6 December 2002 - 24 January 2003
How we laughed when Jenners, the Edinburgh department store, refused to allow children to sit on Santa's knee without parent's permission. And fancy advising teachers not to rub sun-screen on schoolkids during school vacations! And what's this about halting a skateboard park for fear of 'perverts' lurking in nearby toilets in a park in Galloway? If this wasn't enough, The Sunday Times Scotland joined dozens of others to report: "Parents have been banned from taking photographs and videoing school nativity plays and concerts in Edinburgh to prevent the images falling into the hands of paedophiles". It was suggested that an individual or private company could be hired to do the video, editing out the faces of children whose parents did not want them seen. Was this a nativity, or a scene from The Borrowers? The kids were dressed in bed linen, not modelling knickers for Littlewoods! Edinburgh councillors were only stopped in their tracks when a parent threatened court action and nobody could think of an occasion when a paedophile had actually done the sort of things they were supposed to be protecting the children from.
Was it me, or could I smell the 'concern' of a religionist? Well, quelle surprise...! Welcome on stage, Rev Ewan Aitken, Edinburgh councillor and executive member for education. Apart from Roy Jobson, the director of education in Edinburgh, who backed him, the first the rest of the council's chief executive, heard of all this was on the news.
The local authorities in Perth and Kinross had attempted to impose a similar ban two years ago, claiming filming contravened the Data Protection Act. Two more local authorities, in Falkirk and East Lothian, soon followed Edinburgh's example. Parents at Corstorphine Primary School in Edinburgh, refused permission to film their Christmas show, were told it was for 'health and safety' reasons. Parents at Carrick Knowe Primary were told they could not film for 'copyright' reasons. Dundee City Council - who have ran Mr Muscle contests, Beauty Queen and Princess pageants since the 60s - ordered them all to be scrapped. Soon, even the religionists' hymn-sheet, The Scottish Daily Mail was joining in when reporter Graham Grant advised: "Thousands of youth clubs have been told to remove photographs of children from their websites in a bid to protect them from paedophiles". Visitors to the website of the Portlethan Sports Club, outside Aberdeen were now welcomed with the message: ALL PHOTOGRAPHS FEATURING CHILDREN HAVE BEEN REMOVED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE.
Churchgoing Mrs Katie Grant, sufficiently up her own Christian-Conservative arse to qualify for a regular spot in The Scottish Daily Mail, confessed: "Nobody thinks these bans are sensible, yet I have a sneaking sympathy for those who seek to impose them".
The idea of some strange man nobody knows, sitting next to mums and dads in the assembly hall to take pictures of kiddies to use for his own perverted ends distracts readers somewhat from the most likely source of sexual and violent abuse: The families who were invited. Thank goodness for The Independent who shone the light on the record number of actual murders of 143 children and young people in 2001.
An 'educational spokesperson' for Edinburgh council claimed parents might not want their children being filmed because of 'religious beliefs...' Despite all its influence in high places, religion hasn't exactly been flavour of the month lately. Scheming to secure special protections and privileges won't win them any friends either. With the First Minister's ear - having himself already penned a piece for the Church of Scotland's Life and Work magazine - this advantaged minority were seeking a provision in law to protect them from so-called 'religious hatred'. But what protection do lesbians and gays have from religionists? Just look at the repeal of Clause 28 in Scotland and the more recent antics of the Christian Institute. Enjoying its tax-exempt charitable status they produced pocket-size cards that read: "In the event of my death I do not want my children to be adopted by homosexuals". The horrible, divisive nature of religion is instilled in Scottish children from a very early age. In fact, reinforced the moment they start school. Hence the recent debate on whether Catholic schools still deserved the support of the taxpayer. The Catholic Church was quick to demonstrate support for separate schools by commissioning a poll. Religionists commission polls and studies whenever it suits them. There were numerous polls during the Clause 28 debacle and 'studies' have tried to 'prove' everything from how gay men die earlier than straights to how condoms are no protection from HIV. It should come as no surprise to find a poll that demonstrated support for Catholic schools the 'settled will' of the majority of Scots. (Another survey by Scottish Social Attitudes contradicted it with 81 per cent saying - including 59 per cent of Catholics - denominational schools ought to be phased out). As columnist Muriel Gray aptly put it in The Sunday Herald: "State-funded Catholic schools; goodbye chaps".
While the media fanned the flames of paedo-steria sweeping the nation once again, police held 35 men in dawn raids and arrested 1,300 men in another huge paedophile crackdown. Operation Ore targeted men who had used their credit card to access pictures of under-age kids. This number included 50 serving police officers. You don't need a Visa to download erotic films or pictures. There are many sites, like Kazaa.com, which have completely uncensored erotic films free to download and watch on your PC. And free for PC Plod to seize, leaving the press speculating on the seriousness of the matter. Whatever the titles attached to erotic images or videos you download, you are basically leaving to trust that the material you download contains sexual images of consenting adults over the age of consent.
