedophiles in his rubbish Daily Mail column today.
"When I went to Sunday school, a million years ago, we were taught to love our neighbour.
"I don’t recall ever being told that we should take an ‘eye for an eye’ literally. Or that the punishment for homosexuality was death.
"Aged six, we didn’t even know what homosexuality was, even though we’d been warned to steer clear of that chap who was always hanging round the swimming pool..."
Nice one.

The Independent & The Guardian: That Stupid Club

After Pink News' 'Pope argues that rent boys could use condoms as first step in moralisation', the second really stupid and inappropriate headline of the week comes from The Independent.
''The kids are all right? Not according to the lesbian lobby''
Are The Independent's subs not aware that "the gay lobby" and "the lesbian lobby do not exist?
They're propaganda terms used by right-wing journalists and campaigners.
The article - about The Kids Are All Right - is pretty silly too;
"It has been billed by critics and fans as a Hollywood lesbian lifestyle movie with genuine mainstream appeal. But the Kids Are All Right is certainly not all right with one group – lesbians."
Well, I'm sure some lesbians do, but is this universal?
Are they going to start a lobby group?
The journalist Arifa Akbar quotes just three people - all academics - who spout academic-sounding cliches; "There is a recurring pattern of male sexual access to the lesbian body in visual culture narratives of lesbian motherhood... It raises the question of which narratives featuring lesbians become mainstreamed and why."
You could programme a computer to come up with drivel like that.
It's disheartening the regard some journalists show to academics, particularly the "queer theory" variety; most of them are charlatans; pseudo-intellectual post modern/structuralist nonsense machines.
They're quoted like they represent the last word on something, or as if they represent some kind of consensus.
They don't.
There was a piece on The Guardian's Comment Is Free last week by one Jasbir Puara, 'In The Wake of It Gets Better'.
It reads like a fifth-form essay, so Fagburn was stunned to learn; "Jasbir Puar is associate professor of women's and gender studies at Rutgers University."
If it was a student essay I'd've marked it "Epic fail".
It really was just the biggest bunch of Dave Spart crap.
"[Dan] Savage embodies the spirit of a coming-of-age success story. He is able-bodied, monied, confident, well-travelled, suitably partnered and betrays no trace of abjection or shame. His message translates to: Come out, move to the city, travel to Paris, adopt a kid, pay your taxes, demand representation. But how useful is it to imagine troubled gay youth might master their injury and turn blame and guilt into transgression, triumph, and all-American success?"
I love the idea of dismissing what someone says because they're able-bodied - or negating Dan Savage's It Gets Better message as he doesn't look shamed and may have been on holiday to Paris - it's almost too hilarious for words.
And so it goes on in similar vein, dropping in quotes from other pseudo-radical twerps.
You could go through the blog line by line pointing out all the crater-sized holes in her arguments, but life's too short for Fagburn to bother.
Noam Chomsky's phrase "Manufacturing consent" is well-known.
Puar's piece brought to mind another lesser-known phrase of Professor Chomsky's.
Feigning dissent.
Can we have less of these stupid "clever people" in the media, please?

David Laws: Expressway To Your Heart

Exciting news!
The Daily Express has found a gay man they like.
"DAVID Laws, who has the dubious honour of being the shortest-serving Cabinet minister of modern times, showed appalling judgment when he broke the rules to claim parliamentary allowances to rent a property from his gay lover."
I'm betting there's a "but"...
"But yesterday the former chief secretary to the Treasury demonstrated how sharp a political mind has been lost to the government."
Laws is creeping back into public life, if you haven't noticed.
He took his time out to write a book about the birth pangs of the Coalition government, 22 Days In May, which shows his pleasure that the Lib Dems formed a coalition with the Tories and not Labour.
We've always known David Laws was well to the Right of the Lib Dems on economics - which is why the Express adore him.
"Almost alone among senior coalition figures David Laws acknowledged that middle income earners are suffering disproportionately from the efforts to cut the deficit and called for their taxes to be cut before the next election. When you take into account taxes, national insurance contributions, pensions and student loan repayments, said Mr Laws, many middle-income earners are facing marginal tax rates of almost 50 per cent..."
Mr Laws is of course something of an expert in how the well-off can screw more money out of the state.

