Crispin Blunt: Tory Bummer For Bombing Syria

The Independent.

Admittedly it would be hard to throw people off tall buildings if you've bombed a city to dust, yeah.

Or for anyone to kill anyone when they're all already dead.

And would it have been okay to bomb Crispin Blunt back when he was a closeted and vocally anti-gay MP?

Update: From Kelvin MacKenzie in Monday's Sun...

In a poll for this newspaper that will strike fear into the hearts of the vast majority of our citizens one in four Muslims aged 18-34 said they either had “some or a lot of sympathy” for the Islamist Jihadis.

How do you mean sympathy?

Sympathy for firing a machine gun at point-blank range at unarmed innocent young people on a night out enjoying a band or a bite to eat? Sympathy for people who cut off the head of an unarmed hostage and film it to show the world their barbarism? ...

Sympathy for a death cult that throws gay people off roofs? ...

Kelvin edited The Sun in the 1980s and turned it into the most viciously homophobic and, of course, racist tabloid Britain has ever seen.

PS Why that Sun poll is bollocks.

See also The Media Have Failed Us: British muslims on coverage of the Paris attacks, Guardian.

Tweet Of The Week: Take That Putin!

.@JaymiUJWorld has a special message for President Putin in his latest GT column. Via https://t.co/KTWRgsA0xw pic.twitter.com/EHIZchabBe

— Gay Times Magazine (@GayTimesMag) November 21, 2015

LOL!

National HIV Testing Week: I'm Testing

Remember, even yummy young blond aryan supermen can get HIV, so do get tested.

Gilbert & George: God Save

From an excellent profile of the chuckle brothers in the Daily Telegraph.

PS I thought I'd made a BRILLIANT point before about G&G as Tory anarchists, by way of Edward Said, George Orwell and Jonathan Swift, but this seems to have been lost in the ether.

As you were.

Thought For The Day: Chelsea Kelsey

“My mum said to me when I was a teenager that after the age of 27 you don’t feel like you’re getting any older. And that’s about the age we all were when we started so I suppose I still feel about 27.” 

Chelsea Kelsey, Readers Wifes (with Kim Phaggs, left), in a Guardian article celebrating 20 years of Duckie.

Same.

It's tonight!

PS For the record today's Guardian Guide contains things about Ian McKellen and Olly Alexander, but they're not that interesting. Read this instead; Bob Stanley reviews Jon Savage's 1966: The Year The Decade Exploded.

Tory Scandal: Sex & Drugs & Blackmail

The Daily Mail are going big on this; The Sordid Scandal That's Engulfing The Tory Party.

Though it omits this nugget from yesterday's paper...

[The former party activist] said one of his [Mark Clarke's] most devious tricks during Road Trip events was to set MPs up in compromising situations so he could hold information against them to use as leverage in the future.

She wrote: ‘I variously observed a number of MPs being “provided with” young men and women. It became apparent that a certain select number of MPs were always in attendance at these events. It was also known that there was a construct known as “Mark’s girls” – women who flaunted themselves as his mistresses.

‘These women, along with any others that took his fancy, were often instructed to flirt with the heterosexual members. A group of young gay men received similar instructions.

‘I am told that they were instructed to go as far as possible, whilst Mark would arrange to film whatever encounters ensued.'

Blimey.

PS And Fagburn is still fascinated to know what Clarke had on Elliott Johnson that drove him to suicide.

GT: Seann!

LOL.

Labels are for clothes, closets are for clothes, clothes are for washing machines, socks are for feet, cliches are for rhubarb...

The Independent: Sorry?

The ever hopeless Independent.

For the last time, studies like this don't really 'find' anything.

Have you not noticed how sex research keeps contradicting itself?

Farc knows why the media keep reporting them with a 'Eureka!'-like flourish.

But where would journalism be without such unquestioning obedience of 'authority'?

Update: Spelling now corrected here, and 'study finds' now downgraded to 'disputed'. Crappy rainbow flag masking still present.

Paris Massacre: Looking

A fugitive terrorist on the run after the Paris massacre trawled a series of gay bars in Brussels just days before the attacks .

Salah Abdeslam, 26, who is being hunted by special forces over the co-ordinated atrocities, was a regular visitor to the city’s vibrant gay village.
 
Security services are scouring hours of CCTV footage taken from bars in central Brussels, in an area known as “Jacques Quarter”.

Counter-terror agents have been questioned bar owners after the extremist was spotted on a number of occasions at the end of October in the city’s vibrant homosexual quarter.

