15 April 2002 - 16 May 2002
It was a sex story presented in a way that only a Scottish tabloid can. "SHOP PUT PORN ON MY PC", the Scottish News of the World blasted. These stories read so much better when a child is involved, so enter a "shocked eight-year-old girl", from Edinburgh, who "found hardcore porn on the family computer" when she "accidentally accessed one of the sites after pressing a wrong key". I'm nonetheless astonished "little Chloe Riordan accidentally called up the filthy files" at all, after all, the "vile e-mails" were hidden on a cache on the computer's hard disc after it was returned from Currys where it had been mended. Chloe already had her own "wee e-mail account". The e-mails were the usual unsolicited stuff from America; if you have a pc you've probably already seen the ads: More babes than you'd find on a fortnight in Lesbos and enough Viagra to lift an eiderdown filled with gravel. Pull out your Visa, show them your number and it's all yours! Chloe's dad "was horrified" to discover the "X-rated filth" and stormed: "I'm disgusted. It was bad enough having to see those images for myself without my child being exposed to them... The material was depraved". Ever heard of Net Nanny? One of James Riordan's gripes was of "disturbing" material that included "webcams of schoolgirls and sex acts with teenagers". One of the sites was called Tender Youth, and another, Everyone Loves A Teacher's Pet. This is fantasy. If it were not, it would be a police matter. We have to separate fact from fantasy here; games of Daddy's Little Girl, bouncing up and down on your partner's lap, are not for little girls. They are games played by adults, straight or gay, men or women. Sex may well be the issue troubling S.N.O.T World, but was it for Chloe's dad who wanted "a refund and compensation"?
The Daily Mail hasn't treated a gay man kinder since human rights activist, Peter Tatchell attempted a citizens' arrest on Robert Mugabe. The Mail headlined Pim Fortuyn as the "scourge" of immigrants. Most papers referred to him as "far right" and headlines, supposedly used to highlight the most important aspects of the story, revealed he was "gay" and a "dandy". The Daily Record, whose readers probably consider rucked nets at windows and quilted, flameproof nylon bedspreads stylish, sniffed: "His house was decorated with modern art, black and white portraits of himself, framed magazine covers and pictures of naked men. He drank Earl Grey tea from the finest china and conducted interviews in an arbour in the garden, with his spaniels Kenneth and Carla never far from his side". The Scotsman's Christine Aziz described him as "flamboyantly gay" who "kept photographs of Lenin, Marx, and naked men on his walls...", he was someone the Daily Telegraph called "a high-camp homosexual". Pim Fortuyn, a popular Dutch politician, was shot dead. He had voiced the concerns of many Dutch residents that the liberal laws of the Netherlands, which had traditionally welcomed immigrants was, at the same time, in danger of jeopardising those traditions. He was neither anti-Muslim nor immigration but expressed deep concerns over the influx of provincial Muslims who were unwilling to integrate into a liberal country. In the past, the Netherlands has taken gay Scots as political refugees prior to the eighties when homosexuality was illegal and when the age of homosexual consent in Britain was 21. More common refugees to the Netherlands, particularly Muslims, far from embracing the liberal values of their new home, are often traditional, conservative and virulently homophobic. Fortuyn expressed the belief that unlike Islam, Christianity and Judaism has gone through the Laundromat of humanism and enlightenment. Had anyone told him about Scotland? When the Clause 28 scandal swept the nation, Christian militants and the so-called 'right-wing' tried to make hasty alliances with other religionists, Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus to challenge the repeal of the law preventing the 'promotion' of homosexuality in schools. Fortuyn's labelling of Islam as "backward" certainly struck a chord with many Dutch, focusing on the incompatibility of religion with liberal government. Sadly, its populist message also attracted many who were undoubtedly racist.
