20 May – 20 June 2003
Scottish Media Monitor
It’s those bloody Queers again! During the Keep the Clause scandal, a ‘pink mafia’ was supposed to have been operating within Parliament to promote our ‘demands’ for ‘special rights’. Gay people were apparently trying to ‘push or ‘peddle’ gay propaganda onto ‘innocent’ children in schools’. Now we are supposed to be diverting the Parliament’s attention away from more important work - like providing essential services for everyone else – to focus on legislation for ‘gay marriage’. Homophobic columnist, Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday whinged: “Unhappily, the application of the social inclusion doctrine to Holyrood itself has brought 13 Trots (not six, as was rashly assumed on election night, before the Greens revealed their true colours) into the cesspit of the nation. While McFondle (First Minister, Jack McConnell) struggles manfully to get his Crucifixion of Graffitti Artists (Scotland) Bill through committee, the Pinks’ alternative agenda could prove a costly distraction. Beyond that, there lurk the problems of a slender majority, vulnerable to prima donnas, by-elections and downright blackmailers”. Oh, aren’t we Pinks a pain? It has always been thus in Scotland. It is a blame culture. When the Reverend Robert Kirk, a minister in Aberfoyle wrote ‘The Secret Commonwealth of Elves, Fauns and Fairies’ in 1691, he claimed to be an authority on the subject. At a time when sex had been proclaimed by religionists solely for the purposes of procreation, parents were advised to close all the doors and windows at night to keep out the fairies who were blamed for teaching young men to ‘waste their seed’, tossing themselves off under the sheets. (It is said that Rev Kirk was spirited away by the fairies for revealing their secrets and now lives with them in the centre of Fairy Knowe at Doon Hill, near Aberfoyle. Children still tie their paper wishes to the trees). Talking of goblins, we are still waiting for ex-Scottish Sun editor, Bruce Waddell to take up the post as The Daily Record’s new editor and I wonder what kind of treatment the Green Party’s proposal for equality in partnerships would have got had he been in the executive, padded swivel-chair? The chemistry would’ve been just right for another Keep the Clause-type backlash.
Left to their own devices, journalists at The Daily Record have been left playing with their balls through the holes in their pockets, trawling the Internet to discover “OUTRAGE AT GAY WEBSITE LINK TO BATHS”. But whose “outrage” was it? And is anyone really interested in a gay man, sitting in the corner of a Turkish bath, drooling over the eye-candy? The Record gasped how: “a leisure centre is being promoted on a porn website as a popular meeting place for gay men”. They discovered a tiny review of the Bon Accord Baths, run by Aberdeen City Council on a website called cumm.co.uk! (Anyone heard of this site? No, me neither. It’s a site compiled by male masseur, Seb Cox, a former builder living in London’s Aldgate East). So gay and bisexual men have been working up a sweat in the steam room! Oooh, whoopee-do! I don’t see why a bit of eye contact, followed by some private and consensual argy-bargy, should give anyone sleepless nights. Since the report took exception to the fact something “indecent” had occurred in public, I’m tempted to ask who had done the complaining? Precisely whose “outrage” was now being grandly flaunted in the pages of The Record? According to the report, “it was revealed police have been called on at least one occasion to the city centre facility after a complaint about a man performing an indecent act”. Only once? Considering how easily men reach for their dicks, I think that’s pretty good going, don’t you? The website review interestingly revealed there were 16 private rooms, so what was all the fuss about? From a nation that boasts a disgraceful level of heart disease, sex is a very good way of keeping fit. It’s about time we recognised it, made space for it and stopped wasting good trees on sexually repressed drivel.
