Scottish Media Monitor
Garry Otton
20 September – 20 October 2005
The Church gets evermore desperate. An advertorial in The Sunday Times Scotland for the Ideal Church Show - sorry, should I say, Christian Resources Show - held at The Royal Highland Centre at Ingliston said it all. It’s a veritable Paddy’s Market of Karaoke hymn machines; preaching puppets; non-alcoholic communal wines; a GodPod, (solar-powered talking Bible); a board game called Salvation Challenge where players compete to give away money; make-up for Christian clowns; JCUK tee-shirts and Holy Socks adorned with Biblical scenes. There’s everything but a blow-up priest! There is even an articulated lorry kitted out with unashamed religious propaganda otherwise disguised as a multimedia classroom by the Scottish Bible Society “in an attempt to inject what it calls the ‘wow factor’ back into schoolchildren’s experience of scripture. Intended for use as part of the national curriculum, the expandable trailer features a mock film studio and a simulated flight over parts of the world where Christianity is on the increase”. Sunday Times Scotland added: “Just to make sure Scotland’s unchurched youth is listening, the vehicle will be unveiled and sent on its national tour by Cameron Stout, the famously celibate 2003 winner of Big Brother”. Margaret Stewart from Newton Stewart smiled: “We had an order from Mongolia for the camel and star design and last week I sent three pairs of socks to India”. Emblazoned with scriptures, “she expects this years hit to be her Glory Golf Balls…” If this signals a Church in trouble, so does its lurch to the political right. Also in The Sunday Times Scotland was Mike Merritt and Mark Macaskill’s report on notorious fundamentalist group Operation Christian Vote, now re-branded as the Scottish Christian party. They are to “field candidates against every MSP in Scotland with the help of £500,000 from a mystery benefactor… the generous donation of £500,000 from a wealthy businessman, whose identity has not been revealed, will enable them to challenge every seat in the country… The party will also be receiving donations, capped at £200 each, from overseas supporters”. The Rev George Hargreaves who wrote the gay anthem, ‘So Macho’ for Sinitta, founded the party.
Before he had even opened his mouth, most Scottish Sunday papers - thanks to the efficiency of the Catholic press office - was reporting on cardinal O’Brien’s annual Red Mass in Edinburgh in which a sermon was to be preached to a gathering of leading figures in the Catholic community including lawyers, judges and prosecutors. Scotland on Sunday advised: “Scotland’s most senior Catholic will today launch a scathing attack on MSPs ‘intent on enacting unjust and immoral laws which do not stem from any natural or rational basis”. Forgive me, but aren’t such pronouncements from a ‘leader’, largely ignored by Scottish Catholics, more worthy of criticism than elevation? And according to The Herald: “Professor John Brewer, head of the department of sociology at Aberdeen University, has been awarded almost £124,000 for a research project focusing on religion as a reconciliation tool”. Hmm! Where’s all that reconciliation now? Scotland on Sunday headlined: “Cardinal O’Brien attacks MSPs over ‘unjust and immoral laws’” which was ruthlessly used as a vehicle to undermine equality and fair play. He insisted that historically, “certain fundamental civil arrangements”, (not ours), shared across many societies, faiths and traditions, including the respect and protection for marriage and the family, had been historically proven to lead to the common good. This was presented as “the clearest proof”, all of which might come as some surprise to children of violent or drug-addicted parents or even some gay mums or dads who’ve done a perfect job outside this ‘common good’. MSPs had the good sense to hit back. Green MSP, Patrick Harvie was quoted in The Sunday Herald giving O’Brien the kick up the backside he sorely needed: “Traditional morality is as ludicrous a concept as anything the cardinal has come up with recently. The idea of one moral code is dead – and for good reason. Most Catholics understand this fact, so it’s a shame the Church hierarchy doesn’t”. Scottish Socialist Party leader Colin Fox didn’t exactly mince his words either: “The cardinal needs to haul himself into the 21st century. O’Brien’s remarks do not reflect the views of a majority of Scots who clearly believe in equality for all. He’s stuck in the past”. Historically, religion has stunted Scotland’s growth as a nation. During the seventies and eighties, Scotland haemorrhaged as the young, the talented and the inspired fled, usually to London, escaping its moral strictures to seek fame and fortune in a more liberal climate. Today, much of the Church has abandoned its spiritual roots to turn religion into a political force for its own conservative agenda. Recently Cardinal O’Brien used the Time for Reflection slot at Holyrood to lecture the “captives to… sexual aberration”; turned on society for losing sight of the “sacred nature of human life”; used an Easter Sunday Homily in Edinburgh to call for the promotion of ‘pro-life issues’; called a parliamentary report on embryo research a “development which would lead to even more destruction of human life”; called for all General Election candidates to be quizzed on their pro-life stance; called on Scotland’s Catholics to boycott the National Lottery for giving £3.3m to the FPA and Brook Advisory Centres and, (when the issue of equality suddenly mattered); used the First Minster’s summit on sectarianism as an opportunity to call for a repeal of the outdated Act of Settlement, which bars Catholics from the throne.
