Drugs: Crystal Myths

The first feature in the UK press about how crystal meth was taking over the London gay scene was in a short-lived gay magazine called Phase in 1994.
At least once a year every year since then there’s been at least one scare article claiming the same thing - Crystal Meth Is Coming!
Almost always written by people who know about as much as drugs and gay clubs as I know about Chinese opera.
Here's another one on Pink News via The Lancet.
It’s a great sensationalist story – gay sex and drugs and death and all that – but has never been based on any reliable research, just hearsay and drugs hysteria – and often homophobia.
And it's never happened.
Year after year after year.
Odd that.
Do you think they were just making it up?

But this is the economy of the media - gay and straight - this is how it works.
If you're a journalist you can't sell a story to an editor by saying; "All evidence indicates use of this drug among British gay men is negligible and stable."
And similarly, why would an editor want to run an article pointing out the same uninteresting fact to their readers?
'Dog bites man' isn't news.
'Drug-crazed gay men are fucking themselves to death!!!' is.
The facts can go hang. *
One thing that's become apparent to me after writing this blog for a few years is how certain gay groups also often overstate certain "problems".
It won't look good on your grant application if you just say; "Yes, there are problems, but things are about the same as last year, really. And any comparisons to what has happened in the States are ridiculous."
Much better to say; "THERE IS A NEW DRUGS PLAGUE THAT IS GOING TO KILL US ALL."
And then point out how you're working in this field and can you have some money, please?
A cynic might say they're just trying to secure government/local authority/lottery/whatever funding.
That's quite understandable - this government is cutting so much health funding to nothing.
But this is just a load of stupid nonsense.
Warning: Drugs - or rather writing or reading about them - may damage your brain.

* There are two things you can tell the most stupid and unbelievable lies about in the UK media - and sleep assured almost no-one will question or try to check them.

1. Drugs.

2. This week 's Officially Declared Enemies; Iran and Syria are quite popular at the moment.  
"But I read they eat their gay babies!"

Daily Star: Oh, Hang On...

Daily Star.

What a difference ten hours makes.
I'll check the state of play again at lunchtime.
Could be triplets by then.

Closet: For The Man With A Confused Double Life

Brought to you by the people who brought you thedailymash.

Statistic Of The Day: It's Not, It's Not, It's Not, Not A Sin

Americans who believe being gay is a sin are now a minority — a shift that a Southern Baptist-affiliated research group links to President Barack Obama's changed opinion of gay marriage.
A November survey from Nashville-based LifeWay Research found 37 percent of Americans polled said "yes" when asked if homosexual behavior is a sin. Forty-five percent said it was not. Seventeen percent didn't know.
That's a major change from LifeWay's September 2011 survey, when 44 percent said homosexuality was a sin, 43 percent said it wasn't and 13 percent didn't know...

Anthea Butler, associate professor of religious studies at the University of Pennsylvania, said that politics, culture and demographics have played a role in the growing acceptance of homosexuality. She pointed to Obama's support of gay marriage as well as gay rights victories in four state elections this past fall.
There's also the popularity of gay celebrities such as talk show host Ellen DeGeneres.
"Who wouldn't want to take their grandmother to see her show?" 

USA Today. 

Let us make a human sacrifice to Zeus and pray this is a sign that the Church Of Moron is in terminal decline.

Liam Fox: No Gay Marriage For Me

The Daily Mail. 

Strange you've spoken out on this, Liam.
How's your bff Adam Werritty taking it?

20MALEGAYNYC: GAY!

The New Normal: The New Boring

The New Normal - the new sitcom from Glee creator Ryan Murphy - starts on E4 this evening.
It's about a gay male couple who have a surrogate baby.
That's right, they're gay dads, and wh...

Sorry, I fell asleep just typing that.
The only interesting thing about this is how quickly a subject that was once outré can become a cultural cliché. 

PS It's rumoured Elton John's had a second baby. Zzzz...