Officers are working to determine if he was scoping a target for an attack or was there to steal identification documents...

Mirror. 

Can someone explain why they've ruled out the possibilty he was there looking for cock?

PS No hang on, this letter writer to The Independent begs to differ...

Special treatment for gay refugees? That'd go down well the ones you turn back, rev.

PS The last of the famous international playboys...

'Pals said Salah was a "bit of a hell-raiser" but not gay and had such a reputation as a ladies' man he was dubbed "The Playboy"...'

Daily Star, who never make-up quotes from unnamed 'pals'.

Terence Davies: Post-Mirth

In his films, Davies is rather obviously drawn to the trapped, the stuck and the withdrawn: there are the manifold children incarcerated in dysfunctional families, Lily Bart in The House of Mirth, who overplays her hand in the fin-de-siecle marriage game, and The Deep Blue Sea’s Hester Collyer, crushed by the hypocrisy of postwar Englishness. His next film, about Emily Dickinson, continues the theme.

There’s a correlation to Davies’s own life too, and not simply in the firelight-illuminated territory of the small house in Liverpool where he spent his childhood, so brilliantly obsessed over in Distant Voices and The Long Day Closes, or the recent post-Mirth career paralysis...

This seems of a piece with aspects of the Davies emotional landscape familiar to anyone who has seen his early films. The “scar” that Catholicism left on him, for one: “I was terribly devout, I believed it completely. I prayed literally till my knees bled. My teenage years were awful because of that.” Then there was the realisation that he was gay (“that was even worse, that was beyond the grace of God. It was awful”), which he still appears to resent. “I have hated being gay, and I’ve been celibate for most of my life. Some people are just good at sex, and others aren’t; I’m one of them who isn’t. I’m just too self-conscious.” ...

The Guardian.

I've put Terry's name forward for The Guardian's Blind Date series, I reckon she'd be a right larf!

Britain's Students: The New Fascists?

A thought-provoking piece by Brendan O'Neill.

Perhaps you can read it if you think provoking thought is a good thing.

Though Brendan also does seem fond of being merely provocative.

And if you put something in a Daily Mail banner headline, you can forgive people who think you're now just Melanie Phillips in man drag.

Jan Moir Watch: Oh Mr Sheen!

Daily Mail, natch.

Didn't see this coming!

From the woman who brought you; Stephen Gately: A Strange, Lonely And Troubling Death.

Ian Greer: 1933-2015

Greer's homosexuality was an open secret in Westminster. He and his long-term partner, Clive Ferreira, were accepted as a couple years before civil partnerships were recognised. In retirement, he caused a stir by claiming on Radio 5 that there were 40 or 50 gay MPs in the Commons, though he never named names. He and Clive moved to South Africa after the collapse of his business with their dog, Sir Humphrey. There, Greer set up a soup kitchen for homeless children. He returned to London in 2013, to marry Ferreira, who survives him.

Independent. 

There's a lesson there: Never set up a business with your dog.

PS More on the strange warped LGBTory world here; Sex, drugs and blackmail claims rock the Tories: Party chiefs are accused of cover-up over allegations against bullying PM's aide who 'had sex dossiers on four MPs'.

Fagburn wonders what the odious Mark Clarke had on Elliott Johnson, the Tory party activist driven to suicide in September?

Chemsex: Lives Ruined Etc

Chemsex, a documentary by William Fairman and Max Gogarty, examines the burgeoning popularity of chemically-enhanced sexual encounters among young gay men. Following self-confessed ‘slammers’ and the health workers who are trying to encourage safe sex, Chemsex examines how addictive pleasures can feed self-destruction and despair. Chemsex, which played at the London film festival last month, will be released in the UK on Friday 4 December 

Guardian online - present a 'clip from documentary about the fight to save lives ruined by drug and sex dependence' [sic].

*******

[Scary music] We see David Stuart, the Mother Teresa Of Dean Street, walking round his palatial gay men's drugs clinic talking about 'hordes of gay men self-medicating their way through complicated sexual identity and experience [sic] with really harmful drugs.'

'Average number of sexual partners? Sometimes as many as...'

Have to stop him there, as you can't estimate an average by saying 'sometimes as many as'.

Cut to Simon, he's just got back home after having chemsex; 'Had a good time', says the poor wretched and dejected soul.

He tells us his tragic life story; 'school and family were pretty much fine, I had no complaints and was pretty fortunate with that. I'd never experienced misery, depresson, anxiety; I don't know whyfore I do this to myself...'

