15 August – 19 September 2004
Scottish Media Monitor
Eddie Barnes, formerly of the tambourine-shaking Scottish Daily Mail and now political editor of the trash-can for so many Mail has-beens, Scotland on Sunday, was doing his bit for Jesus once again with news that Cardinal Keith O’Brien was reminding local authorities that they ought to be putting nativity scenes in their town centres this Christmas. Well, I know August is supposed to be the silly-season for news stories but “Cardinal asks councils not to shun Jesus on his birthday” was taking the piss! So-called ‘political editors’ like Barnsey must have had editors choking on their supplements! What would the old fool come out with next? The Scottish Catholic leader, O’Brien also wanted to dictate what appeared on the front of the Scottish Executive’s Christmas cards. Failing to mention who put the bomb together in the first place, Barnes opined how the matter “blew up last year” when the Scottish Executive featured “the politically correct ‘Season’s Greetings’” instead of ‘Merry Christmas’. These were the churches of Scotland; united in battle “to reverse the secular tide”. Pulling the rug from under the feet of anyone hoping to take a neutral stance, Osama Saeed of the Muslim Association of Britain chipped in with his support for spending taxpayers’ money on spreading the Christian message (including, I presume, dumping a badly-dressed, white, blue-eyed dolly in a box of straw in every town centre). “I don’t think trying to emphasis that is a bad thing. What is happening at the moment is that secularism is seen as a type of neutral position when it is actually almost a state religion itself which has sneakily-established itself through the back door”. (Oh no, sweetheart! We’re loud; we’re proud, and we’re using the front door)!
Attentive to anything Catholic militants had to say, Cardinal Keith O’Brien intended making the most of it. He threatened he would spark a row over sex education greater than the one over the repeal of Section 28 in Scotland if he didn’t get his way. Democracy or theocracy? That was the only question that should have troubled us. A strident O’Brien promised to enlist the support of high profile public figures.
To re-cap: An expert group was appointed in 2002 to produce proposals for the future of sex education in Scotland. These were published in 2003 and formed the basis of the present consultation called Enhancing Sexual Wellbeing in Scotland of which religionists were well represented. In fact, Father Joe Chambers, vice-convenor of the Catholic Education Committee, had helped write the draft strategy that Cardinal O’Brien now cynically used to secure press attention to a Vatican campaign. It was widely reported that the report was supposed to recommend more detailed sex education for primary and nursery pupils and wider access to contraception and tests for STIs. As the results were considered for a new policy in October, militants prepared themselves for attack. The Sunday Times Scotland had Jason Allardyce trumpeting Cardinal O’Brien’s threats with the announcement that “the leader of Scotland’s Roman Catholics will this week launch the biggest campaign against a Scottish executive policy since the repeal of section 28”. (Nonsense, of course, since Catholic militants are at it all the time)! The threat was wishful thinking on O’Brien’s part! The leading voice in the Keep the Clause campaign - preventing the repeal of an unenforceable law introduced by Thatcher’s government in Westminster, helping gays to feel completely shit about themselves in school - was The Daily Record. It’s mouthy editor, Martin Clarke had long since passed through the swing doors. It’s present incumbent, Bruce Waddell might’ve held a candle to Souter’s campaign as editor of The Scottish Sun, but as editor of The Daily Record there were clear signals that he had no appetite for such a non-starter. “NO TOT SEX LESSONS” held none of the sexual hang-ups that marked Clarke’s Daily Record. This story underlined MSP’s insistence that “pre-school kids in Scotland are not going to be taught about sex”. Patrick Harvie, MSP, co- convener of the Cross-party Group on Sexual Health wrote to The Herald: “I can say with confidence that nobody – but nobody – is proposing to flood Scotland’s nurseries with graphic, sexually explicit material. This ludicrous notion was used to whip up fear during the Section 28 debate, and is again being circulated by the cardinal, by Mr Maan, (Bashir Maan, another Keep the Clause supporter) and by more openly bigoted commentators in your pages and elsewhere”. Seated on Newsnight Scotland, a frail dandy in a beige suit, Catholic spokesman, Peter Kearney argued with Liberal Democrat Mike Rumbles that Cardinal O’Brien had not suggested that sex education for kids was recommended in the forthcoming report, but only that it might be. That’s funny! I heard no words of complaint from the Catholic Church over Allardyce’s piece in The Sunday Times Scotland where he claimed O’Brien had said “that new sex education proposals amount to ‘child abuse’.” Allardyce announced that O’Brien would be delivering “a series of attacks” over the next month. Allardyce was also certain that the planned programme would “offer sex education to nursery school pupils and contraceptives to teenagers without their parents’ knowledge”. Yes, quite a good idea if Scotland could ever get away with it and had the courage to adopt the successful Dutch model of sex