Day by day, more and more men are finding their way into the former Home Secretary Michael Howard's Sex Offenders' Register. Each accusation is accompanied by righteous indignation or a profound sense of shame. A new condition emerged in the face of one man's "porn shame". Like drink or drugs, 'porn' was something you turned to. The Scottish News of the World reported that a "dad-of-two's marriage had hit problems and he had turned to heavy drinking and porn". There are now so many revelations; it appears like we are just one page away from a glossy monthly on paedophiles. It has always been thus. When a young lad from Bannockburn was tortured to death in 1975. His torturers shut his legs in a car, tied him to a chair and played Russian roulette until he wet himself. Then they let him phone his mum before throwing him to his death in a ditch on the way to Brighton. But it is only the memory of Roger Gleaves, the notorious self-styled Bishop of Medway and his hostel for boys he picked up at London's Kings Cross station that lingers. Likewise, when Thomas Hamilton gunned down a classroom of kids in Dunblane, we are left with the memory of a dangerous paedophile.
The Greek word 'paedophile', on the front of tabloids is the last, tenuous connection with a subject long since abandoned by intellectuals. It is a word that only loosely connects with its true meaning. A word that means the love of - not sex with - boys. And when the papers insisted it was sex, it wasn't always with boys. Tam Paton, the former manager of the 70s pop band the Bay City Rollers was linked to the ongoing investigations of a 'paedophile ring' that involved pop star Jonathan King, ex-Radio One deejay Chris Denning and now TV entertainer Matthew Kelly. The police, of course, benefit from this media exposure. The publicity encourages 'victims' to come forward, in this case from a long ago as thirty years. The arms of the tabloids are open wide. Casting all children as the vulnerable and innocent victims of 'perverts' seriously misrepresents children. Try announcing your homosexual status to a group of lads hanging around the streets of Sighthill. Playing the devil's advocate for a moment, I dare say, there must also be youths, who, for a place in a band or promotion in a football team, putting your hand round the cock of some 'ugly fat bast'd' was fair game. Then, along comes the opportunity to expunge your guilt, emerging as the 'victim' and maybe even earn a few notes on the way. During the seventies, the 'pretty things' that did gay sex drove their mamas and papas insane, 'making way for the Homo Superior', dancing at midweek discos behind closed door in provincial pubs. This was before Freddie Laker offered cheap flights across the Atlantic and imported the 'macho man' into UK sexual politics. The 'pretty boy' was as much in vogue then as when Keats praised the 'fair youths' decorating his gilded Grecian urn. Stars like David Cassidy, Donny Osmond, and, of course, the Bay City Rollers rode high in the charts. Following the promotion of one song, gays were handed out a badge sporting the words: Do You Like Boys? which many boys proudly wore. Sexually provocative teen magazines like My Guy or Oh Boy! under the editorship of Gaythorne Sylvester, were immensely popular with girls. And, of course, gays too! Half-dressed 'hunk of the months' and boy-bands wrapped in nothing but skimpy Speedos to hide their modesty adorned bedroom walls from Lands End to John O'Groats. Magazines featuring the half-clothed antics of boy-stars like the willowy Andy and David Williams twins would never have made it on to newsagent's shelves today. Young, pre-AIDS gays did not see themselves as victims; they wore their hair long, dyed it blond and dressed in tight pants to ride a wave of liberation that proclaimed them desirable and potentially haveable. There can be no doubt that there was and is a more hidden, undercurrent of manipulation and coercion of children for sexual gratification that cannot be acceptable, but that is no excuse for character assassination or homophobia in another name. The Scottish News of the World tore into Tam Paton with the news that Paton was "jailed for three years in 1982 for sex offences against two boys aged 16 and 17..." Read quickly, and in the context of the story, the word "boys" jumps off the page like a firecracker. But read it again, remembering of course that the age of consent, until comparatively recently was 21 for homosexual consent (and in Scotland, illegal altogether until 1980), and you will then see Tam Paton served a jail sentence for something that was completely lawful today. Paton had sex with young people who enjoyed, and indeed, sought gay sex. What gay man hasn't courted the attentions of attractive, older men - and Tam was quite attractive - when we were young enough to get away with it? Who hasn't spurned the undesirable, derided the persistent and seduced the winners? I've never heard their attentions ever dismissed as an "evil lust", at least, not until I read The Scottish News of the World over "MANAGER'S EVIL LUST FOR THE ROLLERS" on their front page. Tam Paton was described as a "sexual predator" (aren't we all?) as former band member Pat McGlynn "told" how Paton "tried to rape me at least FIVE TIMES". The thought of Pat McGlynn, innocently stepping into this hedonistic boy-band world at their offices in Heddon Street, (pictured on the cover of David Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars album and a stone's throw from the 'meat rack' at Piccadilly, where rent boys hung out), to suffer endless parties and trips to gay clubs a wee bit hard to swallow. McGlynn claimed he had stabbed Paton after he had tried it on with him and extricated himself out of the band (incidentally at a time when the band's popularity was waning) and claimed he had been promised £40,000 by Paton "to keep my mouth shut". Enter The Scottish News of the World. An enormous colour picture of Paton, obese, balding, shadowed small pictures of a baby-faced Pat McGlynn. Everything the paper could've hoped for was captured in this picture of Paton, reinforcing the stereotype of a 'pervert'. In a more balanced piece in The Daily Record, Paton demonstrated no scars. What he received from S.N.O.T World will, of course, take longer to heal.
