Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

It was Chapman Pincher who opened the can of worms about Maurice Oldfield, the former chief of MI6. THE MAIL ON SUNDAY (19 April) ran an extract from Pincher’s new book making the revelation that Oldfield was gay. This—much to the delight of the tabloids—was subsequently confirmed by Mrs Thatcher.

Mr Pincher’s original article was a classic piece of money-inspired humbug. It was riddled with innuendo and assumption and shot through with the kind of hypocritical moralising that newspapers revel in. He claimed that he had known of “Oldfield’s staggering duplicity for several years” yet had been “diffident about revealing it because he was a friend.”

Yes, it seems Mr Pincher is all heart and nothing if not loyal to his ‘friends’. Nobly keeping his mouth shut—until, of course, publicity was needed for the new book and then the ‘friendship’ could go to hell—and the ‘friend’ can be slandered up hill and down dale because he isn’t around anymore to contradict.

In the article Pincher has to admit that Oldfield’s sexual exploits (and we’re all entitled to those, surely?) had “led to no harm” and that “there was no evidence he was compromised”. Yet he still manages to say, “this case highlights the dangers of having homosexuals in such sensitive  positions.”

Dangers? What dangers? Nothing happened, for God’s sake!

Mr Pincher makes rather large assumptions about Maurice Oldfield’s character and motivations, which not even a ‘friend’ is entitled to do. He speaks of Oldfield’s “charity” towards others who were in trouble. “Such magnanimity, which came naturally to Oldfield, may well have been intensified by the delicate appreciation of his own secret weakness. And the knowledge that there but for the Grace of God, went he.”

What does all this boil down to, then? Yes, Maurice Oldfield was gay. No, it did not interfere with this work in any way. So, what was Chapman Pincher’s motivation in betraying his ‘old friend’ in such a squalid way?

One possible explanation was offered in THE OBSERVER (10 May). “When he retired from the Express in 1979, Mr Pincher says, he did not expect to have anything more to do with spies. But he was short of money. Now, presumably thanks to the spy books, Mr Pincher’s circumstances seem perfectly attuned to his requirements. He lives in a cul-de-sac in a Georgian house next to the church in the charming village of Kintbury, adjacent to Sir Terence Conran, Lord Howard de Walden, and other nobs. Excellent fishing and shooting is available nearby.”

Amazing what kind of a lifestyle can be had if you’re prepared to sell your ‘friends’ down the river.

But once Mr Pincher had given the green light, the other papers went crazy. For days the tabloids were filled with lurid tales of Oldfield’s supposed exploits. If you took it all at face value, there wasn’t a single “sordid sexual encounter” that Sir Maurice hadn’t had. Everything from child sex to ‘rough trade’ to transvestism were reported to have been his forte. Vikki de Lambray was disinterred and given the kind of publicity he would have adored when he was alive. It also gave THE SUN the opportunity to use dehumanising terms like “poof” “pervert” “poofter” and so on over and over again in ever more censorious headlines.

What with this supposed ‘scandal’ and the attempted crucifixions of Elton John and Freddie Mercury, the newspapers’ unhealthy obsession with homosexuality reached such a pitch that week that THE LONDON DAILY NEWS carried a cartoon showing a man at a paper shop having to buy ‘Gay News’ in order to find out what is happening in the non-gay world.

But come the weekend the angle changed. Suddenly it dawned on the commentators that perhaps Sir Maurice hadn’t been such a bad old duffer after all. “Why living a lie is the biggest crime” was the lead feature in TODAY (25 April). It asked whether Roy Jenkins (who guided the 1967 Sexual Offences Act through Parliament) would be dismayed to see “his SDP colleague, Dr David Owen … declaring unequivocally that no practising homosexual should have been allowed to reach a position such as the head of MI6.”

“Why not?” asked TODAY, not unreasonably, and then answered: “Many homosexuals lead perfectly respectable lives, in stable relationships, and if they are frank about their sexuality there is no reason why they should be any more susceptible to blackmail or any more of a security risk than anybody else. There is, after all, no shortage of heterosexuals who have found themselves either susceptible to blackmail or compromised into resignation.”

A fair enough point, and one that was made repeatedly. “The terms ‘homosexual’ and ‘security risk’ are not synonymous,” editorialised THE TIMES, “and there is too much of a tendency to treat them as such.” Tim Foskett in a letter to THE GUARDIAN (28 April) said: “There is something wrong in a society that sets up conditions such that someone who is gay is not protected against blackmail or wrongful dismissal. There is further, something quite immoral about a society that then seeks to negate the lives and work of prominent lesbians and gay men on the grounds that they might have been a ‘security risk’.”

There then followed a spate of articles, mainly, I would guess, written by heterosexuals, trying to make sense of the hoo-ha over Oldfield. Although they were trying to be fair, some of the background pieces were laughable. Paul Barker in THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (26 April) told its readers that they should “keep the revelation of Maurice Oldfield’s sexual inclinations in proportion” and then there followed an article by Norman Stone which “shows that many homosexuals are predisposed to be servants of the state.”

We already know this, of course, but Mr Stone gave us a half-baked “psychological” explanation calling on Freud and Jung as justification. (It couldn’t have anything to do with having to make a living, could it, or am I being simplistic?) Never mind, the feature told us all about famous gays from history who were (in Mr Stone’s terms, anyway) heroes. Lord Kitchener, Cecil Rhodes, General Trotha, Napoleon, Mountbatten, Richard the Lionheart, Frederick the Great and maybe even Beethoven! The following week, John Montgomery used the correspondence column to add to the list: Gordon of Khartoum (who apparently “liked to give baths to poor boys he picked up”), Kaiser William II, Krupp the munitions king, Alexandra the Great, Petronius, Plutarch, Horace, Virgil, Julius Caesar, Tchaikovsky, E M Forster, Lawrence of Arabia, W Somerset Maugham, Ronald Firbank, John van Druten, who “all faithfully served the public”.

Matthew Parris, who has a more intimate knowledge of the subject, wrote in THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: “Why persecute homosexuals willing to serve the state?” He put the whole hyped-up foolishness into perspective: “The small voice which whispers: ‘Gosh! The head of our intelligence for all those years was a homosexual, and did a splendid job!’ is scarcely heard beneath the calls for more vetting, stricter tests, clear guidelines. Why? ‘He could have been blackmailed’ people will say. Well, there is a simple way of ensuring that he could not have been blackmailed, and it lies within the hands of the superiors who fear he might have been. They could have told him that homosexuality was no disqualification from office.”

The Government reacted to this oft-repeated and totally uncontestable argument by suspending a young man from his job at GCHQ because he is a homosexual (OBSERVER 26 April). It seems that to the security services being gay is roughly the equivalent to being a member of the politburo. On this issue the Establishment has a real problem: common sense tells them that their policy is crazy, but homophobia dictates their actions.