education! The lesson in semantics did nothing to conceal the real energy behind the Catholic Church’s campaign. Turning a blind eye to the criminal sexual behaviour of so many of its own priests toward children or human rights abuses performed against gay youngsters in their schools, the Church carried on as if it still had some vestige of moral authority. Jason Allardyce was back weeks later, announcing that the First Minister was going to review sex lessons “after a backlash from parents and church leaders”. MSPs appeared powerless to implement truly meaningful, desperately needed, radical changes to sexual education programmes to change young people’s behaviour. More press religionists were on hand to support the church. Ubiquitous, (and not very good) columnist, Mrs Katie Grant turned on the “sex education zealots” adding: “To accuse the state of sponsoring the sexual abuse of minors is a very serious thing to do...” I’ll say, especially when it’s a Church that’s done more than it’s fair share of abusing! Mrs Grant insisted “…the Cardinal is right”, as she would, and correctly highlighted that he was not just interested in imposing his views on children in Catholic schools, but others too. “Catholic schools still retain the right to control the sex education offered to their pupils. There is no question of graphic imagery, homosexual role-playing or putting condoms on bananas in a Catholic classroom… The Cardinal plays to a wider audience”. The tired columnist tried to borrow from some of the old rhetoric that once divided Scotland saying that this “would cost McConnell his job” but somehow her right-wing mumbo-jumbo only fell off The Scotsman’s small pages. She even tried to explain away the Netherlands’ success with liberal sex education on the fact they hadn’t “undermined” family life. Fortunately, the Scottish Parent Teacher Council had the wherewithal to advise church leaders that they should have “kept their mouths shut” on the issue. When the last thing we needed was another religionist putting their oar in, Harry Reid, former editor of The Herald, carped in the same paper he was supposed to have left: “The Herald, in its comprehensive coverage of the ongoing story, quoted not just the cardinal and Scotland’s first minister, but also a spokeswoman for Scotland’s Muslims and spokesmen for the SNP and the Tories. One voice was conspicuously missing: that of Scotland’s national church. This is sad…” Trumpeting his desire to see his church enter the moral scrum, he begged: “The Kirk must find its voice, and soon”. The Church has never lost its voice, with the siren voices of its militants screeching almost daily from the pages of most newspapers, especially The Scottish Daily Mail. Struggling to lift the Catholic campaign to maintain ‘Christian’ morality in sex education off the ground, new headlines kept appearing. “Storm as ban on lurid school sex packs is stalled” was one, and “explicit sex packs for primaries may never be dumped”, by Graham Grant was another. The ‘storm’ was over Learning and Teaching Scotland, (LTS), responsible for developing the national curriculum, allowing teachers access to informative resources like ‘Taking Sex Seriously’ and the ‘Primary Schools Sex and Relationship Education Pack’. The Scottish Daily Mail’s editorial whinged, “despite massive protests”, the Executive was “determined to foist ‘sex education’ of the most lurid kind upon young children”. The editorial left the realms of reality to accuse the Executive of “corrupting both children and the democratic process”, before declaring: “Despite its success in America, promotion of sexual abstinence is unacceptable to the Scottish Executive”. It was unacceptable precisely because it hadn’t worked! The editorial tried to rally the troops with more 80’s sloganeering. “It is time to make it plain to our unaccountable rulers that their politically correct corruption of children is unacceptable to the majority of Scots”. But the majority of Scots weren’t listening and the majority of Mail readers had already turned over to start the crossword. After starching his collar over sex education, the insufferable Graham Grant, their ‘Home Affairs Editor’, turned to Catholic militant’s opposition to shared schools. “Combined with the ongoing disagreement over sex education, it could cost the First Minister valuable votes among the many Catholics who live in his Lanarkshire constituency”. Would it? Amongst other things, militants want separate toilets, staff rooms and a host of other separate areas to maintain religious apartheid in Scottish schools. Stonewall Scotland’s Ali Jarvis had had enough of the scheming militants and put pen to paper to write to The Herald: “I’d just like to set the record straight for those of you who might have heard the Lesley Riddoch show… (BBC Radio Scotland). Contrary to the forceful assertions of an individual caller to the BBC radio programme (who I believe is associated with a minority religious pressure group) Stonewall has played no part in recent meetings at Greater Glasgow Health Board nor as was specifically detailed has it made any calls for either sexual education or ‘teaching on homosexuality’ for the under-fives. Presented by the caller to the phone-in programme as hard fact, this seemed to be a deliberate and ‘cynical’ move to directly link an LGBT group with these proposals in order to increase the ‘fear and alarm’ factor for the general public. It was then reported unquestioningly by the Mail…”
