What a thoroughly loathsome and scurrilous newspaper the Scottish Daily Mail is. Reporter Eddie Barnes found "the Scottish Executive was attacked last night for caving in to European legislation and ushering through more liberal laws governing homosexual practices". Now, along with ‘straights’, gays could enjoy group sex too. The Mail screamed: "Ministers bow to Europe to legalise gay group sex". That was despite the efforts of unelected Christian militants who had hijacked the political processes to block gays from receiving equal treatment under British law. The Mail’s flunky’s, those same shrill voices we hear over and over again, demanded Britain stand up to Europe. "…They should fight it in the courts and protect our youngsters", squealed Gordon McDonald of extreme Christian group, Christian Action Research Education (CARE). From the very same paper that printed anatomical drawings on how to distinguish a homosexual from a heterosexual during their campaign to retain Section 28, the Mail insulted the intelligence of its readers once again by mimicking the political posturing of thirties Nazi propaganda by linking gay equality to even greater evils: "If it is passed by the Scottish parliament, whole swathes of Scottish legislation will be changed to comply with EU Convention rights… It could mean an early release for several long-serving murderers…" The conviction of "yet another" homosexual child abuser, David Murphy had the Mail reminding readers of all the most recent cases of men abusing boys. Heterosexual cases of abuse were brushed aside despite only two days before; a 38-year-old man from Beith was jailed for raping and abusing two little sisters. "Nobody wants to create a witch hunt…" They implored, "but… The Scottish Executive… has a need to raise its game. Recent scandals make its preoccupation with legalising the promotion of homosexuality in schools and lowering the age of homosexual consent particularly inappropriate…" Using children to expound the religionists’ evil and malicious propaganda begged the question; just exactly what kind of society and moral values existed when the crimes of these homosexual priests, teachers and social workers took place? Exactly the sort of society the Mail’s new Scottish editor Ian MacGregor wants to promote today it appears. Getting the Scottish Mail to explain itself is hopeless. They refuse to answer my e-mails and when I try to speak to someone to answer some fairly simple questions – as I did last week when I got hold of the deputy editor – he said he heard noises and accused me of recording him. I hope the ‘voices’ go away; perhaps then the Scottish Mail might begin to behave more rationally.
Although, we should thank the Scottish Daily Mail for apparently recognising how people are less vulnerable to attack from gays. They want to see an end to the "scandalous practice" of mixed wards. An 83-year-old female patient died after a drunken 40-year-old man sexually assaulted her at a hospital in Kirkcaldy.
Now, would you buy a newspaper that only showed one side of an argument? No? Good! So The Scotsman should no longer have any gay readers then. The Scotsman’s other best reason not to buy it, Linda Watson-Brown, was still poking the coals of her full-time ‘anti-porn’ crusade. "Personally, I find that I can write about child abuse, pornography and exploitation until the cows come home…" (Don’t we all know it)! Not satisfied with attacking car showroom salesmen and newsagent managers, she blasted: "Surely all journeys with children on board should provide entertainment appropriate for the youngest passenger? No matter if a plane has only one three-year-old who sleeps for ten hours, it is no excuse for any film above a U certificate".
The fanatic feminist was at it again in another issue. "I have no truck with the BBFC’s (British Board of Film Censorship) naïve and disingenuous view that pornography always shows consensual sex. I also refuse to believe that an 18-certificate sticker ensures that children are never exposed to the degradation which goes by the name of adult entertainment".
If that hasn’t convinced you how much The Scotsman has changed, they have promoted the editor of the pro-Section 28 Scotland on Sunday, John McGurk and let me tell you the name of its new Glasgow editor: Ramsay Smith. Ring any bells? Yes, he was the former editor of the Scottish Daily Mail, responsible for the vilest homophobia during the Section 28 war, second only to the Martin Clarke of the Daily Record who also now writes in The Scotsman. We changed the Record: We can kill The Scotsman! Spread the word!
Remember when it was only the gay boys that asked to do cookery at school? It made life hard for the ‘straight’ boys who crushed their culinary leanings to lead a life of regret, producing rickety chairs and unstable bookshelves. My heart bleeds. Rikki Brown in the Scottish Sun, otherwise a little too meat-and-two-veg for my liking, was quite taken aback to learn more boys than ever were rolling the dough. "Pants, it’s not cool", Rikki snapped. "…Shouldn’t they be kicking a ball about a street? Or locked in the bathroom with a nude book…? At 15, I’m sorry but burds are what you should be getting passionate about". With boys like him in woodwork, I can quite understand the attraction of Home Economics. There have been plenty of girlz to inspire us! Gertrude Stein’s "constant companion" – as they called her – was Alice B Toklas. After she went to live with Miss Stein in the rue de Fleurus in Paris, in 1908 she and Gertrude explored their interest in food, culminating in a fascinating cookbook, peppered with memories of Alice’s life with Gertrude during the war and recipes like Coq Couvert de Cumin (Covered Cock with Cumin). Perhaps I should invite Rikki to dinner at my place to enjoy a flawless entrée of Chilean sea bass dusted in cocoa powder with Guatemalan mangoes in a light chutney mix, mashed potatoes with a light cream fennel sauce and Anjou pears with yoghurt cream cheese and Grand Marnier swirls, topped off with a cappuccino con panna. If he wants to reciprocate… Educate me into his way of life. Something cleverly microwaved from Spa? That would be delightful! I’ve never been to Motherwell.