He says he also had some GHB earlier; 'So it was good.'

Which might answer his own question.

Fin.

Why won't he admit to his 'self-destruction and despair'!!??

False memory syndrome!!

PS The Guardian should perhaps have mentioned that Chemsex director, Max Gogarty, is this guy; Hate mail hell of a gap-year blogger: Cyber-bullies who attacked young author are accused of class hatred. 

When Max Gogarty, a 19-year-old gap-year student, landed a coveted blogging spot on which to chronicle his two-month backpacking adventure around India and Thailand, he could have never predicted how his moment of triumph would backfire so spectacularly.

But within 24 hours of his first posting on the guardian.co.uk travel pages, the teenager was swamped by a tidal wave of internet hate mail as he became a victim of the phenomenon of 'going viral'. As the north London teenager was touching down in Mumbai, hundreds of comments - many vitriolic - were appearing not only on his blog, but on scores of message boards and social networking forums, including Facebook and high-profile gossip sites such as Holy Moly.

The astonishing reaction was provoked when surfers spotted that he had the same surname as Paul Gogarty, a travel writer who occasionally contributes to the Guardian. Readers presumed he was a privileged public school boy whose father had secured him the blog spot and whose gap-year travels were being funded by the newspaper... 

Poor thing.

NB Chemsex is a Vice film. Their last gay-themed documentary was Searching For Spitman; 'Why are young men on London's council estates performing deviant acts on a person they call "Spitman"? This is a journey through the depths of West London. A story of what some of the young men on these estates will do for money...'

So, obviously they're not interested in sensationalism about some 'seedy' hidden world. 

PS The directors of Chemsex, Gogarty and William Fairman, are both straight. Perhaps making this documentary was like a cinematic gap year for young Max, rich boy's tourism, and a venture into a wild, exotic other?

Books: Speak My Language

Great to see this, Speak My Language and Other Stories: An anthology of gay fiction, edited by Torsten Højer, and carrying on the great work of Peter Burton.

Here's an interview with Torsten.

And here's a fine review in The Independent.

Russia: The Alexeyev Letter

Click to enlarge!

The US embassy in Moscow has given a Russian newspaper a grammar lesson over a fake letter that purports to show that the US pays gay rights activists to smear Russian officials.

The embassy marked more than two dozen mistakes in a copy of the alleged letter that it posted on its Twitter account. “Dear Izvestia, next time you use fake letters, send them to us – we will be happy to help correct the mistakes,” it wrote at the bottom.

The post was in response to an article in Izvestia on Wednesday that said activists were accusing the Russian officials of homosexuality to “earn grants” from the US State Department.

The article focused on prominent activist Nikolai Alexeyev, who told Ekho Moskvy radio station in May 2013 that Vladimir Putin’s aide Vyacheslav Volodin, the head of a state-owned bank and a director at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport were gay.

As proof of the US-backed “campaign to discredit” these officials, Izvestia quoted what the newspaper said was hacked correspondence between Alexeyev and the US State Department. Although it failed to provide a direct link, several quotes come from a letter posted on the CyberGuerilla website earlier this year.

In the letter, dated 11 May 2015, a rights envoy supposedly thanked Alexeyev for helping to organise a rally against Russian aggression in Ukraine, which drew “negative responses from Russian officials … a clear sign of excellent training and qualification of the protesters”.

“LGBT organisations will get increased financing at the expense of other opposition democratic organisations considering their low efficiency in developing civic society in Russia,” the alleged letter said...

The Guardian.

Might one suggest that as this letter was said to have been sent to Nikolai Alexeyev it might have just possibly been the creation of this increasingly nutty fantasist and master of the counter-productive publicity stunt?

The Interpreter Russia Update today notes...

Alekseyev himself is controversial figure in his own terms and is widely-traveled and publicized; when he appeared on Ekho Moskvy, some listeners texted that he himself was a provocateur within the gay movement.

From his first attempt at a gay demonstration in 2005, other gays denounced him as "a provocation of officials," since they believed he cooperated with the presidential administration to make the gay movement radical and visible, and then attract a police crackdown and angry public opinion.

These types of accusations are common in social movements in Russia where groups are split about tactics given the reality of state oppression and where it is easy to believe someone is a secret police informer given Soviet history. An American blogger accused Alekseyev of collaborating with the Kremlin when he claimed that a new anti-gay law would not be enforced, when it fact it was to charge a solo picketer. 