The resignation of Wendy Alexander, the woman who carried the can for the eventual repeal of Section 2a (Clause 28), on Friday, 3 May 2002, from the heart of Scottish politics was very sad news indeed. Reasons for her departure, fuelled by some wild speculation and fabrication, lit the media's torch. Alexander's differences with First Minister Jack McConnell were exposed to closer scrutiny. Jack McConnell was pictured smiling and elsewhere mockingly noted how he had been forced to cut short a trip to Arran, an island hardly a million miles away, just off the west coast of Scotland. On Alexander's departure, Alan Cochrane in Scottish editions of the Daily Telegraph remarked acidly: "Scotland will survive perfectly well without her... She may have the brains of a Shergar but she often displayed the political nous of a rocking horse. She demonstrated this never more publicly than with her handling of the debate to repeal Section 28, or 2(a) in Scotland, that allows the promotion of homosexual material in schools". What Cochrane conveniently forgot was his and most of the rest of the media's role in Section 2a's repeal. No politician could've foreseen such naked aggression. Cochrane continued: "She compounded that mishandling with the outright arrogance in telling Henry McLeish, the then First Minister, to effectively 'get stuffed' when he asked her to take responsibility for the water industry". It was, Cochrane described, performed in a "high-handed manner" for which she should have been sacked. "McConnell added the transport portfolio to her list of duties at the end of last year. She couldn't possibly do any more, she cried. Mr McConnell's response was a simple one. He told her to get on with it". But Alexander was forced to tackle a portfolio originally performed by five ministers! Reading between the lines, Cochrane believed McConnell's leaving message to Alexander was: "Look, life's a bitch in this game so why should you get special treatment?" With truly liberal opinion scarcer than rocking horse shit in Scotland's media, Cochrane dumped his stick-banging-on-floorboards opinion in the laps of listeners to BBC Radio Four's 'The World Tonight'. In the Scottish News of the World, commenting on SNP's Dorothy-Grace Elder's resignation being overshadowed by Labour's Wendy Alexander, Euan McColm snapped: "Alexander's behaviour shows she is capable of the most childish fit of spite - she puts her own moment in the spotlight before anything else... A Cabinet minister should be above childish tantrums... For all her brilliance, she has behaved little better than a spoilt child". John MacLeod - sufficiently conservative-natured to secure a regular place in the Scottish Daily Mail as well as the stodgy Herald - appeared to be wearing an apron as he leaned over the fence to gossip about someone who told someone about how "apparently a small woman called Wendy was forever aboard, (the first class carriage between Edinburgh and Glasgow), jabbering loudly into her mobile about 'effing Gordon and blinding Jack and bloody Henry' in utter disregard for the privacy or comfort of fellow passengers". MacLeod - a gay man, I'm embarrassed to say - variously described Alexander as "petulant", a "little lady" and "a figure more admired than loved". He suggested: "Alexander lacks gravitas. She is extremely small and talks at break-neck speed... Alexander's demotic whine is tiresome and her fondness for crude language was not to everyone's taste". (Would pin heels, a tight skirt to show her arse and three weeks at a Swiss finishing school suit)? Trotting out a string of Alexander's faults, he added how the late First Minister Donald Dewar had "stood by his protégé even when she led the Executive straight into the Section 28 debacle..." and grumbled: "The Section 28 row highlighted Wendy Alexander's greatest liability; a persistent question about her judgment. The Scottish Executive was under no obligation to repeal Thatcher's 1987 measure. Scarcely a soul knew it applied in Scotland. Only the vociferous gay lobby cared about it and Labour had not even mentioned it in the 1999 manifesto. Alexander was inexperienced enough to be deeply shaken by the ensuing outcry and found herself almost abandoned on the issue as Cardinal Winning huffed, Brian Souter raised his standard and Executive colleagues briefed against her". (Don't dare tell me how grateful I should be Scotland's press has at least one regular gay columnist)! Otherwise dismissed as "extravagant hype" by a Scottish Daily Mail editorial, Wendy Alexander's remarkable talents were not, fortunately, ignored by most of the press. She had pitched battle with appalling levels of sexism that continue to bubble away in Holyrood and amongst the Scottish press pack. She, along with the other ousted woman from Donald Dewar's cabinet will be missed. Don't worry. Like any good diva; she'll be back with a new style and a remix! Watch yer back, Jack! She'll get the gay vote. And as any good marketing guru will tell you: We set the trends!