Update: The Daily Telegraph love Laws too - 'An early return to the frontline for David Laws. Telegraph View: The Liberal Democrat who resigned six months ago should be hastened back into the Government.'

One Direction: Lovers In The Backseat

'One Direction are snuggling on the backseat now? That's just taking the mick'

"Are Matt Cardle and One Direction attempting to out-cute each other in order to win votes or something?
"First, there were the puppies. Aww!
"Then Matt kidnapped cuddled a baby. Double aww!
"And now the One Direction boys have tweeted this pic of Liam and Zain snuggling in the back of a car. Triple aww! We think... but man, we're confused!
"We know some teenaged boys (not like that) and in our experience, they don't much like cuddling each other. They tend to be a bit stinky and phobic of all touchy-feelyness. With this in mind, we're deeply suspicious of this touching and touchy image.
"And then there's the worrying fact that we're not sure whether we want to tuck them into bed in a motherly way or something more... intimate. Frankly that's not a quandary we feel entirely comfortable with."

Fagburn's most favourite tabloid journalists, the Mirror's wonderfully cynical and saucy 3AM "Girls", see through the (possible) PR and say all that needs to be said. Funny.
And if you're wondering how this might pan out, over on The Sun's website today Westlife's Kian interviews band member Mark and ends with sweetly asking him when he's going to get married... ie to his boyfriend.
Sometimes I forget how fast the world is changing.

The Pope & Condoms: A Lot Of Cock

Of all the reams of nonsense written about the Pope and condoms, Fagburn thought this essay on the BBC News website by National Catholic Reporter's John L Allen was the most illuminating; 'Why condom comments are no earthquake in Catholic teaching'
Allen argues that the Pope's words have been "sexed up" by the media, and explains why they mean little and change nothing.
Nobody seems to have found out if Pope Benedict actually said/meant "a male prostitute" - but according to Catholic teaching a male prostitute could wear a condom all along because homosex can't be procreation, which means it's wrong full-stop, and HOMOSEXUALS ARE ALL GOING TO BURN IN HELL anyway.

• Cartoon by Peter Brookes in The Times.

Update: From BBC News "Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi said he had personally asked the Pope if there was a serious, important problem in the choice of the masculine over the feminine.
"He told me 'No'," Fr Lombardi said. "The problem is this... It's the first step of taking responsibility, of taking into consideration the risk of the life of another with whom you have a relationship."
"This is if you're a woman, a man, or a transsexual," he added.

Panorama Investigation: Religious Nutters Are Religious And Nutty Shock

There is great vexation today about tonight's Panorama programme, British Schools, Islamic Rules.
According to The Daily Mail; "Children in Britain are being taught brutal Sharia law punishments, including how to hack off a criminal’s hand or foot.
"So-called ‘weekend schools’ for Muslim pupils as young as six also teach that the penalty for gay sex is execution and that ‘Zionists’ are plotting to take over the world for the Jews..."
"For acts of ‘sodomy’, children are told that the penalty is death and it states a difference of opinion whether this should be done by stoning, or burning with fire, or throwing over a cliff."
Next week Panorama will expose a book that is used in almost all schools in the UK that says gay men should be put to death - the Bible.
[Please insert your own joke about Daily Mail readers getting angry about racist, homophobic religious nutters who demand a return to capital punishment here]

Attitude: The Tissues Issue

First rule of gay publishing: Put the word "SEX" on the cover and you'll see sales rise and rise.
It's circulation Viagra.
Or crack or something.
I'll find the appropriate metaphor later.
Attitude started this trend and now it seems every month some gay magazine has done its own "Sex Issue" - or "Naked Issue" or "Porn Issue".
I call them the Tissues Issues.
I pride myself on not being a prude, and think part of the point of the gay press is to celebrate homosex and gay desire, but am I the only gay man in Christendom who finds these things a turn-off and is less likely to buy a fag mag's "Sex Issue"?

Alan Bennett: A National Treasure?