Religion also remains the greatest obstacle to improving sexual education in Scotland. The Herald, having been shaped and influenced by religionists over the years could no longer ignore steps taken to challenge the sexual habits of young people in Scotland. Given the sexual insight of most young people, these were hardly radical proposals. A questionnaire was to be sent to headmasters asking them to identify classes suitable to take part in a survey. Parents would then be contacted before allowing pupils from third to sixth-year secondary school pupils (aged 13-17) to participate. The Herald’s editorial scraped the highlighter over “one question, with three parts, about oral sex and whether it is right or reasonable to expect teenagers as young as 13 to answer it. The short answer must be no… It is difficult to imagine any parent allowing their early-teens child to take part in that sort of survey”. The Herald sniffed: “The Catholic Education Commission has raised its objections with the city council, claiming it has not been consulted about a matter – sexual health and contraception – where it should have a major input”. Should it? Just ask them how they treat gay kids! I don’t recall any Scottish newspaper challenging them on such an issue. I don’t believe the Catholic Church – or any other religion for that matter – has any business interfering in sex education, let alone being allowed to run schools, or worse, securing public funds to run them. With one in ten teenage girls infected with Chlamydia, Europe’s worst pregnancy figures and rising sexual infections in Scotland, we need radical action. If that means sweeping aside the moral concerns of religionists and moral conservatives, then so be it!
Some years ago I appeared on a programme filmed in Aberdeen debating whether gays should have children. The director divided the opposing factions’ right down the middle. I remember a headmistress on the other side of the room indignantly remonstrating that these poor children would be victimised in school. The very idea of tackling the root causes of the bullying was clearly a step too far for her. 14-year-old Ross McKirdy is different. The six-foot, gentle giant is also a brilliant musician. (Perhaps in later years, his parents might be fortunate enough to discover they have a gay son, but for the time being, his sexuality is not an issue). He was a victim of an assault filmed by the perpetrators on their mobile phones and has suffered terribly at the hands of the bullies. His schooldays have been a complete misery and seemingly, like for so many gay kids, an utter waste of time. He has already had to move school twice and admitted to wanting to take his own life. After reading his diary of despair, his parents became desperate enough to try a private school, but when the cash ran out, Ross was forced back to a state school.
There is something of a division in sex. Who can have it, and who can’t. First there was the “randy reverend”, an Episcopalian priest, the Bishop of Glasgow and Galloway, who was “investigated” by the Church. The Daily Record explained how “twice-divorced Kenny Macaulay, 48” bought “kinky toys and porn videos from the eBay website”. Columnist Catherine Deveney gasped in Scotland on Sunday: “Heavens! Isn’t it refreshing to find a clergyman of such modest perversions? But what did church chiefs do? Suspendered him. I mean suspended him. I’d have thought they’d promote him to bishop. At least his sexual tastes involve his adult partner. Perverted? Not as perverted as some other scandals to hit the Christian churches. It’s not another stomach-churning child abuse scandal; not the cold-blooded evil of men who befriended single mothers in order to target their children, as priests in Boston, USA, did. The spineless, soulless, husks of men who wrapped their emptiness in a clerical collar and offered to say prayers at bedtime with children they then molested. Now that’s sexual deviancy. But a kinky collar and a wooden table? Oh do me a favour. The table has even been shoved in the garden. Father Macaulay reportedly said of himself and his partner: ‘We just enjoy a laugh. We laugh at life and we laugh at sex’. That's where you're going wrong then, Kenny. ‘Church’, ‘sex’ and ‘laugh’ do not belong in the same sentence. Not in any order. People used to think I was joking when I told them the headmistress of my Glasgow convent school warned us that if we wore patent shoes to the school dance, they might reflect our underwear. I wasn’t”. Then, shrieking off the front page of the pursed-lipped Sunday Mail: “SHERIFF: I PAID FOR SEX IN SAUNA”. The Sunday Mail, no more than modern-day stocks on a village green, showered Hugh Neilson, a “married church elder” with verbal rotten fruit. He was described as a “shamed sheriff” who had “confessed” to a “sordid truth” after he was contacted by the police who had been gathering intelligence on saunas. Neilson had resigned as a sheriff in January and suspended from his duties by Lord Cullen, the Lord President and Lord Gill, the Lord Justice Clerk investigating his fitness for office. This was all the excuse The Sunday Mail needed to send another lucky “Mail investigator” to “meet two hookers” who showed him “a tacky four-poster-style bed with a canopy surrounded by fairy lights”. It was an opportunity for the The Sunday Mail’s Billy Paterson to report: “The police crackdown on sauna and brothel owners is aimed at stamping out human trafficking from eastern Europe and Asia into Scotland’s sordid sex trade”. This appears to be a more modern concern camouflaging an age-old battle on moral grounds. Patterson added: “The country’s multi-million pound sex-for-sale industry is a front for drugs peddling as well as being held responsible for the spread of sexually transmitted diseases”. But whilst The Mail can report that “Officers suspect some sauna bosses are operating from flats in the capital, some of which are doubling as crack cocaine dens”, they can never bring themselves to empower sex workers to organise themselves, support their rights and arrest the pimps and dealers.