PROTEST can work. Along with many other readers of THE DAILY MIRROR, I wrote to complain about the reactionary rantings of George Gale. Lo and behold—the nasty old git has been sacked! Editor Richard Stott explained: “The idea of providing an ‘alternative voice’ was not one that worked and certainly not one that you and many other readers appreciated. Let me assure you that the Daily Mirror will continue its aggressive and virulent attacks on the Thatcher Government …”

Which proves that those letters to the editor aren’t always the waste of time they seem to us. Mark one up for our side.

Elton John and Freddie Mercury have both been given ‘the treatment’ by The Sun and The Star over the past month. Full details of their private lives were paraded for all to see.

There is a school of thought which says that ‘public figures must be prepared to have their foibles exposed to the world’ and there is another that contends that when we close our bedroom door, the world should keep out. Of the latter persuasion is Norman Tebbit, the gruesome chairman of the Conservative party, who told YOU magazine (10 May): “I think people in public life both deserve and ought to have a private life as well. Of course, if you don’t talk about your private life, people make it up.”

Disagreeing with this view is arch-scandal-monger Nigel Dempster (who is well-versed in the art of apology for lies told in print). THE MAIL ON SUNDAY (19 April) carried a piece by him about: “the healthy, human, simple wish for ordinary people to be informed when extraordinary people misbehave. What we are talking about is democracy itself.”

I would agree with this argument in the case of a crooked politician, a corrupt businessman or a dangerous criminal. We need to be protected from such people. But who needs to be protected from Elton John? What crime has he committed that will either bring down society or which involved an unwilling victim?

THE STAR (20 April) justified its hounding of Elton by saying that its readers are “interested in the truth.” (Why they are reading the Star, then, is anybody’s guess). They say that: “It is nonsense for people in public life to think they should be immune from publicity in their private lives.”

Excuse me, Mr Leader-writer, if you could get off your high horse for a moment, I’d like to know exactly why it is nonsense. If Elton John had chopped up a journalist and flushed him down the toilet for sexual kicks there might (and I say might) be grounds for investigation. But surely a few consensual sexual encounters are nobody’s business but Elton’s? I would think that even paragons of virtue like the editors of the Sun and the Star must have sex lives of some kind. Would they consider them to be of legitimate interest to their readers?

I, for one, would be fascinated to know what such perfect specimens get up to. If they live as they write, though, then I’m afraid it wouldn’t be very much.

Good News Corner: THE LONDON DAILY NEWS reported (8 May) that “Our Aids survey shows clearly that it is the doctors and not the priests who have won the debate about how we will deal with the disease … Our poll makes it clear that the public, in London at least, have reacted with coolness and calm and a surprising lack of moralising.”

In THE LONDON STANDARD (16 April): “A dramatic drop in the number of new Aids cases has been reported in San Francisco because more people are practising safe sex. A report … showed last year that only one per cent of those studied had the deadly disease, compared with 12.4 in 1982.”

Coming Out Corner: Welcome out of the closet disc jockey Paul Gambaccini who described himself in THE STAR (6 May) as “predominantly, but not exclusively homosexual.”

Loony Corner: From THE DAILY MAIL (9 May): “The ‘gay’ revolution encouraged in classrooms by ‘loony’ left councils could threaten the future of human life … if the promotion of homosexuality is allowed to flourish in schools it could mean the end of civilisation, Local Government Minister Rhodes Boyson told MPs.”

From DAILY EXPRESS (27 April): “I am considering setting up a fighting organisation of people of the same name as myself to explore all legal possibilities of hitting back at those people who have popularised the word ‘gay’ for homosexual.” This was in a letter from a Mr A W Gaye. My reply to Mr Gaye (for some reason unpublished by The Express) suggested that he change his name by deed poll to Mr Bent or Mr Poofter or Pansy or Queer or Fairy. We’ve finished with such terms so please help yourself.

An article in the science magazine OMNI (April issue) concerned the research of a scientist called Gunter Dorner, who is convinced that homosexuals are “born, not made”. He asserts that there are certain hormonal factors which can be pinpointed during pregnancy which can indicate whether a child will be born homosexual or not. He also has a theory about how that can be corrected. It’s too complicated to go into here, but very few people in the scientific world seem impressed by Mr Dorner’s ideas.

Inspiration for his work came in quite a bizarre way. Apparently, he was watching ballet on television and thought that the male dancers (who were mostly homosexual, he asserts) were “behaving more like females than heterosexual men” and performing “gestures that couldn’t be performed by heterosexual males.” Seems they were all far too graceful to be straight.

A very alluring theory for those with little knowledge of what they are talking about, but unfortunately there are a lot of gay men who are clumsy, cack-handed and elephantine in their movements. They’d never make ballet dancers in a thousand years. So where does that leave Mr Dorner’s theories?

But much more important, why is he pursuing this line of enquiry in the first place? The German Society for Sex Research has no doubt about his motivation: “It becomes particularly evident how closely all Dorner’s experiments on the subject of homosexuality collude with the social prejudice that demands the restriction and control of homosexuality.” The Society accuses Dorner of advocating “endocrinological euthanasia of homosexuality” and indeed, Mr Dorner seems to be advocating some sort of “final solution” for the gay problem. And there are a lot of people who’d be only too pleased to help him out with that.

“The Sun has never been hostile to the gay community,” said an editorial in THE SUN (6 May). (I’ll give you a moment to pick yourself up off the floor before I remind you that this is not such a surprising statement when you consider that The Sun seems literally incapable of telling the truth.)

They were blathering on about the publicity stunt organised to promote a gay conference in London. Protestors went to the Norwegian Embassy to make a symbolic request for asylum. The Sun said they would pay for a one-way ticket for any gay person who wanted to leave the country.

Day in day out The Sun does its best to whip up hostility against us. Its hateful persecution of gay public figures and its cynical distortion of our lives to promote its political ideals continues unabated. Its slanted ‘news’ stories blame us for everything from child abuse to ‘spreading Aids to innocent’ people.

But no, The Sun isn’t hostile to the gay community. And what’s more the moon is made of green cheese.

On the same story we have Julie Burchill (MAIL ON SUNDAY 10 May) writing in her classic Glenda Slag style (“But to go because of persecution under British law? Come off it!” and so on.) Ms Burchill says that gay people should be pleased to be arrested because we would find ourselves handcuffed to “a hefty brute in uniform—a frisson in anyone’s parley.”

I’m not sure whether Ms Burchill has genuinely gone round the twist or whether she’s having a convoluted laugh at the expense of her nodding readers. Or perhaps she’s really George Gale in drag.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Having carefully created The Great Gay Scare over the past couple of years, the tabloid press made full use of it during the election campaign. “Red Ken to defy Neil and speak out for Gays” said THE SUN’S front page (19 May) while its sister paper The NEWS OF THE WORLD (17 May) ran “My Love for Gay Labour Boss” over two pages. “The Left’s plan for gay charter” announced the front page of THE DAILY MAIL (6 June). “Ken displays gay abandon” was on the front page of THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (24 May) and The SUN gave the whole of page one to the headline (28 May) “Labour picks rent boy as school boss.” “Lesbian plots to pervert nursery tots,” was another classic.