There is a profile of Alan Bennett in The Sunday Times titled The National's Treasure.
It's a double-ended pun as the feature's written by Nicholas Hytner, the director of the National Theatre, who's directed seven of Bennett's plays.
The two men discuss their working relationship in Alan Bennett and The Habit of Art on More4 on Saturday.
Profiles of Alan Bennett seem dutybound to describe him as "a national treasure" these days - a cliche quite freely applied to other people.
"It's a funny bit of cookery," Peter York told The Guardian last year. "You need durability, you need to be fairly mature [he thinks 50 and above is about right] and you need to have a basic craft or skill."
According to The Guardian, York thinks the real national treasures are fairly mid-market performers who have been around for so long you feel they must have hidden depths ("June Whitfield, for instance") and those, such as Judi Dench and David Attenborough, "who have always been at the top of their game and you're just glad they're there. 'Don't die yet!' That's what that's about."
The Observer today is asking readers; "Help us find Britain's National Treasures".
"What connects union firebrand Arthur Scargill, maverick musician Mark E Smith and comedy actress June Whitfield..."
I bet Alan Bennett wins that one, he's one of those gay men the nation seems to treasure.
Elton John gets called a national treasure a lot, often with the explainer that he's "the Queen Mum of Pop", which I think may mean we're all suposed to like him.
And much of the recent hooha about Stephen Fry was arguably because a "national treasure" like him isn't supposed to touch on tricky topics - a bit like the Queen talking about politics.
Which you could argue it was.
Alan Bennett has said he hates his national treasure status.
Which seems to be confirmed in the Sunday Times piece.
'He pleads with those who talk about him to the press to blow his cover,' writes Hytner. '“Tell them I’m a cunt, love.”'

Richard Wilson: One Foot In The Closet

"Right now he is relieved to have a stretch of time at home in London again. "Since I've stopped doing Merlin I've got my social life back," he says, before adding with a twinkle in his eye: "It's nice to be back in the pool, as it were."
"Wilson lives alone and famously refuses to discuss his private life. He quickly shuts down a follow-up question about his "pool" remark with a well-rehearsed: "I'm not seeing anyone special.""

Richard Wilson, having his privacy respected (sort of) by The Independent On Sunday..

The Pope & Condoms: Did "A Male Prostitute" Pass His Lips?

Hold the bit of the front page that hasn't got a picture of Prince William and Kate on!
His Holiness the Pope has said something slightly less stupid and offensive than he usually does.
Using condoms might be okay in certain circumstances after all.
Blimey! He'll be telling us the Earth revolves around the Sun next.
Hang on though - what did Pope Benedict actually say?

Peter Seewald: Are you saying, then, that the Catholic Church is actually not opposed in principle to the use of condoms?
Pope Benedict: She [!] of course does not regard it as a real or moral solution, but, in this or that case, there can be nonetheless, in the intention of reducing the risk of infection, a first step in a movement toward a different way, a more human way, of living sexuality.

BBC News quotes the relevant section at length - and here's the actual rambling quote from the Pope that everyone's misquoting;
"There may be a basis in the case of some individuals, as perhaps when a male prostitute uses a condom, where this can be a first step in the direction of a moralization, a first assumption of responsibility, on the way toward recovering an awareness that not everything is allowed and that one cannot do whatever one wants. But it is not really the way to deal with the evil of HIV infection.
"That can really lie only in a humanization of sexuality."
Fagburn has only seen The Independent On Sunday (and heard BBC Radio 4) point out the semantic stew in the above quote;
"Last night there was some confusion about the precise meaning of the Pope's words, not least concerning the example he used. In the English, German and French versions the phrase "a male prostitute" is used, but in the Italian translation, the words "una prostituta", meaning a female prostitute, is given."
It does seem odd that he'd specify a male prostitute.
Perhaps he's realised that two men using a condom during bumsex doesn't lessen the chances of them making a baby?
Let us pray for clarification from Pope Benedict on this whole "male or female prostitute" business later today.
I for one am positively gripped.

