20 September – 20 October 2003

Scottish Media Monitor

It started with an appeal court judge ruling in July that ruled the common law of ‘shameless indecency’ obsolete in Scotland. This was closely followed by Gordon Darroch’s report in The Sunday Herald. It was a good one; it dispensed with Catholic soundbites and filled the space with facts. I suspected that The Scottish Daily Mail would piss on his report, only, the tabloid doing the pissing turned out to be the self-righteous Sunday Mail! They didn’t get round to the story until weeks later on Sunday, 5 October. “GAY SEX OK AT 14”, they hollered. Brendan Mcginty – no stranger to this column - gasped: “The bombshell ruling went by unnoticed”, only to add: “The decision provoked uproar yesterday as critics demanded action to close the loophole”. By Monday it was headline news on BBC Radio Scotland, superseded in importance only by Israel’s bombing of Syria. Producers were bored of it by lunchtime and on Lesley Riddoch’s phone-in, against muffled giggles and shuffling with a mike turned up over the sport’s news, they turned to something else. Since the very government that endorses homophobia also licences the BBC, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised. The Scottish Daily Mail were so busy ritually banging their drum of moral fervour on other issues, they completely missed the boat on this one! Reporter Eddie Barnes frothed: “Teenage girls to deliver sex lessons in schools”, calling on Catholic spokesman, Peter Kearney to declare that Caledonia Youth, an independent organisation delivering sexual health advice to young people was “pouring petrol on fire”. The front page hailed “the biggest advance since the launch of the Pill for women 50 years ago: THE RISK-FREE PILL FOR MEN”. There was news of further arrests in a “suspected paedophile ring” on the Isle of Lewis, a report on parents demanding more on-screen warnings of sex and violence on TV and the “devastating warning” to teenage girls from a mum promoting the idea that girls could be like her: a “born-again virgin”. Once again, in the reports on the alleged lowering of the age of consent for gay sex in Scotland, the voices of gay people were nowhere to be found. No. There was one. Quietly tucked away in the letters’ page of The Herald. The Equality Network’s Tim Hopkins challenged Sir Gerald Gordon’s interpretation of Scottish law as it was reported in The Sunday Mail. Yes, the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, which considered gay sex as ‘gross indecency’ was scrapped in 1980. And although ‘lewd and libidinous’ conduct could be applied more readily to a woman having sex with a teenager than a man, there was still Section 13 (5) (c) of the Criminal Law (Consolidation) (Scotland) Act 1995. Add to that the laws governing assault and it’s clear as the skin on a twink’s bottom that Scotland is no chicken run! The Sunday Mail, on the other hand, saw a predatory gay man round every corner. “Ruling by appeal judges turns into a time bomb” shrieked Brendan Mcginty trotting out predictable outrage from the likes of the Catholic Church who demanded the Scottish justice minister move quickly to “plug this worrying gap”, calling it “child abuse” that left “vulnerable young people totally unprotected”. I would have thought asking the Catholic Church to comment on protecting kiddies is as insensitive as asking Fred and Rosemary West for their opinons on fostering. Mcginty warned that the ruling “could provoke a flood of appeals from men convicted of sex with underage boys”, despite no evidence that proverbial opening of floodgates had happened or was ever likely to! Almost as an afterthought, McGinty added: “The ruling also allows grown women to seduce and have sex with 14 and 15-year-olds” even though he quotes an ‘insider’, a Scottish Executive legal adviser, who told him that sex with 12 to 16-year-old girls was still covered by laws governing ‘lewd and libidinous’ activity. Self-proclaimed babe-magnets, sex-hungry young men of 14 and 15, outraged by this attempted assault on their chastity, will surely thank Mcginty for helping them plug this gap! McGinty gratefully threw the rug off 74-year-old judge, Sir Gerald Gordon, and wheeled him to choke: “…Consenting homosexual behaviour between an adult and a boy of 14, which would probably formerly have been treated as shameless indecency, is no crime at all”. But was this the same judge who admitted in the same ‘report’ that the lower legal age limit was “vague” and only estimated it as being 14. Claire Smith in The Scotsman declared: “Ministers are being called to introduce emergency legislation…” A spokeswoman for the Scottish Executive told The Sunday Mail: “We are reviewing the law and, if there are shown to be any gaps as a result of this appeal judgement, we will ensure that those gaps are filled”. Let’s hope and pray this is not the same Executive spokeswoman, whom, in the face of at least three recent non-consensual acts of rape of men in Glasgow, told The Sunday Herald there were no plans to reform the law in Scotland to protect them. Whoever the Executive claimed to be ‘protecting’ it certainly wasn’t young gay men! Their priorities are not human rights but the sensitivities of our morally conservative media and their religious cronies.