But it was not only Labour who were tarred with the gay brush. The SUN also went for David Steel using the same cudgel (June 5): “Lower gays’ age of consent, says Steel—Liberal leader’s radio gaffe is set to split the Alliance.”

These despicable smears had obviously been trawled for far and wide. Some of them had been held back until the moment was right to inflict maximum damage. The tactics didn’t go unnoticed by other papers. Ken Livingstone, who knows more than most about newspaper smear techniques, quoted in THE LONDON DAILY NEWS (4 June) from an autobiography written in 1914 by Patrick Macgill and recalling an editor’s advice: “The public is a crowd of asses and you must interest it. You are paid to interest it with plausible lies or unsavoury truths. Our readers gloat over scandal, revel in scandal and pay us for writing it. Learn what the public requires and give it that. Think one thing in the morning and another at night, preach what is suitable to the mob and study the principle of the paper for which you write. Fleet Street is the home of chicanery, of fraud, of versatile vices and unnumbered sins. Only its falseness is consistent.”

Ian Aitken in THE GUARDIAN (8 May) said: “One can shake one’s head sadly over this sort of thing and turn gratefully to one’s more tasteful choice in newspapers. But the fact is things are getting worse rather than better; a substantial section of the press is now plumbing depths never before experienced in this country… yet I confess I have no idea what can be done about it in a free society. Perhaps Rupert Murdoch really is the price we have to pay for liberty. If so, it is a shamefully heavy one.”

It is sobering to see how effective a weapon homophobia has been for the Tories, and it is one they will not relinquish easily. Over the next few years we are going to become scapegoats on a grand scale.

SUNDAY TODAY was closed down half way through its series about “Gay Life in Britain” so only the first two parts made it to the news-stands (24th and 31st May). The whole thing was introduced in a fairly downbeat way by agony aunt Denise Robertson and the first double page spread was … well, I hate to carp when people are trying to be helpful … but it was old-fashioned. It wouldn’t have looked out of place in a magazine in the early seventies when positive images of gay people were something of a novelty. A lot of space was given over to an explanation of supposed gay slang “polari”, which I’ve never heard anyone use, except Jules and Sandy all those years ago on the radio. But according to this article: “Many older gays speak polari and even young boys understand a word or two.” They do?

The second part was better, probably because it was mainly written by gay people themselves. Mark Finch of the Gays and Broadcasting Group did a hatchet job on the failure of TV to represent gays accurately, Brian Kennedy wrote about his Coming Out. There was a bit about police nastiness, Jackie Forster was interviewed about lesbians and Peter Morey-Weale about self-defence courses.

We were promised the following week “The Shocking pink scene”. If it was as bad as it sounded, perhaps it’s as well that it never made it into print.

Even when all the objective evidence says otherwise, the Tories continue to insist that parents know best about their children’s sex education. THE GUARDIAN (6 May) reported that the headmaster of St Augustine of Canterbury School in had sent a questionnaire to all 700 sets of parents to ask: “How should sex be taught.” What should be said about Aids and homosexuality? The response was a resounding silence—not a single reply. The headmaster, Alan Shepherd said: “We are given the impression from newspapers that parents are desperately concerned about what their children are taught. But when we held a meeting about it, only 40 out of 1400 parents turned up.”

There is evidence, however, that children understand the issues much more clearly than their parents do. In the HACKNEY GAZETTE (5 June), there was a report that pupils at a school in the area had organised a petition addressed to their local Tory candidate protesting about the notorious propaganda poster which had suggested that three books—one of which was “Young, Gay and Proud”—were a sinister threat to young minds. The Tory candidate himself refused to believe that the children had organised the protest themselves and said (rather predictably) that they had been “manipulated by left-wing teachers”.

THE LONDON DAILY NEWS carried a heartfelt letter from another pupil (10 June) who was upset by a mock election held in his school. “One of the Conservative posters shows a group of supposedly gay protesters holding banners which say ‘Gay Rights’ and ‘Ban the Bomb’ and the words underneath ‘This is the Labour camp … do you want to live in it?’ I feel that the poster is quite offensive to some school friends of mine who are gay.”

Perhaps there’s hope for us yet with the next generation!

It seems the knives are out for Colin and Barry in EastEnders. THE SUN led the charge by reporting that widespread outrage had been caused by a scene in the programme which showed the gay lovers ‘being affectionate’ to one another. Colin apparently reassured Barry “with a cuddle—and a kiss on the hand”. The Sun said that “Dozens of viewers—many with children—were sickened by the scene. Retired milkman Bert Fulker, 64, said his four-year-old daughter watched the episode which started at 7.30. ‘It’s scandalous to show it at that time of night,’ said Mr Fulker of Croydon, Surrey.”

Meanwhile. THE NEWS OF THE WORLD said: “protests engulfed the BBC following the scene.” I checked with the BBC about exactly how many calls they had received from outraged viewers. A spokeswoman for EastEnders told me that they had, in fact, received fewer calls than usual that night.

Only a couple of dozen were about the gay scene and not all of them critical. “The Sun worded their story very cleverly,” she said. “They overstated the position wildly. When you consider we have 20 million viewers it’s hardly a significant protest.”

The NoW also revealed (14 June) that Michael Cashman who plays Colin is, in real life, gay himself. (Hi, Michael—we love you even more now!). Why it was necessary for the paper to say this in the first place isn’t clear, but it was surely quite gratuitously spiteful of them to publish Michael’s address and reveal which pub is his local. This is a particularly nasty trick when the same article goes on to reveal that the actor who plays the other half of the gay couple, Barry (who is “anything but gay”) has been beaten up a couple of times by queerbashers.

Then THE DAILY EXPRESS (10 June) carried a typically selfish letter from one of its readers, Mrs Val Ogier. “I am an avid fan of EastEnders but I am getting a bit fed up with out gay couple. The last few episodes have proved a bit too much to suffer at such an early viewing time. I’m broadminded but if the BBC isn’t careful it will spoil the programme’s family atmosphere.”

Mrs Ogier is about as ‘broad-minded’ as an amoeba, but I have a nasty feeling that such carping will, eventually, carry the day. My bitter prediction is that Colin and Barry will disappear from our screens in the near future, and we may never see their likes again.

Jim and Tammy Bakker were once famous coast-to-coast in America as TV evangelists. They ranted and railed against the evils of the modern world—against drugs, disrespect for marriage, greed and homosexuality. And as they ranted at their red-neck viewers they implored them to send ever more money so that “the good work” could be continued. But then (according to YOU magazine 7 June) it all fell apart. “Oh the wailing and gnashing of teeth when a former church secretary Jessica Hahn admitted that seven years ago she had a night of dalliance with Jim in a Florida hotel suite and had been paid £160,000 in hush money.”