Jim ‘call-me-Mary-Whitehouse’ Coleman, Glasgow City Council’s deputy leader has been behind the council’s efforts to ban lap-dancing, commissioning a phoney £7,000 survey from feminist Julie Bindel, from the Child and Abuse Studies Unit at London Metropolitan University and renowned for her anti-porn stance, to help justify their efforts to close down shops selling erotica. Bindel will know all about the militant religionists who champion her cause, it is an alliance that is as old as the city. She demands that councils be given the powers to licence lap-dancing clubs as sex shops. The council will like that. Taxpayers’ money well spent, I’m sure! As it stands, they are licensed as an entertainment. There would be no problem licensing lap-dancing clubs as part of the sex industry if only Glasgow didn’t have such a problem with sex. Jim Coleman told The Herald: “Under current legislation, they are seen in the same light as karaoke, live music and discotheque. This cannot be right”. But is it right to denigrate sex as something harmful and inferior? Bindel went undercover, and, surprise, surprise, she found sex! Her report claimed dancers suffered humiliation and sexual harassment, that licensing conditions, employment law, and the clubs’ own house rules were repeatedly breached. She could have found that in just about any Glasgow business whether or not sex was involved! She added that many dancers were in debt, which added pressure on them to provide sexual services, and that some used cocaine or amphetamines to stay awake or control their weight. She added that dancers were ordered to dress “like sluts”. But had they, in fact, simply been asked to ‘dress sexy?’ Her ‘report’ concludes that an atmosphere had been created whereby the buying and selling of sex might occur. Oh, sweetheart, wake up and smell the coffee! These boys would take it for nothing if it were offered! Poor wages, payment of ‘rent’ for each shift worked and hiring an excess of dancers would be amicably settled by unionisation of the workforce. Neither Julie Bindel or Jim Coleman and his cronies were interested in the conditions of the workplace. Bindel’s collaboration with Glasgow City Council’s exercise in public morality had her proposing the banning of VIP suites, curtained areas and the introduction of CCTV throughout the premises. The council insist that ‘women are being made into sex objects’. It’s funny, that’s the same argument – that men were being used as sex objects – which was used by the advertising company booking the latest poster campaign by Gay Times, which showed two men almost – and only almost – kissing! Editor, Vicky Powell claimed the magazine was forced to prepare a defence if anyone complained and to call stores, including overseas distributors, to make sure they would be willing to carry the magazine. The Herald’s Iain Wilson reported that at Legs ‘n’ Co, the VIP suite “contained a bowl of condoms and was unsupervised when certain dancers entered”. It is the thin edge of a wedge when the presence of condoms is ever used as evidence. Condoms are for safer sex, which must always be given precedence over moral policing. The council had failed in legal arguments simply because it had no evidence of harm to women, but they hoped Bindel’s ‘report’ would help. I think the evidence is as inadmissible as that of a pretty policeman chasing men in a public toilet. The licensing board is a statutory body outside of Glasgow City Council’s control, even though all its members are councillors. Edinburgh’s licensing board also claims autonomy and is lobbying the Scottish Executive for more powers to control lap-dancing. Reporter Iain Wilson and Julie Bindel followed in the former Bishop of Edinburgh, Richard Holloway’s footsteps in The Sunday Herald and paid a visit to a lap-dancing club for their report in The Herald. One dancer told them: “Oh, they’re lovely mainly. Some get a bit raucous, but they are generally respectful. They just want to feel a bit special”, but after only a few hours the pair were able to walk away with what they’d come for, a few negative comments for their story. “Her tune changed, along with the outfit, now a bikini and so-called ‘porn shoes’.” She now despised the men. “They come in all arrogant, but leave like little boys. They think they are God’s gifts”. They insisted every night dancers were “complaining of drunkenness, heckling, being grabbed, attempts to barter down dance prices, and being hounded for sex”. Hardly surprising in a licensed premises. Had anyone thought of creating places where men could go for sex and not drink, or does that sound too much like common sense? The Herald prudishly witnessed “girls dancing naked while fondling themselves” and noted “that house rules of ‘no touching’ were broken, from kissing and rubbing within main areas, to sitting or lying full length on men in mirrored private rooms”. They found “full sex was never volunteered” but demonstrating the extent that sex was policed in the clubs, “customers told The Herald of arranging to meet dancers after work”. The Herald reported threats of violence from customers “and of skin irritations and minor burns caused by detergents used to clean the poles”. (Well, change the soap)! Many women feared loosing their jobs simply for having consensual sex in what should have been a safe environment, while the council, so fond of trumpeting a commitment to equal rights, were busy denying women theirs.