Business News: Lawyers Chase Army Fuckers

A sobering story on the business pages of the Independent On Sunday.
"Two lawyers who chased people over illegally copied porn films and computer games are to appear before the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal for trying to use their positions of trust to take "unfair advantage of other persons".
"Davenport Lyons partners David Gore and Brian Millar allegedly sent more than 6,000 letters to web users threatening legal action in what critics called a "bounty hunter" operation...
"The watchdog's statement to the tribunal named a German client of the firm which owns the copyright on a gay porn film called Army Fuckers. A letter of claim from Davenport Lyons regarding the film has been seen by The IoS."

Thought For The Day: John Waters

“Who wants to be an outsider for 40 years? The word ‘outsider’ now is ruined. It doesn’t mean what it used to mean. People didn’t want to be outsiders. It was a dirty word. You wanted to fit in. These days, no one wants to fit in. Everybody believes that they’re unique and that they’re an outsider. So to me, the final humour of it all was to be the establishment!”

John Waters, The Sunday Times.

The Guardian: Who Killed Gareth Williams? Dunno

'When the bagged body of an MI6 agent was found in a bathtub, speculation went into overdrive. Was it suicide? Murder? A professional hit, or a sexual game gone wrong?'
And why does The Guardian's graphic show him in a sniper rifle's crosshair when he wasn't shot?
So many questions - none of which are answered in a long feature in today's Guardian.
Journalists Cathy Scott-Clark and Adrian Levy have put in a lot of work on this, but are still none the wiser.
Can they even be certain that Gareth Williams was gay?
Not really.
"Detectives had been quietly investigating whether Gareth Williams was gay. They had canvassed witnesses in the Vauxhall Cross village of gay clubs and bars, a short walk from Alderney Street. They had also studied Williams's computers and reading matter, his journals, magazines and computer cache. Despite outright denials from his family, detectives were privately certain that Gareth was gay, although they had been unable to find trace of any sexual encounters. They had also come to believe that his sexual orientation was not central to the inquiry (although his sexual preferences might be). There was no evidence of Williams paying for escorts, buying S&M equipment, using porn or drugs of any kind. "This man didn't really even drink," one frustrated detective said.
"The police felt they were being hurried along by other parties, keen for the scandal to go away. "Someone, somewhere, who has access to case material, is saying, 'He's queer and asked for it', rather than waiting for the outcome of the case," one veteran detective said..."
And no, still nobody knows how he died, never mind why.
But a new-ish lead is added to the conspiracy;
"He had been liaising again with counterparts at the NSA, who were part of an effort to create an American cyber defence policy, to prevent the siphoning off of secret or commercially sensitive data or a military style assault on defence or civil systems. Its importance was alluded to last month in a speech by home secretary Theresa May, in which she identified cyber crime as among the pre-eminent future threats facing the UK. A cyber crimes specialist who knew Williams revealed that at the time of his death he was researching British vulnerability to Russian, Turkish and Chinese gangs: "He was already on top of it."
"Rogue individuals and nation states, Islamist terror groups and radical loners, extortionists and organised criminals – these were just some of those Williams had observed, investigated, disrupted and provoked. Any one of them was capable of reciprocating, lethally."
So, erm, it could be any of these?
Or none of them.
How's about answering your own question; "Was it suicide? Murder? A professional hit, or a sexual game gone wrong?"
"Back at the Yard, Operation Finlayson detectives were looking at a vast range of potential threats, but still had few clues, no accomplices or even a plausible denouement for a man whose personal and professional inclinations were to camouflage everything he did."
Oh.

Bishop Gene Robinson: 10 Fascinating-ish Facts

1. His parents gave him a girl’s name, Vicky Jean, after his father, Victor and his mother, Imogene. He toyed with changing it. “It’s a terrible way to grow up. A Boy named Sue — I am like the living reality of that.”

2. Hugh Hefner made him realise he was a gayer. “What I do remember is at about age 12 or 13 being with a group of my friends and somehow they had acquired a Playboy magazine. They were clearly very excited by these photographs and they really weren’t doing anything for me. I thought, 'Oh my God, I think I’m different.' Almost simultaneously I realised that to say that was dangerous, possibly physically and certainly socially.”