Trawling for sex on the Net again at Ocean Quay – the moral equivalent of making news-stories out of messages left on lavatory walls - was a site recommending “hotspots for wife-swapping”. Like so many of these Internet sites, they are posted by individuals hoping to meet other like-minded people. It should have alarmed no one The Daily Record, on the other hand, appeared to pitch their activities as a direct challenge to the Family! “FAMILY PARKS IN WIFE SWAP SHOCK”, screamed the headline. I was unaware that Mugdock Park near Milngavie and Strathclyde Park in Lanarkshire, (the latter popular for gay cruising), and “both popular with young families” was ever designed exclusively for the use of Families? It is, of course, a very useful way of promoting a place for such activities which, until The Record had got hold of the story, had no doubt been carried out with a good deal of discretion. The tabloid reported the author of the posting suggesting there were four car parks in Mugdock to use. “He then lists the car parks where swingers meet up, including one which he describes as ‘a good daytime site’ from where ‘it is possible to get away to the great outdoors and hide’.” Mugdock park manager, Ian Arnott appeared suitably outraged and “vowed anyone caught breaking the law would be stopped. He said: ‘We are already looking at increasing security in the car parks and we will continue to work closely with the police to prevent crime of any kind in the park’.” Central Scotland Police claimed not to be aware of any complaints of “swingers”, but nonetheless promised The Record they would engage valuable resources in an effort to “step up patrols” since “people who engage in sex acts in public places are committing a criminal offence”. The Sunday Mail were also reporting Strathclyde Police in Glasgow’s exercise in moral policing: “Sixteen cameras will monitor Glasgow Green in an attempt to protect vice girls and to scare off men looking for sex”. Where were the cameras for people who were mugged or attacked on Glasgow Green in otherwise completely non-consensual circumstances? (The fate of gay architect and activist, Frank Worsdall, author of The Keek Show and The Glasgow Tenement; a ferocious sixties campaigner who has done more than anyone to protect Glasgow’s historical heritage, springs to mind). The men seeking sex with female sex workers will, of course, look for sex elsewhere, closely followed by the women. And the expensive cameras? No doubt, left vandalised and hanging from trees. Hey-ho!
A Daily Record story about a former sex worker who hated the job and left it to get married was spun into so many knots it ended up looking like the Christian Institute had nobbled it! Karen Bale told how “Maggie Stewart tearfully admitted” to “spiralling debts” and “severe depression” before she “turned to prostitution”, and before The Daily Record appeared like a vision of Christ as Saviour along with a packet of fags in her local newsagent. “…The mum-of-two gave up her £1250-a-week job in a sauna after she appeared in The Daily Record”. I don’t know why. All she got from Record readers, helping her do the ‘decent thing’, was £40! “When my story appeared in the Record about me and Jim getting married”, Maggie gurgled, “it made me so happy”. Maggie, of course, “had no choice but to become a prostitute” and she declared it “one of the hardest and most terrifying things I have ever done… She admitted that the day she phoned the sauna, which masquerades as a health club, in the Charing Cross area of Glasgow, was the worst day of her life… ‘The men treated us like pieces of meat. They are sick and I could never be with a man who set foot in a sauna. I feel sorry for their wives and families’.” The Record claimed: “Maggie has eased her pain through poetry, and wants to work for Roots, a support service for girls who work on the streets”. Many sex workers perform their career with a good deal of dignity and talent. They have had their rights in the workplace undermined and compromised by moral campaigners and are only forced to work in premises ‘masquerading’ as something else because morally-inspired legislation demands it. Of course, many, like Maggie, dream of the security of a loving relationship. Good luck to her. For many though, that pretty wee ring turned too quickly into a ball and chain.
“BAN ME AND OUR KIDS WILL SUFFER”, screamed Old Mother (Joan) Burnie off the pages of her respected organ, The Daily Record. In debating the Sexual Offences Bill, the House of Lords in England have recommended she be gagged along with other agony aunts from giving out anything but essential sexual health advice to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections. That is a great shame for highly respected talented agony aunts like Anna Raeburn. Old Mother Burnie was, of course, in high dudgeon: “Schools do now provide sex education, but while it is useful, it’s not easy to stick your hand up in class to ask Sir or Miss what an orgasm really feels like”. Unless I’ve missed something, I don’t recall this former convent girl, who once described sex as “a private matter”, ever describing what an orgasm felt like. In the past, Burnie has recommended the burning of “porn”, described a transsexual as “he, she or it” and chastised gays for making love outside while encouraging a straight female to go ahead and do it! “Believe me, M’Lords”, sniffed Old Mother Burnie, “it’s all about emotions and I for one will go on giving advice about it – right up to the gates of Cornton Vale”. You just go ahead and do that, old girl! And I’ll be right up behind you, shutting the gate!
The Renault Megane’s car ad has been banned by the Independent Television Commission from being shown in the daytime or early evening because a paltry number or viewers, eleven, in fact, said their children were copying what they saw and wiggling their bums! “The commercial features people gyrating to Groove Armada’s song I See You Baby, which repeats the lyric, ‘shakin’ that a***’,” as The Daily Record delicately put it. (P****d is another word this delicate tabloid had problems with when Prince William suggested he might get drunk). 139 people complained about the Renault ad, still a dismal number given the overall number of television viewers. I’m not beyond questioning the usefulness of watchdogs. I remember all too well, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), dismissing complaints over the naked bigotry of the Scottish ‘Keep the Clause’ billboard campaign. The ASA’s own code of conduct informs advertisers that particular care should be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation or disability. The ‘Keep the Clause’ campaign went on to reach number eight in the ASA’s top ten of the most offensive campaigns of 2000. Outraged Scots defaced dozens of these nasty posters. Wee kids might shake their arses, but the ASA just sat on theirs and did nothing!