However accessible good (and bad) porn is to kids, chancing upon it by accident seems to be the most damaging. Out in the open is when people are forced to deal with it. The Southern Reporter’s staff reporter Bob Burgess told the tragic story of a 61-year-old religious education teacher, John Stephen, who ran the school’s video club. He was forced to resign after being convicted of culpable and reckless conduct. Rape? A stabbing? Pissing on his neighbour’s roses? No. Mr Stephen sold a video he picked up at home, maybe used by his gay lodger and labelled as the school’s 2003 Christmas concert, to two “stunned” 17-year-old girls. They were subsequently treated to more than just a few minutes of a good horn section filmed off Sky TV’s The Spice Channel. Or as The Southern Reporter would have it, “three hours of pornography…” Come on John; have you not seen Sky’s Gay TV yet? So full of limp dicks and coy sexual suggestions that the only danger would be unexcited users worrying if they were perhaps impotent! In court, “the pupil told a sheriff she was shocked and embarrassed at what she described as gay porn”. If that wasn’t bad enough, a 15-year-old guy chanced on the same hot action when he switched on a video machine at the school! (No mention of the inherent risks buggering about with the school’s electrical equipment unsupervised). More worryingly, he told the sheriff at Selkirk’s Sheriff Court “that he was scared by what he saw and told a teacher”. An over-excited Crown begged Mr Stephen be put on the Sex Offenders’ Register. Fortunately, the sheriff thought otherwise. It’s not surprising the Sex Offenders’ Register has been growing over the years. It now holds almost 3,000 names in Scotland. If that’s not bad enough, police have been keeping an unofficial register for six years – that’s people who haven’t been convicted – which, according to Scotland on Sunday, holds something like 30,000 names. Sheriff Drummond declared: “There was a foreseeable danger that pupils would be exposed to inappropriate material which was recorded and stored within the accused’s home” and said he was “satisfied that the culpable and reckless conduct – was attended by the consequences of fear and alarm”. I’m not sure enough has been done to attend to precisely those consequences.
By the end of this year, I will be marking the tenth year of the Scottish Media Monitor. I have made the decision, on this anniversary, to finish writing this column to concentrate on my business and complete my second book, Badge of Shame, which will be chronicling the repeal of Section 28, the notorious law, introduced by former PM, Margaret Thatcher to prevent local authorities from ‘promoting’ homosexuality in schools. I have to say, I’m uncertain at this stage, of the Scottish Media Monitor’s future. The Scottish Media Monitor opened in the January 1995 issue of Gay Scotland, a few months before Thomas Hamilton tragically gunned down a classroom of children and their teacher in Dunblane. It is a story that is back into the papers now that secret police files have been opened to public scrutiny. In so doing they have laid to rest rumours that Thomas Hamilton was part of a ‘paedophile ring’, sharing photographs of the boys he had taken attending his boys’ clubs. Local parents had challenged Hamilton’s sexual status and unleashed a dragon. A decade later and the tap still drips. Mike Tait wrote in The Metro: “…The mass killer was accused of taking ‘dirty’ photographs of a young boy. The evidence, giving a chilling insight into the mind of Hamilton, raises vital questions as to why he was allowed a gun licence”. For the majority of its life the Scottish Media Monitor has occupied the centre pages of ScotsGay magazine and its website, scottishmediamonitor.com. My column has chronicled a difficult period in the media’s treatment of sexual issues, which has included campaigns like The Daily Record’s SmutWatch and The Scottish News of the World’s ‘Name and Shame’. It has witnessed everything from the insidious peddling of religious propaganda by media columnists to seemingly benign stories like the man arrested with a snake down his trousers or the doll with a penis under her dress. Then, at the turn of the century, Brian Souter, an evangelical Christian, with an estimated £2m and the help of large swathes of the Scottish press, launched a vile campaign to ‘Keep the Clause’ (Section 28). It was led by a former editor of Scottish editions of The Sun and included a massive billboard campaign across Scotland. Souter launched a private ‘referendum’ while the media, much like the church today, went to war with itself over the issue. There were daily stories demonising gays - including anatomical drawings on how to spot a homosexual – set against a background of vandalism to gay-run premises, beatings and murders of gay men. ‘Keep the Clause’ was supported up by the Scottish School Boards’ Association (SSBA) at the same time it was homophobic catchphrase in Scottish playgrounds.
The National Library of Scotland, which selects websites that are judged to be an important part of the documentary heritage of Scotland, has archived the Scottish Media Monitor.
E-mail: garry@scottishmediamonitor.com
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CUT IT OUT
Ubiquitous columnist Mrs Katie Grant, airing her views in The Scotsman on the European Court of Human Rights: “The ECHR has moved us into ‘have a go’ country and even if many of those who have a go don’t succeed, a culture of litigiousness and grievance is generated which spills over and encourages those who don’t get as far as they would like down the human rights path to try other legal avenues – anti-discrimination or anti-racism legislation, for instance – in pursuit of that crock of gold known as compensation”.