Tom Daley's Mum: J'Accuse

Dear Mr Sparkes,

We last spoke at Loughborough in June 2011 after you asked for Tom to do a favour for you and open a sports park at Loughborough. I don't believe that you spoke much to Tom directly in 2012, other than to briefly congratulate him on his medal. Since the media is your preferred method of communication, I thought that I should do the same.
As Tom's mum, I take a lot of pride in the way he handles himself. I am sure that he will make mistakes along the way, but to date he is doing a lot right. I find it incredible that you want to criticise him so publicly, when he does so much for your organisation and for sport in the UK - and worse, you do it by giving your opinion without any thought. You did not speak to Tom - or his agent - first. Is this a good way for a CEO to operate? 
As far as I'm aware, Tom was one of the few major success stories for British Swimming this summer... and possibly one of the athletes that helped you retain your job. Others say that your performance was the worst of any CEO in British sport. Surely you should be thanking Tom and showing your support and gratitude?
The Daily Mail.

Debbie Daley writes an open letter to David Sparkes, British Swimming's chief executive, who - again - has publicly criticiised Tom Daley's non-diving commitments.
Bit odd to place it with the Mail, though. 
Please read it all. 
What a wonderful woman.

Rylan Clark: Worse Than Jimmy Savile - Official

Daily Star (Prop R Desmond etc).

Hard to find fault with this argument, really.
Rylan has the evil gene.

PS Yup, looks like there's not much news today...

Morrissey: "I Nearly Voted For Ukip"

"I nearly voted for Ukip. I like Nigel Farage a great deal.
"His views are quite logical – especially where Europe is concerned, although it was plain daft of him to applaud the lavish expense of the royal wedding at a time when working-class England were told to cut-back, shut-up and get stuffed."

Morrissey, Loaded interview.

Is anyone surprised by this?
He was also a bit rude about Posh and Becks.
Wow, she's just so edgy these days!
Haven't seen a copy yet, but I guess he's rude about the Royal Family, too.
"Bloody foreigners, come over here, eating our foxes." etc.

PS It's spread over ten pages, with curiously some very old photos - I'll post a link to scans when I find them...

BNP/UKIP: Gay Bigots Left Reeling After Finding Out Their Bigoted Parties Are Riddled With Bigots

There has never been many openly gay members of the BNP, probably due to the huge amount of hatred and homophobia that exists within the BNP.
However, in recent years one gay BNP activist has emerged as a kind of unofficial spokesman for the small gay community within the British National Party.
Joshua Wren from Swansea has never hidden his sexuality from his fellow bigots in the BNP but now it seems the hatred directed towards him and the gay community has reached a point where even he can no longer stay within the party.
We have obtained a copy of a letter he penned yesterday to the BNP membership department announcing his immediate resignation from the party.
I reproduce the text in full [here]...

Hope Not Hate blog, yesterday.

Ukip youth leader Olly Neville sacked for supporting gay marriage 

The leader of Ukip’s youth organisation has been stripped of his post by the party leadership, after expressing his support for gay marriage on national radio.

Olly Neville, who was appointed as chairman of Young Independence (YI) at the end of last year, was told by the party’s chairman that comments in support of gay marriage were “completely at odds with the party’s policy” and risked “seriously setting back the party’s current growth”...

The Independent.

As ever there's clearly more to this than meets the eye, but less than you can see.
Internecine party feuds are rarely about what they're said to be about. *
But anyway, I don't want to sound like a bigot, but I think anyone called "Joshua" or "Olly" sounds like a posh twat who should be taken out and shot.

* Edit: Apparently Olly is quite mad. Here's a piece he wrote called I Agree With Nick Griffin.

Update: Another right-wing careerist gayer wades in. Oh, give us guns.

Bradley Manning: Days

After more than two weeks of intense litigation by Bradley Manning’s defense, and hearing how Quantico brig staff blatantly disregarded Navy Rules, military Judge Denise Lind has confirmed that Bradley was punished unlawfully before trial by awarding 112 days credit...
Judge Lind has granted credit for the 7 days Bradley was kept on suicide risk watch against Navy Rules, 75 days from November 1 to January 18 when he was kept needlessly on Prevention of Injury watch, and 20 days from April 1-20 when he was forced to remove his underwear at night. Lind said Bradley’s confinement was “more rigorous than necessary,” and that it “became excessive in relation to legitimate government interests.”

Bradley Manning Support Network.  

Bradley Manning has been imprisoned without trial since May 29th 2010 - 956 days.
His actual trial/court martial has been put back again, and now won't start until June 3rd at the earliest - that's over 150 days from now.
And it'll be over three years he's been in solitary. 
What's 112 days off Life again?