Tammy was admitted to a drug rehabilitation centre and now, according to TODAY (29 May) Jim is accused of having had more than one homosexual experience. “That’s a lie,” he protested. “It’s worse than if I’d been assassinated.” But the evidence of the dastardly deeds has been produced by none other than founder of the Moral Majority, Jerry Falwell who has now assumed responsibility for the PTL Television Ministry. (PTL means Praise the Lord or, perhaps, People that Lie).

You would think that after this the whole deception would come tumbling down. But no—the money continues to flow in and the apparently limitless gullibility of middle-America remains undented. And meanwhile one of the other TV evangelists is running for president and being taken seriously.

Where is it all leading?

And so, we wave a not very fond farewell to our old friend Peter (Ratface) Bruinvels. He failed to retain his seat in Leicester East—indicating that sanity still prevails in isolated pockets of this country. But before we let the little twerp pass into well-deserved obscurity, we ought to look at a story about him in the INDEPENDENT (9 June). It told of Mr Bruinvels going walkabout in search of votes. “He was accosted by one Rosie Silver,” says the paper, “a ‘practising Christian and mother of four’ as she describes herself.” Ms Silver expressed the opinion that Bruinvels should be ashamed of himself for offering to act as hangman should capital punishment to reintroduced. She told him that such a thing was “decidedly anti-Christian.” Mr Bruinvels would have none of it. “He looked me squarely in the face,” she claims, “and said ‘Piss Off!’”

It is that same sentiment that I am sure Gay Times readers will join me in sending now to Mr Bruinvels himself.

I AM glad that I am not alone in believing that the newspapers in this country (as influenced by Rupert Murdoch) are a distinct threat to democracy. Ron Todd, general secretary of the Transport and General Workers Union gave a lecture to the London School of Economics in which he said (INDEPENDENT 2 June): “Over the past decade there has been a measurable and dramatic decline in the standards of the popular Press. I believe their standards have become so corrupt as to create a cultural imbalance, which is a threat to the health of democracy itself.”

He said that the tabloids fostered racial prejudice and were responsible for “a persistent and perverse degradation of women and for trivialising human intimacy.” The fabrication of stories was almost “commonplace.” THE GUARDIAN (2 June) reported the same speech and added that Mr Todd had told journalists “that they had to take responsibility for the work they did. ‘We have to say frankly to journalists that the Nuremberg defence no longer cuts ice; the predictable trail of disappearing responsibility which starts with the reporter and goes through the subs will no longer prove absolution.’”

These are not new thoughts for gay people who see their lives distorted, lied about and manipulated for political ends every day of the week. But what can be done? Mr Murdoch isn’t interested in what his opponents have to say, and anyone who speaks out against this outrageous use of power will find no sympathy in the present political climate. All we can do is stand firm together and shout as loudly as we can that the tabloid press is lying, lying, lying.

Francis Wheen in the INDEPENDENT (2 June) revealed the depth of shame of Wapping journalists: “I hear that Kelvin McKenzie, the editor of The Sun, has been alarmed to discover that his staff can no longer bear to read their own paper. But he has an idea which will force them back: make the brutes take a weekly test in which they will be comprehensively quizzed on the paper’s contents.”

Leonard Bernstein, the composer of West Side Story, is the latest victim of an unscrupulous biographer in search of publicity for a book. This time it is Joan Peyser who has dished the dirt on what THE DAILY EXPRESS (27 May) called “one of world’s greatest living musical talents.” Ms Peyser is quoted in The Express as saying that behind the glittering success, Bernstein led a “sordid double life. He revelled in being a rampant homosexual and slumming it in gay bars… he was really a promiscuous homosexual who jumped into bed with boys on three continents.”

In the end, the pygmies who produce The Express have the barefaced gall to “excuse” the great man his “excesses” because of his overwhelming talent. Very big of them, I’m sure. It’s rather like a pig excusing a swan for being beautiful.

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

The trashy “Mills, the Angry Voice” column in THE STAR has attracted a £500 fine from the National Union of Journalists for its author, the crypto-fascist ranter Ray Mills. Mr Mills was censured by his Union for racism and incitement of hatred against homosexuals. He reacted with characteristic arrogance by saying that he will not pay the fine and would await his expulsion from the NUJ “sadly, but with his head held high”.

Even the ineffectual Press Council was moved to describe Mills’ remarks as “outrageously racist, crude, offensive and inflammatory.” No doubt Mr Mills will, in a future column, be parading this condemnation with pride.

The London listings magazine CITY LIMITS (6 Aug) reports Marc Wadsworth, who co-chairs the NUJ’s Ethics Council, as saying: “It is our view that Mills has been guilty of a sustained campaign against black people, lesbians and gays and we’re seeking to stop that”

Mr Wadsworth also says that he thought Mills’ reaction to the fine “must be a source of considerable concern for his NUJ colleagues on the paper’s staff.”

So, what is the likely out-come of this face-off between liberal intention and right-wing abuse? City Limits says that non-payment of the fine could cause “major industrial problems” at Express Newspapers and eventually lead to Ray Mills being booted out.

We will have to wait and see. But there can be no doubt that the man is a disgrace to the profession of journalism and his column is a disgrace to the ‘newspaper’ that publishes it. It is time for his colleagues on The Star to wake up to the fact that Mills is dragging their collective reputations into the gutter.

Protests about Ray Mills can be addressed to the editor of The Star, Lloyd Turner, at 121 Fleet Street, London EC4. (N.B. The circulation of The Star has dropped 9.3 per cent in the past year.)

The right-wing SPECTATOR (8 Aug) gave two pages to a man called Roy Kerridge for him to “denounce a kind of perversion which corrupts young people.” The ‘perversion’ in question is, of course, homosexuality.

The piece turned out to be nothing much more than a semi-pornographic fantasy masquerading as moral outrage. “Strange are the rules of homosexual ‘love and marriage’”, wrote Mr Kerridge, with all the authority of a complete ignoramus. “An older man, having persuaded a young boy to live with him, humiliates the boy by bringing ever-younger teenage boys back to his flat for tea and sympathy. Often the older man and his younger partner indulge voracious and voyeuristic sensations by going out together in pursuit of young boys.” (Ooer! My mother never told me about all this before she allowed me to become a homosexual!) “‘Gay clubs’ often have rooms attached to the dance floor where group sodomy can take place, sometimes with whips, chains and handcuffs as handy props. In a sense, many popular ‘gay clubs’ are brothels…”

At this point somebody should have chucked a bucket of cold water over Mr Kerridge to quell his agitation, but they didn’t and his hysteria goes on for column after column. Eventually the reader forms a mental picture of Roy Kerridge as a retired dirty-mac wearer, sitting in a rest-home somewhere, writing down his masturbation fantasies and passing them off as outrage.