The editor of The Scottish Daily Mail, Tim Jotischky, an editor who has overseen some of the most vicious and partisan reporting of issues relating to homosexuals Scotland has seen, is leaving to head back down to London to work on special projects for The Mail. The Scottish Media Monitor awaits his replacement. Will that person be a man? Will he be homophobic? Will he carry a tambourine for the religionist’s cause? Is the Pope a Catholic?
I was very sorry to learn that religionists have succeeded in pushing through legislation that specifically exempts them from employment legislation protecting gays in a move that has been described as “something dreamed up by the Taliban”. They have sought and won legal backing in the UK to discriminate against homosexuals in the workplace. Lord Lester – himself a barrister – has argued in the House of Lords that he was prepared to stake his reputation on the fact that these new regulations, that will become law on 3 December, would not survive a legal challenge and Blair’s government would be humiliated. The First Minister, Jack McConnell too has expressed in interviews an unease with the power of the Church. Too little, too late.
Garry Otton’s book SEXUAL FASCISM is published by Ganymede Books priced £8.99.
garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
CUT IT OUT…
Magnus Linklater in Scotland on Sunday taking exception to the First Minister - one of a growing number of MSPs - who chose not to swear his oath of loyalty on the Bible: “Just because he affirms, I was assured, does not mean that he is not a Christian. And even if he isn’t, said one woman minister, does it really matter? Well, excuse me, I think it does. And if the Kirk itself is not prepared to make the case, then I will have to do it myself”. Don’t bother.
Christian propagandist and media whore, Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: “Committee meetings and ecumenical working groups are a complete waste of time. Civilised Christians have, on the whole, given up killing each other. Let’s give thanks and leave it at that”. Thanks for what, sweetheart?
Catholic, Conservative columnist, Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: “It is odd, these days, being a Christian. Many people put adjectives in front. ‘I am a committed Christian,’ they say, or an ‘evangelical Christian’, or even an ‘Alpha Christian’. This is supposed to indicate that you are not one of those barmy, old-fashioned Christians, but a right-on, hippy-happy Christian, comfortable in the modern world. I dislike all these labels. I am just a plain Christian. What I will not be, however, is a quiet Christian”. No change there, then!
One of the few columnists in the Scottish media who has ever echoed our concerns, Iain MacWhirter in The Herald on The Daily Mail’s response to the European constitution and it’s proposed ‘referendum’ on the issue: “The row about the constitution reminds me of the row in the first year of the Scottish Parliament over Section 2a on promoting homosexuality in schools. Again, a coalition of conservatives with powerful media connections turned a rather innocuous piece of legislation into a cause celebre. They tapped into a latent fear and suspicion of sexual minorities in the Scottish public and gave this bigotry a spurious legitimacy. With the EU constitution, a similar powerful media campaign has played upon latent xenophobia by hyping the constitution issue into a test of will. Like Section 2a, the campaign for a referendum now has a life of its own”.
Columnist Alan Taylor in The Sunday Herald: “As for Orcadian attitudes to gays, I can only say that if you are a Nordic sailor, Stromness may not be San Francisco but it tries hard. Where else will you find B&Bs where the guests feel so relaxed they make blue movies in the bathroom?”
Columnist Ian Bell in The Sunday Herald: “The Daily Mail does not speak for me, of course. It speaks for the dark little heart of middle England where they believe asylum seekers were invented in Brussels. The Scotsman doesn’t speak for me; it speaks for parrots everywhere. And the Sun does not speak for me: vindictive gibberish is not, I’m fairly sure, one of my languages”.
Columnist Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday on a new film interpretation of Brideshead Revisited: “Brideshead without God is worse than Hamlet without a prince. If Davies wants to write an anti-religious film script, there is no dearth of fiction suitable for adaptation. If he wants to portray God as cruelly frustrating human happiness, then why not adapt one of the self-pitying Irish feminist novels from the ‘Our lives were ruined by Catholic patriarchy’ canon?” Self-pitying? Tell that to the girls sent to work in the Magdalene laundries or the children sent to the De La Salle homes.
Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday on Catholicism: “It is also extremely demanding; it is not for wimps. Even within the Church today, there are siren voices pleading the cause of human gratification, demanding toleration of the remarriage of divorced people, a non-celibate priesthood, the ordination of women… ‘Moving with the times’ is the seductive euphemism for apostasy from immutable Catholic truth; ‘compassion’ is the weasel word for the condoning of sin”. No Geraldine, you’re no wimp! So strong, manly, upstanding… (Aye, and I knocked Alex Arthur out in the second round!)