Paton's friend, ex-Radio One deejay Chris Denning regularly invited youths to his home in Weybridge in Surrey. During the seventies he promoted his own record label, Live Wire, and with ideas benefiting Jonathan King who made hits of European songs, like the George Baker Selection's 'Una Paloma Blanca', from the Netherlands, Denning promoted European hits. This included, in 1974, Milk and Honey's version of Abba's 'Dance (While the Music Still Goes On)'. With a sharp eye for a pretty face, he also put together boy-bands like Flame. The idea that youngsters were forced against their will to have sex with an overweight pop magnate in an ill-fitting wig I find very difficult to believe. If street-wise youths used their chutzpah to manipulate their way into his pockets - or indeed the hole in them - through their looks, Denning, in return, traded what many would see as his only remotely endearing asset: Money, influence and the voice of a seasoned broadcaster. Denning was the proverbial dirty old man, and everyone knew it! Whenever older men turned up in gay discos popular with young gays, they stood out like sore thumbs, particularly with a bunch of 'chickens' or a young pop group in tow. They certainly weren't there to dance to Dooley Silverspoon! Innocent youth? The boys chewed 'em up and spat 'em out. To reinvent youth as always the innocent and vulnerable victims of 'perverts' avoids the truth and lowers the complicated issue of sexuality further into the grave we are slowly digging it.
CUT IT OUT!
Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman following the banning of filming school nativities: "Where there used to be trust, some complain, there is now suspicion; where there used to be innocence, there is an obsession with corrupt motives and filthy minds; and where there used to be a sensible attitude to risk, there is now a futile and fundamentally ridiculous effort to guarantee 'absolute safety' in a world full - by its glorious nature - of unpredictable hazards".
Religionist columnist Ron Ferguson in The Herald: "...Organised religions can be terrible, terrible things".
Ruth Wishart in The Herald: "If the continuation of civilisation, such as it is, depends on tolerance, do not look for it within organised religion". Go girl!
Columnist Muriel Gray's Christmas present in The Sunday Herald: "And as a present to myself I really fancy being as pig lazy as a Daily Mail journalist, filling up space with a bunch of vacuous, minor personal anecdotes instead of writing an essay containing any kind of argument".
Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: "My sister came a cropper out hunting. As we rang for the ambulance, somebody hissed urgently: 'Don't say it is a hunting accident. Say she has fallen off out riding'. Would the paramedics really have been less speedy if they had known she was in hot pursuit of a fox? I don't think so, but it says something truly depressing about the times we live in that it could even be suggested". Hang on... Where's the number of the local police station? Let's screw the bitch!
The horrible Clause 28, cruel-sport, Catholic, Conservative-supporting Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: "For a parliament to act against a minority whose livelihoods are at stake because of difference of opinion rather than provable fact would be a dangerous thing".
Alan Taylor, another Sunday Herald columnist ruining his chances of every writing for The Scottish Daily Mail: "Actually, the only reputation that ought to be... in 'tatters', is Ms Grant's, not just for the tripe for which the Mail is happy to pay good money, but for the manner in which it is written".
Peter Kearney, director of the Catholic media office on the findings of a poll which suggested a small minority of 18-35-year-olds supported the retention of denominational schools in a letter to The Herald: "Perhaps a reflection of a more outward-looking, tolerant, and pluralist generation keen to move away from the closed minds of their parents and grandparents and certainly a sign of hope for the future of diversity in Scottish education". Can I just mention Clause 28 here? He's having a laugh, surely?
Gerald Warner taking a swipe at the New Year's Honours list in Scotland on Sunday: "Possible titles might include the Order of the Repeal of Section 28 (almost inevitably on a pink ribbon)." Now, now! Let's be fair. We all know that Peter Burt, the former boss of the Bank of Scotland who attempted to do a deal with televangelist Pat Robertson before hiring Keep the Clause frontman Jack Irvine to do the PR has been awarded a knighthood.
Joan Burnie: "Fantasies are usually better left unfulfilled as they seldom live up to expectations". Please don't write to me but Old Mother Burnie, c/o The Daily Record at Ocean Quay, Glasgow.
Joyce McMillan in The Scotsman: "Porn is just the junk-food end of the spectrum of sexual experience, more poisonous and disgusting with every passing year in its search for that cheap, more-ish sensation; now it's up to us to turn our backs on it, and start cooking up the real gourmet stuff for ourselves".