Fears of the sexual threat adults impose on the young reached new heights with the headline: “Security fears over adult use of gym at school”, (The Herald). Reporter Elizabeth Buie warned darkly that the Midlothian shared campus school (where Catholics can share with others of all or no religion) had been “attended by Jodi Jones, the 14-year-old found murdered three months ago”. She added: “Teachers and politicians have pointed to the Dunblane massacre and warned that, by allowing the public into the fitness suite in school hours, Midlothian Council is endangering pupils’ security and could disrupt their education”. A lottery grant was apparently dependent on allowing community access. It was difficult to see who was the most distressed, Elizabeth Buie or Midlothian Council. The council promised students would be given priority using the facilities during school hours and even planned to use CCTV cameras to patrol the perimeter! Ms Buie helpfully pointed out that separate changing areas could “be accessed from a communal area”.

As I’ve said before, the moderator of the moribund Church of Scotland, the Professor Iain Torrance is no liberal, I don’t care what you’ve read in The Herald: “He outraged church leaders in Skye and Lochcarron by appearing to suggest in a newspaper article and a subsequent article in Life and Work that he was ‘utterly untroubled’ by the ordination of homosexual ministers”. (Just so long as we don’t ever get our end away)! Visits by moderators to presbyteries come around once every 10 years or so, the last time the then moderator, James Weatherhead was in these parts in 1994 he had expressed doubts over the literal truth of the virgin birth. He was barred from one pulpit in Lochalsh. Over the mere hint that these God-forsaken churches were at risk of a makeover by Ikea, five of nine Kirk sessions in the presbytery want Torrance banned! With echoes of the horrible Keep the Clause scandal that rocked Scotland three years ago, Rev Iain Greenshields from Snizort in Skye told Scotland on Sunday: “…We have had calls and e-mails from all over Scotland”. James Glover dutifully crawled out from under a stone and wrote to The Sunday Times Scotland saying: “To elevate one sin above another, in terms of judgmental distaste, whether it be homosexuality, abortion, incest or whatever is the headline of the day, is to diminish the corporate responsibility we all have toward the evil that exists in this world”. Rev Ivor MacDonald, minister of Kilmuir and Stenscholl was quoted in The Herald saying: “I would want to be satisfied that Professor Torrance regards homosexuality as a sin, and that there is recovery for the homosexual. I am not satisfied with the explanation that homosexuality is a given, that it is something we inherit and therefore there is no room for movement from homosexuality”. Given that I know the damage such thinking has done, I want to know why action hasn’t been taken against such naked homophobia at the highest level? Why is this man not been prosecuted? (Oh, sorry, I forgot, the First Minister was in Rome with the homophobe-in-chief Pope John Paul)! But who were these monsters? We have their names: Rev Iain Greenshields in Snizort, Rev Gary Wilson in Dunvegan, Rev John Murdo Nicolson in Portree and Rev Ivor MacDonald in Kilmuir. And God have mercy on their souls!

The Vatican’s decision to sideline conservative Mario Conti and appoint ‘liberal’ Keith O’Brien as cardinal had Scotland’s media falling over themselves to remind everyone how hard-line moribund Pope John Paul II really was. What was the silly old sod doing appointing such a renowned liberal? (There’s nothing like fanning the flames of Scotland’s religious divide to sell more papers). A few oddballs and sideliners like the fundamentalist Catholic Truth magazine were called up to help fuel the debate. Nobody knew. The Pope, who had spent his life abstaining from sex and expecting all gays to do the same, had Jenifer Johnston writing of his meeting with the cowardly Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams and the Pope’s determination to express his homophobia to him in The Sunday Herald: “He trembled throughout the speech, but was determined to read it to the end, although many of his words were muffled. The Pope seemed determined to make his feelings known…” The Daily Record confessed: “Unlike John Paul II, Cardinal O’Brien is a liberal on issues such as celibacy, contraception and homosexuality…” O’Brien had been reported saying: “Christ never said anywhere all his priests and apostles must be celibate” and calling for a “full and open discussion about these issues”, including homosexuality, in an interview in The Scotsman. Dani Garavelli in Scotland on Sunday added: “O’Brien’s mild manner, commitment to ecumenism, and open-mindedness on issues such as gay and married clergy have made him a popular figure both in and out of religious circles. His famous New Year soirees are attended by an eclectic group of people – MPs and cabinet ministers, journalists, priests and judges – all of whom turn up as much to enjoy his company as to network”. I beg to differ. Putting aside for one moment this horrid religious nepotism polluting our democracy, this is politics in divine drag. Days later, with Rome in his sight, he was telling his flock at a lunchtime Mass how he intended to promulgate what the Church has been teaching on contraception, defend the law on ecclesiastical celibacy and was reported in The Scotsman saying: “I accept and promise to defend the ecclesiastical teaching about the immorality of the homosexual act…” O’Brien said he had been hurt by the allegations of liberalism. I tell you what… I’ll show you hurt, son! Talk to some gay Catholics! The Sunday Herald was aghast: “O’Brien, who told this paper last year that he had ‘no problems with celibacy withering away’, insisted to the Sunday Herald yesterday that he ‘would expect each and every priest to observe his promise of celibacy’. He added that he did not believe allowing priests to marry would solve the clergy’s recruitment crisis”. Ronnie MacDonald of Catholic Truth magazine told the same newspaper: “He’s at it”. Indeed he was. Scotland on Sunday reported: “Scotland’s cardinal-elect has called for Catholics to become more politically active to attempt to exert a greater ‘Christian influence’ over the running of the country”. He enjoys something of a head start. He has already arranged a private meeting with the First Minister, Jack McConnell in Rome. How about a meeting in San Francisco to discuss gay human rights for Scots, Jack?