The Spectator promises that “next week Adam Mars-Jones gives a contrary view.” And hopefully a sensible one.

What a mess the churches are getting themselves into over Aids. On the one hand we have those Christians who want to see an utter and complete condemnation of homosexuals and on the other we have the pragmatists who realise that condemnation does nothing to solve the problem and much to make it worse. THE INDEPENDENT carried a perfect example of this confusion (5 August) in an article about the Rev John Bowker, a member of the Church of England’s ‘Doctrine Commission’, who is trying to reconcile what the Bible says with what his conscience tells him on the Aids issue. Although he comes down on our side in the end, there is an awful lot of befuddlement in between. As the author of the article Andrew Brown says: “To talk to (the Rev Bowker) is to realise how rich and strange Christian dialectics can be and how far removed from the ordinary course of secular debate…”

I’ll accept the ‘strange’ but ‘rich’? The convoluted nonsense that seems to pass as ‘debate’ in religious circle is shot through with excuse making and wishful thinking No rational mind could make sense of statements like: “The liberal, or provisional wing of the Church of England, does not dominate the debate on sexual morality, yet it has the great advantage of a coherent theory of incoherence. Once you accept that interpretations of Christianity may legitimately vary, it is only a short step to conclude that this variation is desirable, and is itself an expression of God’s grace.”

In other words, you can think whatever you like just as long as you believe in God. This is a long way from what I was taught at Sunday school. In those days if you disagreed with God you’d likely get a short, sharp shock from a thunderbolt. But then, Aids wasn’t around in those simplistic times to let the religionists know that they’ve been wrong all along on so many issues.

Why do Christians torment themselves with this useless soul-searching when there is urgent humanitarian work to be done? It seems obvious (least to yours truly) that religious debate on the issue of sexual morality and Aids leads nowhere but to a cruel and perplexing dead-end.

The public service unions have generally responded well to the Aids issue. Most of them have gone to great lengths to try and reassure their members that it is safe to work with people with Aids, so long as ordinary precautions are taken.

The National Union of Public Employees is on the front line: among its members are nurses, hospital ancillary workers and home helps. Its policy is to educate and encourage the compassionate treatment of people with Aids. But now, according to COMMUNITY CARE (21 May), NUPE members are being “assured,,, there is no possibility of disciplinary action even if members still refuse to work with such people after they had received training about the disease.”

The statement from NUPE divisional organiser Roger Poole excuses “people who are naturally homophobic” from working with Aids cases.

Naturally homophobic? What on earth is that supposed to mean? If workers refuse to carry out their duties, even after being reassured that they are in no extra danger, then surely they are making a mockery of their professional ethics. Is NUPE saying that if foolish hysteria persists, even in the face of the facts, then it is acceptable if a member is “naturally homophobic”? What happens if a racist home help decides he or she doesn’t want to work with black people, or an anti-Semitic nurse refuses to care for a Jew? Would the union let it pass on the grounds of “natural racism”? I doubt it. So does the fact that they are making exceptions for homophobes indicate the Union’s own homophobia?

NUPE has done some sterling work in educating its members. But this policy statement needs an urgent rethink.

John Junor is a constant critic of gays. In a democratic society that is his privilege, I suppose. But you would think that he would at least attempt to make his comments a little more logical than the idiotic drivel that they are. On August 2nd he was writing in THE SUNDAY EXPRESS about the Terrence Higgins Trust and one of its safe sex leaflets. “It is probably the most filthy and crudely worded publication I have ever seen. Instead of preaching abstinence it gives illustrated advice to homosexuals about how to have perverted sex but with less risk.” Sir John even quotes one of the offending passages: “WANKING…GO FOR IT! Share the pleasure with a friend.”

“Isn’t it damnable,” fumes the frantic old fool, “that such a pamphlet should be available where children can pick it up?”

One could explain this topsy-turvy logic as simple eccentricity, but one finds it difficult to forgive his attempts to dissuade people from donating money to the Terrence Higgins Trust. What kind of morality is it that prompts cranks like Junor to try to damage the undoubted success of the Trust in promoting safe sex simply so his own strange sensitivities won’t be offended? Or does he think children won’t discover masturbation is THT leaflets are banned?

Name someone who is in the news and you can be sure that THE SUN or THE NEWS OF THE WORLD will find a gay angle from which to approach them. Last month’s Madonna hype led the NoW to headline “My Gay Affair with the Queen of Rock”. They had unearthed an ex-manager called Camille Barbon who claimed she had a “torrid affair” with That Girl.

More dangerously THE SUN (27 August) carried a “confession” from an ex-soldier Andrew Preston claiming he’d had sex with mass-murderer Michael Ryan [Note: Ryan committed what was to become known as the Hungerford massacre in which he shot to death 16 people before turning the gun on himself]. “Manic Rambo was my gay lover” as the front-page lead. The following day THE STAR and THE DAILY MIRROR were insisting that Preston was lying. They quoted a friend of his as saying: “It’s a lot of nonsense. He made it all up in a pub. He said he was going to ring a newspaper with the story just to get some money out of them.” And a senior police officer was quoted as saying: “We have checked Ryan’s background thoroughly. There were no homosexual affairs.”

However, it was too late by then—The Sun had planted the idea in its readers’ minds that homosexuality was at the root of the tragedy. ‘Normal’ readers could rest assured that the slaughter had nothing to do with the selfishness and callous machismo promoted daily by The Sun as acceptable values.

Julie Burchill explored similar ground in her MAIL ON SUNDAY column (23 Aug) in which she questioned the definition of what is ‘normal’ these days. “It is ‘normal’ and legal to collect in Berkshire weapons that are standard issue of war in Beirut—it is abnormal to smoke marijuana and get a bit giggly,” she wrote. “It is normal and legal to gloat over huge collections of pornography—it is abnormal and illegal under the age of 21 to be a homosexual, no matter how unprurient and monogamously inclined. In fact normal has come to mean ‘whatever white, nominally heterosexual men who live in the Home Counties do’ – not matter how ugly and morally bankrupt those things are.”

Of course, The Sun and the Star and all the other crappy tabloids are produced for just such a ‘normal’ audience. They relentlessly promote the idea that those who will not tow the ‘normal’ line are worthy of contempt and, indeed, violence. This was illustrated in a SUNDAY MIRROR story (30 Aug) headed “Holiday Brit killed a sex pest.” It told of how a young man called Michael Kennedy had murdered a Spanish taxi driver who had made sexual advances towards him. “He touched me up and I must have gone spare,” says Kennedy after admitting he had been on a 24-hour drinking binge.

The paper quotes Kennedy as saying he feels he has let his country down. And when he saw his wife and child “I broke up. Judith and I have been sweethearts since our teens. It’s a nightmare.”