3. Although now married to a man, Mark, he was married to a woman, Boo, for 13 years. “I loved her, I still love her.” They have two daughters.

4. He is a recovering alcoholic, just like George Bush.

5. Gene wears what he calls “my fundamentalist socks”. They are decorated with fish, a symbol of the early Church, and crosses.

6. Robinson is not a liberal theologically. "I am wildly conservative theologically.” He “absolutely full stop” believes in the bodily resurrection. “That seems like such a small miracle compared with the Creation, for instance.” And the Virgin Birth? “Why not? I believe in God’s power to do those things.” Nutter.

7. He would like to think "Jesus would have been arguing for the full inclusion of gay and lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in the life of the Church and in the life of the secular community... For 18½ centuries we had slavery and we used scripture to justify it... we have used scripture to subjugate and denigrate women... now we happen to be living in a time where we are trying to sort out whether we might have been similarly wrong about homosexuality.”

8. He has friends who think the Archbishop of Canterbury has been abducted by aliens. Not literally, mind.

9. Gene took up smoking when he was 40. "The most consciously self-destructive thing he has ever done. He tells me it is like a Persian carpet weaver, who deliberately puts a defect into every carpet he makes as an acknowledgement that only God is perfect."

10. He prefers Lady Gaga to Madonna.

All factoids gleaned from the Saturday Interview in The Times.

David Cameron: It Gets Worse

David Cameron, the prime minister chappie, has made one of those "It Gets Better" videos.
His was actually made for Stonewall's bandwagon-jumping "It Gets Better... Today" campaign.
He plugs the Tories new buzzwords - "fair" and "fairness" - ie the Tories don't believe in equality.
Just as intriguing is a word that Mr Cameron doesn't say - "gay".
Unbelievable.
"This is not the sort of country where we label people for being different," he says, incorrectly.
"Equality laws are fighting discrimination at work and in society," he adds, neglecting to mention that the Conservatives are in the process of dismantling them.
Anyway, Dave's got some advice to all the isolated young gays in UK plc; "Talk to someone about it."
Do you think they'd be watching your stupid fucking video if they had someone they could talk to about it?

Coronation Street: What's There To Smile About?

"Here’s the best bit of dialogue ever written. Someone asks Bet Lynch why she’s smiling. She says, “This isn’t a smile, it’s the lid on a scream.”
"I don’t even know who wrote that. Those gems – blinding gags, aching wisdom, sizzling insults – fly out of the screen five times a week on Coronation Street, too many, too fast, to catalogue. It’s the first show on which I remember noticing the written word; I’d watched, as a kid, happy with this world of matriarchs and milk stout – my grandmother ran a pub in Swansea called the Cornish Mount, so the Rovers seemed genuinely familiar – but then one day, on screen, some character with a broken heart said wistfully, “I was just building castles in the sky.” That wasn’t a cliché for me, because I was so young. It was new.
"It was honest. It was perfect. And that one little line forged a connection between me and Coronation Street that has lasted for decades, because that’s the moment when I actually thought: I love this. I also seem to remember that the character was beehived, smoking and drunk, so there’s a convincing argument to say that Coronation Street made me gay. If so, I love it all the more!"

Russell T Davies pays tribute to Coronation Street on its 50th birthday, The Times.

That's Gay: Fagburn Salutes The Magic Of Bryan Safi

"Gays hate it when people judge us, but there's nothing we love more than judging other people. We may not be on the Supreme Court but there's one place where we rule supreme - reality TV..."

Over on Current TV, Bryan Safi is currently into his third or something series of That's Gay - his ludicrously good comic critiques of (the representation of) The Gays on US TV.
As I'm not 100% sure what Current TV is or how you can watch it, you can catch up on Bryan's complete works here.
He funny. Enjoy!