PS Hegemony and Sodomist Strategy: Gay Inc. against Bradley Manning, Andrew Fogle, Jacobin.

Queercore: Explosion!

This playlist consists of tracks curated for an as-yet unreleased collection of early 90s queer rock and punk entitled Queercore Explosion! The songs are mostly from 1990-1995, to illustrate the queer punk rock explosion of the early 90s, a time when almost nobody in rock music was openly gay (even the ones you might assume were out were not). Some of this music overlaps with the Riot Grrrl movement of the same time. Listen, enjoy, and learn about a nearly secret underground musical movement that existed before the internet! 

Here ya go - on da YouTube!

Thanks to Larry-Bob and Jon.
Want some more?
There's 8 hours on Queer Music Heritage.

Jeanne Manford: 1920-2013

Founder of Parents, Families And Friends Of Lesbians And Gays (PFLAG).

'After her son was beaten during a gay rights protest in 1972, Jeanne Manford spoke out: "I have a homosexual son, and I love him."'  The Advocate.

Much love and thanks to you and to gay men's moms everywhere - our best friends and supporters. x

London Men's Fashion Week: This Is Why We Lost The Colonies!

Just a reminder that Fagburn's fashion correspondent, Penelope Sloane-Square-Ponytrek, is liveblogging from London Men's Fashion Week all week.
Follow her on Twitter #godhelpusiftheresawar

Owen Jones: A Government Of Millionaires Just Made The Poor Poorer - And Laughed As They Did It

They cheered, they guffawed, they mocked. Picture the scene, and don't forget it as the next two and a half years of Cameron's Britain drag on: a smug pack of over-paid Tory MPs – some worth millions – sniggering as they prepared to slash the incomes of Britain's already struggling poor. Labour's Lisa Nandy and Ian Mearns pleaded with them in the Chamber, vainly, to stop laughing. Not since 1931 has a Government attempted to deliberately, consciously reduce the incomes of the poor. Oh, the hilarity...

Owen Jones on good form in The Independent. 

PS "Owen Jones boyfriend" has started turning up in Fagburn's top keyword searches. I'm not sure why...

Coalition 4 Marriage: Nobody Knows What's Going On In My Mind But Me

Word cloud based on the bios of Coalition For Marriage followers.

Brilliant.

With thanks to Coalition 4 Equal Marriage. x

Telegraph: Look

How modern!
Do they know the Telegraph doesn't think they should be allowed to get married?

PS Until she gave up in March, the star columnist in the Telegraph's Saturday magazine was lesbian of note, Sandi Toksvig.

Clubs: Where Have All The Good Times Gone?

I liked this elegaic piece by Little Bastard (Made-up name!!!) in Polari magazine on the death of London's alternative club scene.
Articles about alternative gay culture often descend into cultural elitism and class snobbery ("G-A-Y's just so common and vulgar, yah..."), this avoids that.
The gay scene tends to be circular, and I'm sure such spaces will rise again.
All it needs is some people to go and make it happen.

Update: Save Our Scene, QX magazine on London gay bar and club closures in the recession-era. 

Alex Jones: The Secret Plot To Turn Kids Gay

You've probably seen the video of Piers Morgan interviewing US shouty shock jock, Alex Jones, about gun control.
He talked a lotta sense, right?
Well, here's Mr Jones exposing the secret government plot to turn American kids gay by putting chemicals in fruit juice.
Enjoy.

Fagburn: Here Is The Gay Non-News

Dong! There's not much happening in Gayland to be honest. I won't keep you, so here's today's non-news in brief. 

Dong! Lots of people over 40 are getting overexcited about David Bowie releasing a surprise new single, Where Are We Now?, on his 66th birthday. It's not that good, really, but hurrah for nostalgia and that. Rumours of a surprise Gary Glitter comeback tomorrow unconfirmed.

Dong! Far more importantly it's Elvis's birthday today, which we always celebrate at Fagburn Mansions. Here's a Spotify playlist of some of my favourite Elvis songs I made a while ago. It's rimming ace.

Dong! Coalition 4 Marriage have released another ComRes poll on gay marriage. Telegraph dutifully salivates. Here's why, once again, it's really dodgy and goes against all the other research on this. And here's why ComRes/C4M polls can't be trusted. Not sure if this predictable anti-gay tripe even warrants comment anymore, but y'know...