We are not told what the family of the murdered man felt about it all. We aren’t even told his name. But I’d like to bet that Michael Kennedy is a consumer of tabloid newspapers.

Gratuitous insults department: “I read with interest the letter in The Sun from the 17-year-old lad whose mother is against him becoming a male nurse. She said it was a sissy job fit only for gays”—Reader’s letter in SUN (7 Sep).

“It is quite unbelievable that Sir Robert Armstrong should be putting the safety of our realm in the hands of men who have so often in the past sold us out. It does not take an historian to remember gay double agents like Anthony Blunt and Guy Burgess”—Terry Dicks, MP for Hayes and Harlington, commenting in the DAILY EXPRESS on the Civil Service instruction that homosexuals should not be denied access to sensitive security information.

You thought THE STAR couldn’t sink any lower without emerging in Australia? Think again, for now it has been joined in unholy matrimony to the detestable SUNDAY SPORT. Michael Gabbert—the man who made “newspaper” into a dirty word—is the new editor. Within days of his takeover there was a fifteen-year-old girl, topless on the front page. While the other tabloids work themselves to screaming pitch over the question of child abuse, The Star tells its salivating readers how “sexy” under-age girls are. Can you imagine the brouhaha that would have erupted if Gay Times had the audacity to feature a semi-nude fifteen-year-old boy and describe him as “sexy”? There would be questions asked in the House and several MPs would have made a career out of denouncing us.

Under the new regime our old friend Mills can really feel at home. If you thought that it was impossible for this dreadful man to get any more offensive, cheap and nasty, then you haven’t seen anything yet. He wears his snarling hatred like a badge of honour. His constant despicable harping on gay issues is like a green light to gay-bashers. The language he uses (“woofters”, “lezzies”, “perverts”, “degenerates”), dehumanises us to the extent that we are made to appear legitimate targets for those with a grudge.

I’m not alone in finding this new-style Star alarming. Robin Corbett, opposition spokesman on broadcasting and a former executive member of the NUJ said: “Mr Gabbert is plumbing even deeper depths of pornography and filth. The paper is a disgrace to British journalism and it deserves to fail.”

Members of the National Union of Journalists chapel on the Star unanimously passed a resolution expressing “dismay and disgust” at the direction the paper had taken and wanted to “secure adequate severance pay” for those journalists who couldn’t stand it any longer. NUJ representative Barbara Gurnell spoke at the Trades Union Congress of “the sheer awfulness of the press which is spreading into the broadcasting media”. The Sunday Times called it “debased”.

It seems that in the Tory ‘free market’ even common human decency can be dispensed with if it stands in the way of a fat profit. And if big money is involved, you can be sure that it won’t be long before the other tabloids follow The Star into the seemingly bottomless cesspit.

Last month I reported an article entitled Predator Homosexuals by Roy Kerridge that appeared in THE SPECTATOR. I’m pleased to say that the readers of that magazine were quick to let its editor know what they thought of Mr Kerridge’s over-the-top fantasy. “Ignorant” “silly” “ugly” and “a perversion of the truth” said Francis King in the correspondence column. “Sad and curiously repellent,” was what Ronnie Mutch thought of the article. “Hysterical rantings and grotesque generalisations… a sad discredit to your publication,” said M Gourley.

And Mars-Jones was allowed equal space to put out point of view (15 August) and very eloquently he did it, too. “Homosexuals are the softest of soft targets,” he wrote. “They – I suspect I have left it too late to modulate gracefully into the first-person plural – are poorly placed to rebut even the most preposterous description of homosexuality. This isn’t true of me, many gay people may think, “but perhaps it is true of the majority of my minority. How can I know?”

If you missed it, this is an article worth looking out in the back numbers department of your local library

When the history of the gay struggle is written, the names of our persecutors will be many and varied. According to THE GUARDIAN (4 Sep) another is about to emerge—the Rev Tony Higton of Hawkswell, Essex. He’s the man who is trying to make Aids into a “moral issue” with the General Synod of the Church of England. “Moral issue”, when translated from religious gobbledygook, is a simple euphemism for “get the gays”. Or, as Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said: “We’re afraid of homophobia in the guise of concern for Aids.”

Mr Higton has assiduously collected 168 signatures from members of the Synod for a “three-point motion against promiscuity – ‘that sexual intercourse should take place only between a man and a woman who are married to each other that fornication, adultery and homosexual acts are sinful in all circumstances; and that Christian leaders are called to be exemplary in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality, as a condition of being appointed or remaining in office.’”

Hopefully the Synod will conclude that the rooting out of ‘heretics’ belongs to the Church’s shameful and bloody past. Mr Higton’s bid to resurrect a sort of personal Inquisition with himself as witchfinder general needs to be nipped in the bud – and quick. Otherwise history has a nasty habit of repeating itself.

We all know that high summer is the silly season in newspapers (although it could be argued that most British. tabloids extend the season throughout the year). But surely the most ludicrous story so far was carried in THE NEWS OF THE. WORLD (30 Aug). It concerned a French man by the name of Rene Le Grange who has received a heart transplant from a female donor, He claims he has been ‘taken over’ by the personality of the woman whose heart now beats in his breast. “Rene says the heart swap saved his life—but doomed him to a fate WORSE than death. He complains: “Now I fancy other men. It’s terrible”

Le Grange says that since his op. his marriage “is in ruins” and “now the former stud spends his nights cruising Paris’s seedy gay bars” while his “wife weeps alone in their marriage bed.”

I’ve heard some pretty feeble excuses from closet cases trying to explain their gayness, but Monsieur Le Grange must surely take the biscuit.

A Gallup poll of attitudes about Aids was carried in THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (13 Sep) and revealed that “one in five (respondents) said they were taking more care to avoid homosexuals or those they thought were homosexual or avoid places where homosexuals met.”

I have to say it again—it is the British press and its malevolent refusal to treat Aids seriously that has led to this appalling situation. The survey shows that ignorance is still widespread. The tabloids in the meantime are doing nothing to relieve their readers of this lack of knowledge.

The trial of mass-murderer Michel Lupo gave the papers the opportunity to once more parade their ignorant fantasies about what gay life is about in London. The case itself was tailor-made for the tabloids – hey couldn’t have invented anything as satisfactory: Aids, murder and ‘the seedy underworld of homosexuals’ were all trotted out at length. There was even talk of the police getting their idea of what gay life is like from watching the Al Pacino film Cruising which is set in New York in the seventies. But best of all, from the media’s point of view, was the connection – however tenuous – with the rich and famous and even royalty.

As usual ‘the gay community’ (or at least their idea of it) was portrayed as ‘sinister’, ‘sleazy’, ‘kinky, a world occupied by perverts and inadequates, where the only pursuit is sexual gratification. Even Gay Switchboard was portrayed as irresponsible for allegedly advising one of the survivors of Lupo’s attacks not to go to the police. Exactly the same angle was adopted in the Dennis Nilsen case.