Religionists were marking up another victory after seven members of the special licensing committee of Glasgow City Council halted Ray Darker’s plans to open a sex shop at 69 Gordon Street in the city centre. Whilst The Daily Record mindfully reported how “anti-vice campaigner Pastor Jack Glass, sang hymns and waved banners as councillors arrived for the meeting”, The Glaswegian’s Chris McAuley made no mention of the religionist-led moral campaign and smattering of misguided feminists packing the galleries helping to “scupper” the application before licensing chiefs and referred only to it being “controversial” and, without any schools in the locality, was forced to remind readers it would be “just yards from Central Station”. After the rabble had dispersed, MSP Sandra White was reported in The Daily Record suggesting: “So many people have made their feelings known on this issue, it gave a clear signal on the kind of city centre people want”. The “clear signal” referred to 10 objectors following Clive Sullivan representing Darker Enterprises largely on religious and moral grounds and just 450 letters handed in to the licensing committee, nearly all of them part of a co-ordinated campaign from campaigners attempting to make spurious links with pornography and sexual violence. The Herald reported how Rev Ian Wills of Parkhead, a minister of Brian Souter’s church, the Church of the Nazarene (a piece of happy-clappy Hicksville, USA in Scotland), “warned that granting a licence would increase the entire sex industry in Glasgow, and lead to increased problems with pornography addiction”. Thankfully, Glasgow’s insistence that the “appropriate number” of sex shops permitted within the city’s boundary was “zero” has already been felled by the High Court in England, and, at tax-payer’s expense, will hopefully happen again now the way is open for a challenge in the Court of Session. While Glasgow continues to fail in its duty to regulate the sex business by opening the back door to an under-the-counter trade by default, Mr Darker looses his £10,506, the cost of his application for this tawdry bunch of moralists to hold their ridiculous party.

It doesn’t surprise me that “THONG SIDE OF THE LAW”, a report in The Daily Record, should have avoided carrying the name of who was responsible for it. Trailer trash journalism that displayed an appalling ignorance of transsexuals. Alexis Lang enjoyed no such anonymity, despite being reported asking photographers on leaving court: “Please don’t take my picture”. The photograph of “lipstick lout” Ms Lang accompanied the story of her appearance in court for breach of the peace and kneeing a policewoman in the leg. Had she been straight, the disturbance wouldn’t have merited any mention at all, let alone almost a full page with pictures of her “lady’s day” at the court. Our not-very-well-travelled “Record Reporter” (its got to be a bloke) gasped how Ms Lang “appeared in court yesterday as a woman in full make-up”. The contents of her handbag dominated the ‘report’. “Alexander Lang, 35, wore lipstick, eye-liner, mascara, a gemstone pendant and hooped ear-rings”. After adding: “He carried a black handbag, wore a ladies’ trouser suit and answered gruffly to the name of Alexis,” the ‘reporter’ was almost ready to get on with the story. Despite Glasgow Sheriff Iain Inglis interrupting prosecutor Andrew Haughney “more than once to insist that the accused be called a ‘she’,” the ‘reporter’ couldn’t get the message and continued referring to Alexis in the masculine gender throughout. Despite this imposition, the ‘reporter’ attacked her with homophobic rhetoric: “He kept on screaming abuse…” Thank goodness they are not all idiots working for The Record. Marie Sharp, whose tragic story of Michaela, a 51-year-old transsexual who’s body was found in Edinburgh’s Princes Street Gardens alongside vodka and an empty packet of painkillers, had no problem referring to her subject in the feminine gender. It was reported how “the former RAF mechanic committed suicide because she could no longer face the wait for a sex swap operation”. The most touching statement was from her partner Richard Nellis who said: “I loved her for who she was not what she was”. That would have gone over the heads of Record Reporters who were more comfortable with the headline: “PILL SUICIDE BLONDE WAS MAN IN DRAG”. If the Scottish media, microfilmed in libraries, are to be kept as a record of all our histories, who will start telling the true story about the real lives of Scotland’s transsexuals?