The writer of a new drama, (described in The Sunday Herald as “controversial”), chose footballers sex lives as his subject. They’ll be calling me ‘controversial’ for popping two Hermesetas in my coffee next! Rob Fraser entered the men’s changing rooms, to discover a lot of them turned on by group sex. Channel 4’s ‘Sex, Footballers and Videotape’ exposed “murky rumours of group sex and allegations of gang rape”. The two expressions of sexuality, group sex and rape, ran together in one sentence, despite being worlds apart. It became apparent to Fraser, “that the lurid tabloid splashes about ‘roasting’ (two men, one woman) hid a more disturbing truth about fundamental shifts in behaviour and attitude”. Grainy camcorder footage of Kieron Dyer, Frank Lampard and Rio Ferdinand ‘romping’ in Cyprus in 2000, “wasn’t included in the final cut for sensationalist purposes”, he assured us. Of course not, and programme makers had intended to woo advertisers with a documentary on molecular biology! Fraser did one better than a documentary. He turned it into a TV drama. Fraser confessed to “something troubling about the contempt shown for the young women who feature”. But most of these women were enjoying themselves. And there lies the rub. Men – and indeed many women – are saturated in a culture that suggests women don’t make their own choices in sex; that a woman adopts a passive role. That women service the needs of men; that they are ‘the victims’. We seem unable to get our brains round the fact that getting fucked doesn’t constitute ‘passive’ in all senses of the word. Fraser adds, “somehow the footage remains unsettling”. Of course it is, when our instincts equate ‘passive’ with ‘out of control’. Get it right! When you’re screwed: You decide. Whether it’s doggy-style on the duvet or legs in the air over a Hotpoint on fast spin, only you can make a judgement whether you are ready, willing and able. If men behave badly in sex, isn’t it better out in the open? Fraser’s research indicated half of the clubs in the English Premiership last season had players on their books that’d been involved in similar group sex incidents. Fraser is worried that the tribal mentality of football has “a serious downside”; that group sex is quickly becoming the norm. In reality, group sex is older than prostitution. There is good group sex and bad group sex. But it is never always bad. Fraser observes, “those players with a taste for group sex take (women) for granted”. Who cares? Not all women, I’m sure! Only when the subject is forced or coerced into doing something they don’t want to do, is it rape. But a woman’s sense of control doesn’t leave her when a few more guys join in. She always has that right to say ‘no’, as do the men participating. Even in an orgy there are grounds rules; an etiquette that players often instinctively understand. It is difficult with a horde of strangers in a luxury penthouse or hotel suite after a lot of champagne, ecstasy and cocaine to draw parameters. But rarely do we see such energy wasted exposing such pitfalls. Perhaps, that quiet section of the beach, or the park areas where couples go dogging, watched by a straggle of onlookers, far away from the nearest bar, might be the safest way to enjoy group sex after all.
garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
The Scottish Media Monitor supports the work of Outrage! P O Box 17816, London SW14 8WT. Donations welcome. www.outrage.org.uk
CUT IT OUT…
The Daily Record: “A boy thought to be as young as 12 was being hunted by police yesterday after he exposed himself to two women in separate incidents in Cowdenbeath, Fife”.
Tory Columnist Gerald Warner in Scotland on Sunday: “The hated name Thatcher – loathed by all those pompous prats in corduroy who got it wrong when the Lady got it right – is the headline attraction…”
The Daily Record on a survey conducted by Sanyo, the camcorder manufacturer: “Prudish Scots less likely to strip off for home-made porn than anyone else in Britain”.