A positive gay story in The Herald - where homophobia and censorship of gay issues have been recorded - on gay parenting was not allowed to escape the attention of one its most retrenched religionists. John MacLeod writing on sexual politics is like commissioning Margaret Thatcher to do a piece on the cup final. By his own confession: "There is no issue, in the decade I have written this column, on which I have agonised more than homosexuality". But why should sexually liberal readers, who far outnumber sexually repressed religionists like MacLeod anyway, have to share his personal agony? Why couldn't we, perhaps, have been enlightened by findings of same-sex 'marriages' in history or read the research challenging the interpretation of homosexuality in the Bible? All MacLeod could come up with was: "...Nothing can refute the reality that its practice is contrary to common sense and contrary to the Old and New Testaments". Such bigotry is hardly stimulating. Coming from a gay man, it is altogether rather sad. "Silly" amendments to the Adoption of Children Bill, allowing unmarried and same-sex couples to adopt children, brought about a customary fire and brimstone response from a broadsheet we are supposed to take seriously. "These proposals are yet another assault on the institution of marriage. The rights once exclusively afforded a married couple are being demolished in the name of toleration. This is not a good thing... Even in Eden, one man and one woman were faithfully and exclusively paired until death did them part". Of course, gays have no need to demolish the institution of marriage, with almost 50 per cent of heterosexual couples divorcing; they manage it quite nicely by themselves. Confusing parenting with marriage he remained adamant: "...Gay adoption is preposterous. It is one thing to forswear marriage. It is quite another to parody it". It was a perfect moment to introduce the subject of promiscuity: "...In recent decades we have seen in terrible fashion the consequences of promiscuous homosexuality". If he is referring to the terrible consequences of AIDS, then he brushes aside, not only the fact that the majority of people who are living with AIDS are not homosexual at all, but that if promiscuity was the problem, anything supporting long-term, monogamous relationships - marriage, for instance - would be very useful. With promiscuity out the way, child abuse was next: "Nor is it hard to find evidence of the pink pound itself demonstrating that the gay market-place panders to a less-than-pure interest in children". This less-than-pure interest was based on the marketing of two videos. Firstly, the Boys of St Vincent's, (1993), a Canadian television docudrama which had been shown in many countries, including Britain, and was loosely based on a case of abuse at a Catholic-run orphanage. This remarkably restrained film was co-produced by the National Film Board of Canada, had received excellent reviews, including the New York Times and has been showered with awards. "The mass of gay people, of course, regard such things with disgust...", he insisted. I would've thought that films and documentaries that expose the familiar theme of a religious background to sexual repression and child abuse are bound to be popular! Secondly, the Dutch film, For A Lost Soldier, (Voor Een Verloren Soldaat 1993), which has also been shown on British television. The film is about a 12-year-old ballet dancer who recalls his sexual awakenings and crush on a Canadian soldier during World War II. However exploitative you may feel the character of the soldier was in Rudi van Dantzig's original book, the film's sensitive, honest and touching portrayal is certainly no gay Lolita. There is something quite perverted in the suggestion that this film could be sexually arousing. MacLeod was outraged to find it for sale in Virgin Megastores in Glasgow on a shopping trip off the Isle of Harris where he lived. His insulting remarks that "most unwanted pregnancies are terminated; and many of the infants given up for adoption have such problems as HIV or Down's syndrome" brought about a sharp rebuke from Dr Betty Wilson, a consultant paediatrician at Springburn Health Centre in Glasgow. She wrote to The Herald to say his comments were "a myth if not downright offensive - especially to parents of children with Down's syndrome or HIV. This makes the presumption that these children are instantly rejected by their natural parents - they are plainly not". His hysterical rambling was supposed to be a wake-up call to Scotland's MP's on the "lunacy" of such "dangerous" measures in allowing gay couples who "are far less likely to endure than heterosexual marriage" to adopt children. John MacLeod once asked Scottish gays through ScotsGay magazine to forgive him for writing on homosexuality in "violent and hysterical terms" for "offensive and absurd comments" like suggesting gays "are simply not equipped to live". If I were his editor, I would be inclined to ask him to go away and suck some cock or something before even thinking about writing anything else about gay sexuality. If I were his friend, I'd recommend counselling.