Adoption Agency Closures: Doing The Math/s

Here's The Daily Mail today, returning to a favourite riff;
'Mixed-race adoption rules must be changed say ministers... but they duck fears over Christian discrimination'
"...the Coalition was silent about the rules that appear to be doing most to push down the number of children finding parents – the bar on adoption through Christian agencies that do not approve of gay rights."
"The number of children in care adopted by parents has dropped by 30 per cent since Labour’s Sexual Orientation Regulations brought homosexual equality rules into adoption law in 2007."
That's terrible.
But this drop clearly can not be blamed on the closure of Catholic adoption agencies.
Before the Sexual Orientation Regulations were passed it was estimated that; "The Catholic Church's agencies are said to handle 4%, or about 200, of all adoptions a year." (BBC News, January 23 2007))
On the day the law was introduced, five out of 11 of the Catholic-run agencies announced they were staying open and would comply with the law. (BBC News, January 1 2009)
In actual fact, only two agencies abandoned their adoption work - in addition, Catholic Care went to the courts to fight for its right to discriminate. (The Guardian, March 3 2010).
They lost in August and announced they are reconsidering their position. (The Guardian, August 19 2010). (Update: They say they are appealing the decision)
So two, perhaps three, out of the 11 Catholic agencies have stopped work on adoption.
As Catholic agencies were previously responsible for 4% of adoptions (200), a rough calculation would say these two/three agencies were probably responsible for less than 1% of UK adoptions.
Fagburn has the feeling the other 99% of adoption agencies may have been able to take up the shortfall.
Not to mention all the lesbian and gay couples who are now coming forward to adopt knowing they will no longer be discriminated against.

Daily Telegraph: The War Against Equality

In a leader today The Telegraph welcomes Theresa May's dropping of the duty to equality, and her potentially seismic semantic shift from talking about "equality" to "fairness".
It is worth quoting at length - not least because it sounds to Fagburn like an opening salvo.
"Speaking in a south London community centre this week, Theresa May argued that equality has become not a noble goal, but "a dirty word… associated with the worst forms of pointless political correctness and social engineering". Harriet Harman, take a bow.
"The Home Secretary was announcing her decision to scrap the clause in Miss Harman's Equality Act that placed a duty on all public bodies to take account of "the inequalities of outcome which result from socio-economic disadvantage" at all times – so sweeping a requirement that it was labelled "socialism in one clause". This is welcome news: as Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem Home Office minister, told Parliament yesterday, "all the policy would have been was a bureaucratic box to tick… another form to fill in".
"We urge Mrs May to be similarly ruthless towards the other clauses that await her approval. These include the need for the public sector workforce, across 27,000 separate bodies, to be monitored in terms of gender, ethnicity, religion, sexuality and disability, and the lifting of a ban on positive discrimination in recruitment."
And do you think the demands for overturning equality laws will stop there?
It looks like there is a new front opening in the Tories' war against equality - gay adoption...

Equality Law: Now You're Just Being "Ridiculous"

The Tories class war continues apace.
'Fury as Theresa May scraps equality law' - The Daily Mirror.
"Home Secretary Theresa May was accused of a shocking attack on the poor yesterday after scrapping an equality law.
"Councils will no longer need to consider disadvantages and inequalities in their policy decisions."
Of course this has pleased those on the right.
'Theresa May will today scrap a ‘ridiculous’ Harriet Harman equality law dubbed ‘socialism in one clause’' - The Daily Mail
May's speech about ending "Harman's law" was "leaked" to the Mail.
Reading between the lines, more worryingly the Conservatives seem to be abandoning any commitment to equality - now they will talk of "fairness".
The Home Office press release announced;
"Controversial rules that would have forced all public bodies to focus spending and services on poorer areas at the expense of better-off communities were today scrapped."
But in a piece of spin as obvious as an iceberg it adds;
"The speech also underlined the government’s ongoing commitment to equality and fairness."
Really? Do go on...
"This included the Home Secretary announcing that a measure in the Freedom Bill will allow people who were prosecuted for having consensual gay sex at a time when this was illegal to apply to have their convictions deleted from criminal records."
May also said in her speech; "...we will give schools the power to take tough action to tackle bullying, including homophobic and transphobic bullying."
Verily, the Conservatives giveth and the Conservatives take away.
Even if they don't say how they will giveth in practical terms.
Would anyone fall for this?
"Minister for Women and Equalities Theresa May has spoken out on a new equalities strategy, announcing that those harboring convictions for consensual gay sex should soon be able to apply to have their records cleared," Jamie Tabberer writes on PinkPaper.com.
"She added: “We will give schools the power to take tough action to tackle bullying, including homophobic and transphobic bullying."
"May will however scrap an inequality measure that would have called for public bodies to address class inequalities introduced by Harriet Harman, labeling it 'ridiculous'."
Pink News' headline reads; ''May scraps ‘ridiculous’ equality duty but promises new action on anti-gay bullying'
Ridiculous innit?