The Scottish Sun’s reactionary-of-choice, Jim Sillars wrote: "Peter Mandelson is entitled to feel miffed at being sacked for cuddling up to rich men, taking their cash for political purposes, doing them favours, and lying". But Mandy’s gay. His spent all his life lying to hide his sexuality from dickheads like Jim Sillars who think gay men want the age of consent "as low as possible to ensure a continuous supply of sexual partners". He moaned: "Rewarding the rich has become Tony Blair’s main hobby. He has dished out more peerages in four years than Mrs Thatcher did in 11". Q: What Party did we elect to run Britain? A: A Labour Government. Q: What Party has a sufficient majority in the Lords to halt gay human rights legislation? A: Conservative. And what unelected prick twice lost his seat only to be rewarded with his own weekly column in the Scottish Sun? A: Jim Sillars. I rest my case.
There’s hope for us yet. Former editor of The Sun Kelvin Mackenzie who has in the past referred to us as "botty burglars" and "shirtlifters" has joined forces with Labour Peer Lord Alli to launch a gay radio station. (Just a moment while I sit down). Mackenzie is chairman and chief executive of the Wireless Group whose radio stations include TalkSport and Scot FM. Lord Alli has been appointed chairman of the consortium, which is also backed by Scottish Media Group and the Carphone Warehouse and, if successful, will launch Purple Radio for London’s listeners. And us…? In Scotland? Hello…? We’d be lucky to get a few minutes of airtime!
Suddenly a window flew open and there was a rush of fresh air. Was it spring? No. The List magazine was celebrating its sex issue. Or was it making an issue of sex… Whatever. Not just St Valentine’s timely entry onto my PC calendar but a flood of emails from enthused editor, Mark Fisher signalled this special event. And deservedly so. But why, oh why does one ever need an excuse for sex? Since most of us have It more times than we go to the cinema, why doesn’t The List bulge with sex in every issue?
As events guides go, The List is a good egg. It has to be. In London during the early seventies, a rather plain What’s On was shoved aside by new girl on the block: Time Out. So good there was even a book. Gay bars were not only listed, they were occasionally photographed. From the inside! With the Oz trials hardly a distant memory, this was challenging stuff. Things moved fast in London. So goodbye the fifties’ pecs Pictorial, sixties’ Jeffrey and hello, seventies’ Gay News! And gay ads. The ads became the subject of a court case. The protesters were a motley bunch that lived in mock-Tudor semis and bought their sheets from Brentford Nylons. (That was just me being nasty, which I accept is quite unnecessary, since they lost anyway)! Time Out pressed on regardless and largely ‘straight-acting’ gay readers rewarded them with pages and pages of personal advertisements for their columns of Lonely Hearts. Defined by sexuality and living it politically - as most gays do - we remain a good thermometer of sexual culture in Britain. From the Puritanism in the wake of the AIDS crisis to the whiff of sexual liberation riding on the back of the Internet, we turned a muddy corner into a new century. Now London has Ken Livingstone and it’s gay scene is as liberal as any other European city. How liberal, you ask? Frilly knickers? Smack botties? Well, put it this way… It is now quite possible to go for a drink at a bar, dressed in your best rubber, without ever having to go to the ‘wee boys’ room’! (I’ll give you a moment)! Scotland doesn’t yet have a bar with a safe place round the back for a quick fumble let alone the chance to sit in a leather hammock and pick nuts! Time Out hangs stubbornly onto listing gay venues separately and bravely carries commentary from a gay perspective. (Reminder: There are more gays than bums on pews today)! In Scotland, what gay commentators/journalists (and yes, editors)! Exist, are closeted or self-loathing if they can ever be arsed to see beyond Tanya from Livingston’s tits. While morally conservative commentators flood the Scottish media, every moral issue has to be filled with outrage from a string of religionists. The List has had its moments too. No, it doesn’t ask the Catholic Church or the Kirk’s Board of Social Responsibility what it thinks of a new production, but a previous editor once insisted that gay clubs/events didn’t need their own section because gay staff felt it singled out gays for special treatment. (Oh, yes! That old chestnut)! She appeared to suggest this was a liberal attitude. Like the Daily Record appears to think it quite liberating to say how OK it is to be lesbian, show a picture of a couple of them curled up together, have Old Mother Burnie sort out their angst, then ban them from ever advertising for partners in its personal columns. This sends a clear message that it is OK to be lesbian, providing it’s titillating to others. Hide gay sexuality and you hide all our sexuality’s. Show it all! Celebrate it! Give us a bit more than a ‘wee special’ when we’ve behaved ourselves. I want the The List’s Valentine’s special every fortnight! I want the venues. The news. The politics. The commentary! Where? When? How? Who? Tits, bums, arse, cock… My efforts may not have been wasted since I have it on good authority that The List is planning a gay section.