And while the Sunday Herald joined The Herald, promoting its former editor, Harry Reid's "explosive" new book, a naval gazing exercise on what to do with the Church of Scotland's dwindling congregation, their competitor, Scotland on Sunday was doing what one of Scotland's newspapers should have done a very long time ago. Jason Allardyce and Brian Brady's piece, 'God On Their Side?' lanced the festering sore of the Church's political activities in Scotland and exposed "a network of highly-organised evangelical Christians who... meet discreetly with government ministers". It was a revelation from a paper that once vociferously supported the efforts of religionists attempting to hijack the Scottish parliament's moral agenda. "Emulating the Christian right in the US, CARE (Christian Action Research and Education) has spent large sums on lobbyists to circumvent the electoral process and put morality firmly on the agenda in all the UK's parliaments and assemblies... With an annual income of £2.4m, 60 staff based in Scotland, England, Wales and Northern Ireland and around 40,000 supporters 'to promote Christian standards in society', CARE has the ear of Britain's most senior MPs and MSPs... Since 1999 it has also relieved the financial burden on at least six MSPs by paying £3,000 a year to researchers, or 'interns', to work in their private offices. At the height of the battle over Section 28, when millionaire Brian Souter spent around £1m fighting its repeal, one such intern worked for the then schools minister Peter Peacock. While Peacock firmly rejected any suggestion that this relationship benefited CARE, the Christian charity which opposed repeal boasts on its website that its efforts ensured the law was replaced with strict guidelines on how homosexuality should be discussed in schools." 14 elected MPs and numerous MSPs from all the major parties have helped individuals with direct links with Christian groups like CARE, Evangelical Alliance Scotland or the Christian Institute to gain special access into parliament. One intern works in the office of Stephen Timms, the minister in charge of creating more religious schools, another works for Bill Tynan, chairman of the Scottish MPs. David Miller, of Stirling University's media research unit pulled no punches: "It is basically the buying of the parliament", he said. Scotland on Sunday revealed: "The Christian Right's lobbying for the Lord is becoming ever more ambitious. CARE's next and most controversial step is to infiltrate the Scottish Labour party, the SNP, the Scottish Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats to influence candidate selection procedures ahead of next year's Holyrood elections". This article was more deserving of the title: "explosive" than Harry Reid's book. Don't get too excited. Unfortunately, John McLellan is presently only an acting editor of SoS.
The Sunday Mail's language is telling: "Edinburgh is the dirty dance capital of Europe". (If the dancing is sexual; therefore it must be 'dirty'). Reporter Brendan Mcginty appeared a little excited over the apparent migration of lap-dancers to Scotland's capital. "...We can reveal other venues are planned, meaning there will soon be a lap dancer for every 250 people in the city. It is more dirty dancers per head than any city in Europe". American research linking nude dancing with sexual violence and figures from Lothian and Borders police showing there had been 1,912 "sex attacks" in the previous 12 months, an increase of 145 from the previous year, really got Mcginty's goat. However, I don't see that opening all these clubs would lead to more sexual violence since Lothian and Borders police say they have very few problems with the existing clubs. Sandra White, SNP MSP was "absolutely disgusted" and dressed her outrage in the naive opinion that it was somehow "demeaning to women" to be "viewed as sex objects". Fortunately, one erotic dancer was allowed to speak for herself and told the Mail she preferred lap-dancing to scraping by on a minimum wage cleaning or waiting tables and boasted the men at her club were "eating out of our hands".
After two Edinburgh teenage girls stabbed to death John Brankin, a 39-year-old homeless man who once lived in a disused watermill - known to locals as the Stockbridge Beggar - and left another horribly scarred, the Daily Record reported: "The drunken duo carried out the appalling attack because they mistakenly thought one of the victims was a 'beast'." But where do they learn such language if not from the very same tabloid? And what do such words as 'beast' imply if not something dark and sinister, unworthy of life? After "worried parents" tipped off police that a flat was being used as a drinking den, 18-year-old Shevonne Clarke, who was pregnant, and her pal, 16-year-old Pamela Reid decided Brankin was just the sort of "sex fiend" they had heard so much about, and, after drinking a bottle of vodka, went along with two 14-year-old boys to beat the innocent man over the head. The girls later returned to the scene and Shevonne Clarke stabbed Brankin in the heart. She was sentenced to 10-and-a-half years and her baby taken away from her while her friend was sentenced to eight years. Meanwhile, the Cumberland and Westmorland Herald highlighted the plight of 53-year-old Richard Gower who now lives in Gretna after he was forced to leave his home in Penrith. He suffered abuse and was ostracised in his home town after being wrongly placed on the Sexual Offenders' Register.