Julie Burchill: Burchill's Law

"I love Louie Spence, the queerly leering hero of the recent reality TV hit Pineapple Dance Studios. So I was irked by the kneejerk anti-American conservatism of the reported premise of his new show, wherein he will visit "redneck" towns in the USA, strike a pose and wait for "his sexuality and appearance" to stir up controversy.
This sounds woefully out of date. In the Glee-crazy US, the world's finest comic writer, David Sedaris, has remarked that on national signing tours he is often confronted with apparently redneck men who proudly push forward their fragrant adolescent sons and assure Mr Sedaris that they, too, are gay. If you want to make a point about contemporary prejudice against homosexuals, surely it would make a far more challenging show to go to a series of Muslim states and prance around in pantaloons? But of course, then the consequences would be no laughing matter."

Julie Burchill (Obviously), The Independent.

• Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

• Burchill's Law: As her newspaper column grows longer, the probability of Julie writing "Try doing that in a Muslim country!" approaches one.

Adoption: Sheila, Take A Walk

"The case-law shows that the right to manifest religious beliefs is a very weak right. It gives way to conflicting goals or values that society as a whole has decided are of importance and does so because they are (or should be) based on reason or evidence.
"We do not allow people to set fire to an abortion clinic, to carry out genital mutilation of young girls, or to massacre infidels, however sincere the religious beliefs that motivate such action, and however important they may be to the believer. Abraham would be very fortunate today to escape with a bindover for the binding, and attempted murder, of his son Isaac."
A Catholic adoption agency cannot refuse to consider placing a child with a gay couple if that is in the child’s best interests however much this may offend against religious beliefs. The law does not prevent people from believing that homosexual acts offend against the word of God. But if you offer a service to the public, it must be on terms that do not discriminate against people on grounds that society finds unacceptable."

David Pannick QC, 'Praise The Lord, But Don't Expect The Courts To Genuflect', The Times

• Sheila Matthews, a Christian adoption adviser dismissed from her job with Northamptonshire County Council for refusing to recommend same-sex couples as suitable parents, has lost her claim for religious discrimination.
'Homosexual practice is not God's will: What Christian paediatrician who lost job on adoption panel told tribunal', The Daily Mail (Obviously).

Pink Pound: Exploding The Myth Of Gay Money

"If you believe what you read, "gays” (really just gay males) are a lucrative group, a “dream market” made up of high-income earners who demand nothing but the best. That’s a great image for a minority group to have, isn’t it?
Gay marketers, using unreliable data, relentlessly promoted the image of well-off, desirable gays (usually gay-male couples) all through the ’90s. It’s become a stereotype.
But it isn’t true. The overwhelming consensus of over 60 research papers on lesbian and gay incomes holds that gay men earn less than straight men..."

This site summarizes all the research on lesbian & gay economics in one convenient place. This site explodes the myth of gay money.

Canadian journalist Joe Clark has spent a year researching the facts behind the manufactured fallacies of the Pink Pound and the gay market.
His brilliant new data-packed website should be the last word on this subject - though sadly Fagburn fears it won't be.
This guy deserves an award.

Out 100: Out Demons Out!

A royal wedding in the offing, The Beatles on iTunes and Children On Need on Friday - truly these are wonderful times to be a fuckwit.
The rest of us must somehow struggle on.
I haven't found anything to write about in today's papers yet, so here's a photo I like of Chris Colfer from the new Out 100; the US magazine's annual list of the top 100 gaylebrities who they wanted to take photos of who returned their calls.
Enjoy!

• The photograph above is part of a Stonewall riots themed session. Mr Colfer's own views on Judy Garland are not known.