A couple of years ago the Daily Record was attacking Edinburgh children’s TV presenter Gail Porter: "…Her hair piled high and her make-up plastered on… Wearing just a bra and pants on the front page of FHM…" Gail "angered parents". I expressed my concern that parents were reading this tripe in the first place, but now its prudish sister, the Sunday Mail was finishing her off after she turned up to work leathered! She was already in deep water after the Church complained about her calling herself a ‘daughter of Satan’. Linda Watson-Brown sniffed: "It’s not clever Gail, and it’s not grown-up". Gail is now narrating the sex-swapping Channel Four documentary Boy Meets Girl. Go girl!
New teen-mag, Mad About Boys was sure to evoke the wrath of Scotland’s minions of sexually repressive commentators and journalists. Sure enough, The Scotsman’s Linda Watson-Brown, the Record’s Tom Brown and the Scottish Mail all pounced on early editions. There was a "wringing of liver-spotted hands" as Muriel Grey cheekily put it in the Sunday Herald. "Store bans ‘sexual’ pre-teen magazine", bellowed the Mail. Rather prematurely, I think, since publishers Planet 3 had not even asked Woolworths to stock it. The Scotsman’s editorial went on to prescribe "what childhood should involve" while their sour feminist, Watson-Brown advised from La-La Land: "In one instance, it was claimed that when a young girl well under the age of consent wrote to an agony aunt to seek advice on a boyfriend who was asking for fellatio, she was told how to perform the act rather than how to get rid of him. In a society where young people say they do not believe oral sex constitutes ‘real’ sex, and where sexually transmitted infection rates are soaring, you do not have to be Mary Whitehouse to be worried by this". This ‘letter’ didn’t appear in Mad About Boys, and even if it did, fellatio most certainly is ‘real’ sex and the magazine was right to advise how to do it properly. I’m all for sexual lessons that inform youngsters that sex is not just about getting screwed.
Glasgow’s Evening Times issued a "school alert on child porn social worker". He "sparked an alert after it emerged he lives opposite a primary school". 45-year-old Charles Doran was suspended from his job with East Renfrewshire Council after firefighters found the "stash" putting out a fire at his flat in Govanhill, opposite St Bride’s Primary School. There was no suggestion he had ever taken pictures of children himself or had any direct contact with children in the course of his work. The allegations appeared to centre wholly on pictures of kids faces he’d cut out of magazines and stuck on the bodies of naked men and women having sex. The Evening Times were quick to point out: "The social worker lives alone in a first-floor flat… in Craigie Street, Govanhill… Dirty curtains were pulled closed all day on his front window. Inside the close, an LP cover has been used to patch up a broken window above the door to his flat. No-one answered when the Evening Times called at his flat today… A spokeswoman for Glasgow City Council today confirmed that St Bride’s school had been contacted regarding the situation…" I don’t know why they didn’t just give his full address and be done with it.
CUT IT OUT!
Katie Grant was in Scotland on Sunday promoting something nasty sticking up out of the water. "It says something remarkable about marriage, given the invective poured on it by unhappy individuals, that it still stubbornly refuses to go down the plughole". Try pulling the chain again, dear. "…The real truth is that although many people cock theirs up, marriage is a very good idea". Isn’t anything with a cock up it? (Oops! Should I have said that)?
David Stenhouse in the Sunday Times Scotland’s Ecosse magazine had some advice about dress: "Silk may be slinky, velvet may have a decadent sway, but any self-respecting member of the fashion cognoscenti knows the only material to be seen in is Harris tweed". I think Mr Stenhouse must be ‘straight’.
Piers D’éere wrote in The Scotsman: "Peter and I go back a long way. In fact, he used to step out with Pippa, my ex. I remember once that she joked to me: ‘Even Peter was better in bed than you. And he’s gay’. I took it in good spirits and, shortly afterwards, we got divorced".
On the new gel being developed to protect women against HIV infection, the Catholic Church’s new ‘Sexfinder General’, Father Danny McLaughlin told Scotland on Sunday how he didn’t believe it would make people more sexually active. "People seem to be dangerously liberal in their attitude to sex already".