garry@scottishmediamonitor.com

CUT IT OUT…

The Daily Record on Steve Gough the ‘naked rambler’ whose attempt to cross Scotland naked has been hindered by violence, moral policing and prudery: “…Witness Kathleen MacDonald, 52, of Tore, told the court she was alone at home when she saw Gough. She said: ‘I felt disconcerted, as I was alone. There was no way I would be able to get help. There are plenty of places people can go if they want to be naked. I don’t think walking about, frightening other people is right’.”

Gerald Warner banging on about what’s wrong with his beloved Conservative Party in Scotland on Sunday: “The Conservative Party, traditional guardian of the interests of the thrifty and hard-working, has the solution to your problem: homosexual marriage. That is the catch-all nostrum the Tory Modernisers – the Steve Norris Tendency – prescribe for all the nation’s ills. It comes as part of a package of inanities known as ‘Compassionate Conservatism’, at a time when the public mood has never been more militant”. Compassionate? When did this start?

Gerald Warner attacking the onslaught of fair-mindedness, equality and liberalism in Scotland on Sunday: “…The squalor of the Liberal Democrats’ policies was also exposed last week, when delegates voted to deny parents the right to withdraw seven-year-old children from compulsory sex education classes that would include ‘trans-gender’ issues. By what perversion of the English language can that enforced corruption of young children be called ‘liberal’? This is the dirty-raincoat brigade posing as a political party”.

The Daily Record’s headline for a picture of green algae having sex: “WARNING: THE RAUNCHIEST PIC YOU’LL SEE IN A FAMILY NEWSPAPER”.

The Daily Record on the police hunt for the rapists assaulting single men in Glasgow: “Detectives issued an e-fit of one of three perverts they want to quiz over the assaults in the west end of Glasgow”. Is this a personal view of homosexuality or of rape?

Mrs Katie Grant in The Scotsman: “It is always good when a stereotype is reinforced…”

Allan Laing’s personal opinion creeping into a report of TV’s Upstairs Downstairs and The Professionals’ actor Gordon Jackson in a report on Piers Paul Reid’s biography on Sir Alec Guinness in The Herald: “It’s one of the easiest tricks in the book – to out someone as gay post-mortem when they are not around to defend themselves”.

Actor Tom Conti in The Herald: “To say Gordon was gay is utter tripe. His family would be extremely upset… Any sort of club, be it Roman Catholics or homosexuals, always want to claim people as one of their own, but Gordon was married his entire life to the same woman…” Gays will be extremely upset to be described as a club like the one offering support for Roman Catholics.

Allan Brown in The Sunday Times Scotland: “I don’t know, some people just have to sully everything with innuendo. Let us remember instead those classic episodes of the Professionals, in which Jackson played gruff commander-in-chief George Cowley”.

The poor, wee Daily Record on Channel 4’s honest depiction of sex between 18-year-olds Tommy Wright and Jade Dyer on TV’s Teen Big Brother: “Parents were horrified by last night’s broadcast of the youngsters fumbling under a duvet (they were fucking) while the other housemates slept in the same room. Critics claimed the Channel 4 reality TV show had plumbed new depths”.

Charmless TV presenter Lorraine Kelly who should know a thing or two about showing-off in front of cameras for tacky TV programmes in The Scottish Sun: “TV hit rock bottom… Two charmless show-offs got nude and lewd just six days after they met, all for the sake of tacky TV show Big Brother… She will probably pose nude for a lad’s magazine and be forever labelled a slag”. Jealousy is a nasty thing.

Jason Allardyce in Scotland on Sunday helping soften the blow for Stagecoach Empress and sister of Brian Soutar’s recent appearance in court over claims by estate tenants of her bulldozing their garden and threatening eviction: “While both parties continue to give competing versions of events about what has gone on in the Highlands, what is not in question is that the Mercy Ships that Gloag supports have allowed life-changing operations to take place. The entrepreneur has helped not only with her money but also with her time, working on board and drawing on her experience as a nurse. Gloag said: ‘Even as a little girl it seemed right to donate part of my pocket money to starving children in Africa. Then, when I became a nurse, even though we were poorly paid, it was the most natural thing in the world to continue with my giving’.”