Brand-naming a bra 'Aberdeen' interested the Sunday Mail so much more than a cake called 'Dundee' or an English beverage called 'Buckie'. Reporter Natasha Weale's story of lingerie firm Van de Velde's bra almost filled a page. Van de Velde's must've been pleased with the support! The report even enlisted the advice of an expert in retail management who, realising this was about to make a news story, surprised no one with the news that naming a bra 'Aberdeen' was "a good marketing ploy".
Scotland on Sunday's "torment of sex change soldier trapped in a woman's body" did little to promote a better understanding of the difficulties of changing sex or assist the challenge of Sandra MacDougall in a process made all the more difficult by the attitudes of many of those in the Ayrshire community where she lived. The first line of Claire Gardner's report gave away the implication that the story was trivial enough to warrant starting off on a light note: "Sometimes it's hard to be a woman, especially when you used to be a man". And just how hard was painfully demonstrated by MacDougall's confession that since she had undergone surgery - which we are reminded "took four years and £10,000 of NHS cash" - her life had been made a misery by people's taunts. Any positive images that Sandra MacDougall had of herself appeared to be exploited in this report. She was pictured sitting in her garden surrounded by her collection of dolls that it was noted she "treats as playthings", a "doll desire" that was linked to the fact she had "always wanted children". The tragedy of being victimised by people wherever she went led MacDougall to confess how much she wished the operation could have been reversed, which was all that was needed to quip how she was now "trapped in a woman's body". But she already was a woman - much clinical and medical work would have already been done to establish that.
A "top health expert" told the Daily Record there was "no need to panic", so what's with the front-page headline: "KIDS DOC HAS HIV", after it became known that a doctor who worked in the obstetrics and gynaecology department of Raigmore Hospital in Inverness had an AIDS-related illness? NHS Highland officials wrote to over 100 women offering counselling and blood tests and around 500 or so women who attended a hospital where the doctor worked in Yorkshire were also contacted. Over the last 15 years, five NHS staff, including three nurses and a former consultant at Borders General Hospital who worked at a hospital in Zambia, died as a result of HIV contracted from patients. There are absolutely no recorded cases of patients in the UK being diagnosed with HIV after having contracted the virus from hospital staff yet patients do not need to disclose their HIV status to receive medical or surgical care. Forcing disclosure would do nothing to encourage anyone to be tested for HIV. Applying customary health and safety measures during invasive operations benefit us all. Health workers and patients suffer a greater risk from other blood-borne infections like hepatitis, which can also be fatal.
CUT IT OUT!
Atticus in the Sunday Times Scotland: "Not one woman in the hall under the age of 50 would have wanted to see (Lib Dem leader Charles) Kennedy in the buff - maybe a couple of men, but that's a different story".
Jean Rafferty in Scotland on Sunday: "As the Catholic Church begins its third millennium, (the Pope) has apologised for all sorts of pressing wrongs in the Church's past - and for some not quite so pressing. The list includes the Crusades, the persecution of Galileo, the Inquisition, the Church's attitude to women, Jews, gipsies and homosexuals. Now he's finally addressed the worst injustice of all, making a very public mea culpa for the paedophilia that has been allowed to rampage unchecked through his Church". Apologised for homophobia? Did I miss something?
Old Mother (Joan) Burnie's just-say-no advice to a 15-year-old female in the Daily Record: "I'll get in the lecture bit first - for which you won't thank me, but it needs saying. At your tender age, you shouldn't be sleeping around. In fact legally, you should not be having sex with anyone. And don't you realise it's possible all these boys want to sleep with you not because they think you're nice, but because they think you're easy?"
Katie Grant in The Scotsman: "...A virtual world with virtual relationships produces virtual morality and there seems to be little we can do about it. It is very difficult to convince either giggly children or perverted adults that lewd conversations conducted in cyber-space are just as degrading, demeaning and potentially damaging as those carried out face to face. What net user has not laughed at jokes sent down the line which, if spoken aloud, would be viewed as utterly tasteless? The net operates in a cultural and moral vacuum that poses some tough self-discipline questions on us all".
Ron Ferguson in The Herald: "If I were to perform a ceremony of blessing for my two (gay women) friends, I would be in serious trouble. Yet if I were to bless a nuclear submarine, carrying enough fire-power in its belly to incinerate millions of men, women, and children in the space of minutes, I would feel no ecclesiastical finger on my collar. Family values? Give me a break."