If you compare these two cases with that of the “Yorkshire Ripper”, you will see that although there was equal sensationalism involved, there was no question that the red light areas that Sutcliffe frequented, being presented as representative of heterosexual life. So, will the papers ever show the other side of gay life, the one that is stable, creative, vigorous and fun? Not on your nelly, they won’t.

It seems that straights are beginning to latch on to the idea that what governments are saying about Aids and what the statistics are showing aren’t necessarily the same thing. THE LONDON STANDARD’S Washington Correspondent, Jeremy Campbell, filed a report (1 July) which was headed: “Whatever happened to the Aids doomsday?” in which he reports that American heterosexuals are waking up to the fact that Aids does not seem to be spreading outside the ‘high risk’ groups in the way they were led to believe it would. For three years there have been predictions that Aids would spread into the general population through the medium of bisexuals and the partners of drug users.

“But the second wave has yet to break. And a handful of epidemiologists are starting to wonder if they might be misreading the story,” says Mr Campbell. “Conceivably, they surmise, there is something about American heterosexuals, or their way of life, that makes them seem less likely to become infected than high-risk people.”

Although this new interpretation might seem hopeful to the majority, Mr Campbell sees it as decidedly bad news for gays. “It cannot help but make it easier for the political right to portray Aids as a disease of an immoral, insatiably promiscuous, unnatural and disgraceful minority. Already conservatives are stressing the ‘difficulty’ of catching Aids if one’s lifestyle is reasonably normal … It is only one short step from there to the conclusion that monstrous practices bring their own punishment that the non-monstrous are largely spared, and governments can find more deserving causes on which to spend taxpayers’ billions.”

It seems certain that this type of argument will gather strength in the coming months—with worrying implications for the gay community. But it’s also worth noting that Aids organisations in Britain are already insisting that the new interpretations being placed on American figures are premature, foolish and misguided.

Nick Partridge of the Terrence Higgins Trust points out (in TODAY) that 50 per-cent of all people with Aids in New York are now heterosexual. And it has also been reported that Aids replaced cancer as the leading cause of death for women between 25 and 34 in New York City last year.

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a beached whale? No, it’s just Geoffrey (Moby) Dickens MP, shooting his overworked mouth off again. This time he turned up in THE SUNDAY TIMES MAGAZINE, which devoted the whole of its 21 June issue to the subject of Aids. Mr Dickens seemed to have changed his mind a mite: “The homosexual fraternity have sharpened up their act a bit,” he says, “and they’re either taking more precautions or they’re not exchanging partners so readily, and they’ve brought more discipline into their affairs, which is good and to their credit and may well take any pressure off for the repeal of the 1967 Act. Many people, including myself, have probably been a bit heavy-handed with the gay fraternity, but if one is fair-minded about it they have readjusted their lifestyles because they are terrified of Aids.”

Before you get the idea that Mr Dickhead—I mean Dickens—is laying off his hate campaign against us, we must turn to THE PEOPLE (June 28), to see him “storming” in yet another of that paper’s interminable gay non-scandals. Apparently, someone saw a British hotel advertising holidays in the American gay magazine The Advocate. “I think it highly irresponsible to aim to attract homosexuals to somewhere where they may swap partners over the course of a weekend,” said the representative for Littleborough and Saddleworth.

What The People and its permanently apoplectic rentagob MP seem to forget is that the people who read The Advocate are probably better informed about Aids than anyone else in the world. Or are they really saying that gays are so irresponsible that they shouldn’t be allowed to have holidays at all?

The tabloids have turned their penchant for dragging celebrities out of the closet into something of a blood sport. As you’d guess, the hounds at THE NEWS OF THE WORLD are particularly good at it. In their 12 July issue they carried an account of how they had pursued some minor TV luminary over a period of weeks to try to get his account of being gay. The poor man, like some persecuted fox, had employed all kinds of tactics to avoid the snooping reporters. That did not deter them, however, and the ‘story’ was still carried over two pages—it consisted of nothing much more than a simple statement that he is gay. There were no rent boys, no juicy details of illegal activities: the mere fact of his gayness seemed sufficient to constitute a ‘scandal’. Such persecution of individuals by the press makes badger-baiting look almost humane in comparison.

On the 21st June the same paper carried a similar non-story (“Was Cary Grant a secret gay?”). The whole thing served no purpose but to upset the late star’s family and friends—and, of course, to make more money for Mr Murdoch. THE SUN (14 July) managed to get the word ‘gay’ onto the front page in three-inch letters yet again when it reported that Sylvester Stallone was divorcing his wife because she was discovered in bed with another woman.

Meanwhile, the annual Martina Navratilova season came and went. As far as the tabloids are concerned, Ms Navratilova is far more famous for being a lesbian than for being the best woman tennis player in the world. THE PEOPLE (21 June) carried a highly dubious account of how Martina planned to ‘marry’ her girlfriend, Judy Nelson, at the post-Wimbledon Ball. Leaving aside the fantasy element, the article itself was almost affectionate in its approach to the two women, leaving out entirely all the nasty weasel-words we are so used to seeing in such coverage (kinky, bizarre, sordid etc). Strange isn’t it, how they can tolerate, or even cheer, Martina, but they bully, malign and vilify any male gay they can unearth. A definite illustration of the journalists’ innate sexism, I would say.

Like most straight men, the macho males of Wapping find it impossible to believe that any lesbian relationship could be ‘real’. It would be too much of a blow to their fragile facade to admit that women might be able to get through life without them.

Am I imagining it or are there more nutcases around than there used to be? Or is it just that the papers are more willing to give them space these days? Two absolute head-bangers got local coverage over the past couple of months.

The first provided THE CHESTER MAIL (4 June) with what must rank as probably the year’s most restrained and moderate headline. “EXECUTE GAYS—PASTOR” it screamed. The paper reported (for some reason) the rantings of one Pastor David Carson, who represents something called The

Protestant Reformation Party. I won’t detail the bilge which emanates from Pastor Carson’s disturbed mind—you’ve heard it all before. But just for the record this would-be fuhrer contested the seat

for Ellesmere Port and Neston in the General Election on the death-penalty-for-gays ticket and scored 185 votes.

The second worried voice was that of a Mrs Dianne Partridge of Ferndown, Dorset. She was worried about the ‘immorality’ on television and her views were reported at length in THE WESTERN GAZETTE. She was concerned about EastEnders, of course, but reserved her harshest words for The Paul Daniels Magic Show. “They had an act of levitation which we were very concerned about,” flapped Mrs Partridge. “It seemed that the Lord was speaking directly to me, that the levitation was not good, clever or magic. That there is an evil force that makes the body float.”