As Ekho Moskvy host Timur Olevsky commented during the talk show:

The co-organizer of the gay parade in Moscow, Nikolai Bayev, an acquaintance of Alekseyev, Nikolai Alekseyev believes that he is too rigid, and that this harms the cause of the gay community, however even so, he says that only coming out, only publicly emerging from the shadows, that is designating the right to be yourself, can help the LGBT movement in Russia.
 
Alekseyev has been arrested numerous times both for his attempt to stage the gay parades and campaign for same-sex marriages in Russia, where they are outlawed. He has also launched winning cases before the European Court of Human Rights on gay rights.

But he also became controversial in the West in August 2013 when he made a series of antisemitic comments on Twitter and Facebook about Advocate editor Matthew Breen and the magazine OUT. As a result, the organization Human Rights First, which had been active on promoting non-discrimination and tolerance of racial minorities and LGBYT withdrew from a planned conference call with Alekseyev. Alekseyev's social media outbursts at the time then culminated in slamming Peter Tatchell's "Love Russia, Hate Homophobia" campaign [Who could have predicted the two biggest egos in LGBT campaigning would fall out? FB]. Finally, he issued a death threat to Michael Lucas, a Jewish American with Russian and Israeli roots. Alekseyev then claimed to quit LGBT activism after the scandals...

See also, Is Nikolai Alexeyev The Russian LGBT Community’s Greatest Asset, Biggest Liability — Or Both? Max Seddon, Buzzfeed.

Thanks to Paul Canning (who thinks everything I write about Russia is the mad ranting of the last gay Stalinist). x

PS Fagburn's favourite entirely believable stories about the eminently sane Nikolai are his two (2) claims to have been kidnapped!

One Direction: Zayn Slams Rumours!

One Direction fans have long fantasised the duo are more than just friends, referring to them as Larry Stylinson.

Recently reports suggested Harry, 21, and Louis, 23, had fallen out and now travel separately.

But ex-Directioner Zayn leapt to their defence.

The Bradford boy, 22, said: “There’s no secret relationships going on with any of the band members.

“They won’t put their arms around each other as they’re conscious of this thing, which is not even true.

"It’s just the way the fans are. They’re so passionate, and once they get their head around an idea, that’s the way it is. If it wasn’t for that passion, like, almost obsession, then we wouldn’t have the success that we had.”

Daily Star. 

 

Erm, he's clearly not SLAMMING the rumours, is he, silly? 

 

Rather, he just sounds rather bored by it all.

 

Here's the gripping Fader interview with some saucy pics!

Property: Van Not Included

Other 'Hot homes with star connections' for sale and featured in the Independent's Homes And Property section are Michelangelo's Tuscan estate, 'Grimmy's X Factor House' and Gok Wan's old house - 'near Hampstead Heath'.

Tinder: It's What's Inside That Counts

“Apparently there’s a term for someone who gets turned on by intellectual stuff. You know, just talking. What’s the word?” His face creases the effort of trying to remember. “I want to say ‘sodomy’?” 

Sean Rad - intellectual, and co-founder and CEO of Tinder - opens up to the Evening Standard.

Stonewall: No Offence

Stonewall, the lesbian, gay, bi and trans equality charity, releases new research by YouGov today that shows offensive comments are frequently made about lesbian, gay, bi and trans people, but that very few people step in to challenge these slurs. The research comes ahead of Anti-Bullying Week.

In the past year, one in five (19 per cent) admitted to making offensive remarks about LGBT people. Almost a third (30 per cent) have heard offensive comments, or language like ‘poof’ or ‘dyke’, in the past month and half (49 per cent) have heard this sort of abuse in the past year.

Nearly two-thirds (63 per cent) of those who witnessed this abuse didn’t intervene, almost a third (31 per cent) said they did intervene but just three per cent said they offered support or assistance to the person targeted. The research also shows that women are twice as likely to confront someone they hear making offensive comments (27 per cent of women compared to 13 per cent of men).

Stonewall is asking people to sign up to its No Bystander pledge, and commit to calling out abuse when they hear it and to be brave, be heard and be kind. So far more than 16,500 people have signed up...

Stonewall. 

Not sure what we can deduce from this.

Does it include crap gags?

Calling someone a silly old queen?

Even if they are silly and an old queen (and you're their boyfriend)?

Going 'Whoops-a-daisy! 'in a 'comedy' camp voice?

Saying something's 'gay'?

Saying someone's gay?

Surprised it isn't higher tbh.

But hey! Why question a survey from an LGBT advocacy group who benefit from talking up a problem?

That'd be like questioning one of those endless 'surveys' from LGBT marketing groups saying we're all loaded.