Dong! Things are so desperate that another minor US celebrity no-one in the UK has heard of has come out is "newsworthy". Gay Idiot News dutifully salivates. More from Gay Star News: "Another Christian homophobe has said something stupid and homophobic today, almost certainly. GSN are so politically braindead, things like this are all that we get angry about. Plus more of the usual advertorial, press releases, days-old "news", general cringe-making naffness, and power-serving, Orientalist, hegemonic badly-written junk. Yay!"

Dong!: Even Richard Littlejohn in the Daily Mail couldn't raise my righteous ire today. "After getting their cassocks in a twist over female bishops, the Church of England has given the thumbs up to gay bishops — but only if they agree to remain celibate. I don’t want to sound difficult but, apart from God, how will anyone be able to check?" True, obviously. Note to the Church of England hierarchy, even Richard Littlejohn thinks all this is quite laughable.

Dong! A thick gay posh twat has been left - quite literally - stunned after finding out the BNP is full of bigots.  

Dong! Liked this piece, Columnism, by Ulrike Meinhof on how newspapers' "radical" columnists "function as a pressure release valve..." Much more to be said on the vanity and cliqueyness of "star columnists", and how this is antithetical to claims of being of the left, which I hope to wibble on about some day. (Thanks to Pierce Penniless x).

Dong! Why don't you just switch off your computer and go and do something less boring instead?

Coalition: I Never Promised You A Rose Garden

"We are married - not to each other. We are both happily married. This is a Government, not a relationship."

David Cameron launching the Coalition's fun-packed mid-term review this afternoon.
He's such a card, isn't he?
36 pages! 180 policies!
Brief summary: Carry on class war.
Still, not to worry, these two dudes love The Gays.
Unless they're dirty, thieving welfare scum. 

•  Idiotic cartoon from the Telegraph.

US/UK: Two Nations Divided By A Common Language

Ad on Queerty.

I wonder if anyone's ever lost out on a shag cause when they finally got to the bedroom and took their trousers off their new friend didn't like the make of their knickers?

The Little Richard Story: It's The Pictures That Got Little

Here is the blurb!: 'Klein goes on the hunt for Little Richard, the legendary ‘Architect of Rock and Roll’, who quit show business in 1957 at the height of his fame to become an evangelist. Richard was then lured back to secular music in the 1960s and 70s, but the excesses of stardom led him to a second retreat from the stage. For years he struggled to reconcile his religious calling with his flamboyant rock-and-roll persona, and at the time of filming, Klein finds Little Richard selling ‘Black Heritage Bibles’ for a Nashville couple. Sensing that his image is being exploited, Richard quits his sales position and deserts the film. But Klein turns this into an opportunity to reconstruct Richard’s personality through the words of his family and friends in his native Macon, Georgia, and to celebrate his status as a cultural icon by filming scores of Little Richard impersonators and adoring fans in Hollywood.'

Tate Modern, Starr Auditorium

Friday 11 January 2013, 19.00

Part of the series William Klein: Films, 1958-99

Thanks to EMF. Never knew this existed. Sounds ace. x

The Guardian: Letter Of The Week

Can I suggest that the Guardian stops putting the doings of the Church of England on its front page (Ruling that gay clergy can be bishops reignites church feud, 5 January)? Giving them the oxygen of publicity will only reinforce their idea that they remain relevant. Having insulted the entire female population over the issue of women bishops, they now do the same to the gay community by condescendingly agreeing to give them a measure of equality, but only as long as they don't actually engage in their disgusting version of the act of love. On both these issues, the church will bleat that, underneath its apparent misogyny, homophobia and general bigotry, real progress is being made towards enlightenment. Of course, this enlightenment is theirs not ours, as most of us moved way beyond them decades ago. So please, can you print their next cock-up (if you'll excuse the expression) on a much later page? Near the obituaries, perhaps?
Alan Clark
London

The Guardian.

The Guardian also published today a thoughtful and witty piece on this "ludicrous" hoohah by Giles Fraser, the former canon of St Paul's Cathedral of Occupy-supporting fame - Why Gay Bishops Have To Lie. 
Giles, along with the Rev Richard Coles and the late Oscar Romero are a good argument that maybe not all Christians are mad, and some are quite humane.
Further breaking with convention it's also illustrated online with the above photo featuring some of your actual gay men's faces.
Will wonders never cease?