Remember: 100% of surveys are 100% reliable!

PS Ben Goldacre points out some holes in a Stonewall survey about coming out.

Charlie Sheen: Shame

Back in 1982 when developing AIDS was viewed as a death sentence, I attempted suicide when I discovered I was HIV positive.

After hearing so many terrifying stories of long, agonising deaths, I just couldn’t face it.

But society’s ignorant response was almost as frightening.

Fortunately my attempt to take my own life failed and thankfully we’ve moved on from the hysterical reaction to AIDS in the 1980s.

Advances in medication and a more open-minded society have helped, but the Government is cutting funding for HIV services, there are new diagnosis every day and not everyone responds to the medication which combats the virus.

Now Charlie Sheen hasn’t helped the struggle to combat the stigma and misinformation that still surrounds the illness.

His claim that it would have been “impossible” to pass it on to other people is particularly damaging...

I understand the difficulties surrounding someone in Hollywood admitting this and it’s appalling to hear he’s been blackmailed.

Though going public about his status could have contributed towards normalising the condition - an important step in combating the spread of the virus.

Sheen is only admitted it because he was forced to do so.

It all contributes to a warped perception of the illness and turns HIV back into the sinister secret it was viewed as 30 years ago.

Joanthan Blake, also of LGSM (note the Pits & Perverts t-shirt), in the Mirror.

Bit of an odd one this, especically when you consider the Mirror's role in trying to (force) out Charlie Sheen, their awful 'Hollywood HIV panic' angle, and the incredibly shitty Fleet Street Fox article; The Hollywood actor with HIV deserves everything he gets - and worse.

But bear in mind this is in the Mirror and may only be very loosely based on what Jonathan said. 

PS A less judgemental piece from Independent Voices...

Syria: Bombs Away!

Steve Bell, The Guardian.

See also Terror Can Only Succeed With Our Cooperation by Simon Jenkins. (And his excellent book, Mission Accomplished?: The Crisis Of Western Intervention).

PS The Empire Of Chaos: An interview with Noam Chomsky.

Hollywood HIV Panic: Oh, It's Charlie Sheen!

There you go, 'panic' over.

Maybe we'll go back to scaremongering about chemsex now?

NB Dan Wootton has not taken credit for the Mirror's story this time.

PS And the Telegraph re-run This is what it's really like to live with HIV (first published in April).

PPS What is HIV? The Express finds out!

Update: Fact-checking the [US] media on Charlie Sheen and HIV - and more on 'inflammatory media coverage'.

Clickhole: Raising A Gay Son

When it comes to true allies, it’s hard to find better friends to the LGBTQ community than Mitch and Lauren Hendrick. A lot of people say they support gay rights, but this couple went above and beyond by conceiving and raising a gay son.

That’s right. Mitch and Lauren’s son, Daniel, is 16 years old and is sexually attracted to men. It would have been easy for the Hendricks to simply put a rainbow flag up in their window or change their Facebook profile pictures, but the couple instead took the time and effort to give birth to a son who is actually gay.

Wow! Truly inspiring.

Admittedly, the Hendricks still have a little ways to go before they become perfect allies. They have a straight daughter, and neither Mitch nor Lauren are themselves gay, but when you consider how much the average person actually does to help the LGBTQ movement, you have to admit that the Hendricks are really doing something remarkable.Of course, we can’t expect everyone to go the same distance as the Hendricks have, but if the couple inspires even a few people to show their support for the gay community by having some gay children, our world will definitely be a better place. 

Looks like love wins again!

Clickhole.

Moschino Barbie: Barbie Boy

God help us if there's a war!

PS An actual Barbie ad, pretty sure it's internet only.

The Guyliner writes...

The advert isn’t quite the watershed moment we’ve all been waiting for – the Barbie doll is a limited-edition in association with fashion house Moschino, and the little boy is styled to look like the brand’s creative director Jeremy Scott, so it’s all very tongue in cheek.

But, honestly, what I wouldn’t have given to see a a boy in an advert playing with a doll when I was that age.

It may come as zero surprise to learn I was a boy who liked to play with dolls. At playgroup, you couldn’t get me out of the Wendy house, apparently, and on the first day at primary school, I marched straight to the dressing up box at play time and put on a skirt. As a child you don’t realise the consequences of your actions or that one day you’ll be embarrassed by what you’ve done – like a really innocent version of being mortifyingly drunk and uninhibited – and nobody has taught you that you have to behave a certain way just because, so you screw it up...