If Mrs Partridge is thinking of starting a campaign to have Paul Daniels burned at the stake then I won’t stand in her way. But I think it was wrong of the Western Gazette to exploit this poor woman’s suffering for cheap laughs. Don’t they know it’s wrong to mock the afflicted?

Having secured a victory in the General Election for the Tories, the tabloids (and particularly the Murdoch ones) are now gunning for the left-wing local authorities. Their campaign—as before—rests heavily on the exploitation of homophobia. To keep the pot boiling until the next round of local elections, the papers harp on endlessly about “ratepayers’ money” being squandered on gays.

Look at a few of the headlines over the past month (and they really are only the tip of the iceberg): “A gay a day (or two) away … on the rates” (LONDON STANDARD 25 June); “Rates pay for gays to combat ‘sexism’” TODAY (26 June); “Fury over Lesbian lessons at school” (STAR 1 July); “Gay group’s sick letter shocks Town Hall girls” (SUN 18 June); “Cash crisis council backs gay festival” (LONDON STANDARD 11 June);  “Lesbian Teacher resigns” (SUN 3 July); “School governor’s gay pride protest” (LONDON STANDARD 25 June); “Parents tear down school’s gay posters” (LONDON STANDARD 23 June).

THE SUN also carried a wickedly offensive cartoon (19 June) by Franklin, probably the most reactionary cartoonist in the country. Ray Mills, THE STAR’s so-called “Angry Voice” commented (30 June) on Camden Council’s Lesbian and Gay Unit (“They employ four full-time woofter apologists”): “Mills has a positive view to offer: These filthy degenerates should be kicked up their much-abused backsides and locked up in their closets.”

I (along with many other people) made a complaint about Ray Mills and his trashy opinions to the National Union of Journalists ‘Ethics Council’, but in the end nothing came of it: the machinations of the Union allowed the complaint to run out of time. However, Mills has been censured on grounds

of racialism. His reply was to compose an abusive tirade against the NUJ which was published on June 30th. His contemptuous attitude towards the Union makes it obvious that they have no power to stop his disgraceful and dangerous antics. And the STAR will continue to collude with this crypto-fascist attempt to stir up racial and sexual discord around the country.

Bad news for democracy, but especially bad news for gays, was the purchase of TODAY by Rupert Murdoch. Such an obvious piece of political patronage would be difficult to imagine. And for all the new editor’s assertion that Today would remain impartial, it wasn’t long before the baleful Murdoch influence began to push through. Within days of the takeover Today had launched an attack on the BBC (6 July). Now this just happens to be one of Murdoch’s long-term projects—to get TV deregulated so that he can step in and start a new and even more powerful media empire. His other British newspapers, The Times, Sunday Times, Sun and News of the World, wage a constant war upon the BBC. The Times has run an inordinate number of anti-BBC editorials over the past two years, more than on any other single subject.

One good thing to have come out of the whole affair is that the other papers have openly set their face against Murdoch, recognising him a not just a competitor but as ruthless enemy out for their blood. Indeed, John Junor it THE SUNDAY EXPRESS (l July) was moved to ask: “Is Mr Murdoch being given Today as his reward for having supported Mrs Thatcher during the election?” (This is rich coming from Junor whose own knighthood was a personal thank you from Maggie for propaganda services rendered.)

The following day Today shouted back: “Sir John Junor is famous for taking a once great newspaper, The Sunday Express, and single-handedly turning it into the boring, trivial paper it is today … When the owners of The Express finally manage to get rid of him as editor … they made the mistake of letting him keep his column. No other regular feature it British journalism is so full of inaccuracy and ignorance.”

It is a shame to see serious and thoughtful newspaper like Today transformed overnight into being just another Murdoch mouthpiece. However, one can take some pleasure in watching these paper tiger tearing at each other’s throats. Hopefully there will be some fatalities in the forthcoming circulation war.

THE SUN, as we all know, is very fond of gay stories. It just loves to let its readers know just how dreadful we “poofters” are and what a wicked threat we are to family life etc. etc. You’d think a gathering of 15,000 of us in the centre of London would have their headline writers going wild, but for some reason they seemed to overlook the Pride Festival again. And so did every other newspaper in the land except the communist MORNING STAR (29 June) which gave its usual thoughtful coverage.

Could this sudden indifference to our existence have anything to do with the fact that the Pride Carnival is probably one of the most joyous, exuberant, colourful and positive festivals in the London calendar? We wouldn’t want the great British public to know that lesbians and gay men are still capable of having a ripping good time despite you-know-what. If they did know they might begin to suspect that all the other stuff they read about us in the tabloids is perhaps a teensy-weensy bit exaggerated. They might even suspect that these morally superior beings we call journalists might just be naughty old fibbers on the quiet.

The British Medical Association’s decision to “secretly test patients for Aids” prompted Robert Maxwell to tell an Aids seminar in Canada (LONDON DAILY NEWS 8 July): “Aids hysteria, added to public ignorance, self-serving politicians and tunnel-visioned guardians of law and order will affect not only those likely to be infected with the virus but its erosion of civil liberties will touch us all.”

Noble word, but they wouldn’t carry such heavy irony if Mr Maxwell’s papers (in particular THE PEOPLE) hadn’t done their fair share of creating panic and ignorance. However, if he is sincere in what he says there is a simple answer: he should employ someone who knows what they are talking about to check all Aids stories in his papers for factual accuracy and foolish panic-mongering.

What about it, Cap’n Bob?

Terry Sanderson’s autobiography “The Reluctant Gay Activist” is now available on Amazon https://www.amazon.co.uk/Reluctant-Gay-Activist-Terry-Sanderson/dp/B09BYN3DD9/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

Name someone who is in the news and you can be sure that theSUNor the NEWS OF THE WORLDwill find a gay angle lo approach them from. Last month’s Madonna hype led the NoW(16 Aug) to headline “My gay affair with the Queen of rock.” They had unearthed an ex-manager called Camille Barbon who claimed she’d had a “torrid” affair with That Girl. 

More dangerously, THE SUN(27 Aug) carried a ‘confession’ from soldier Andrew Preston claiming he’d had sex with mass-murderer Michael Ryan. “Manic Rambo was my gay lover” was the front-page lead. 

The following day the DAILY MIRRORwas insisting that Preston was lying. They quoted a friend of his as saying: “It’s a lot of nonsense. He made it all up in a pub. He said he was going to ring a newspaper with the story just to get some money out of them.” And a senior police officer was quoted as saying: “We checked Ryan’s background thoroughly. There were no homosexual affairs.” 

However, it was too late by then—the Sunhad planted the idea in their readers’ minds that homosexuality was at the root of the tragedy. ‘Normal’ readers could rest assured that the slaughter had nothing to do with the selfishness and callous machismo promoted daily by the Sunas acceptable values. 

Julie Burchill explored similar ground in her MAIL ON SUNDAY column (23 Aug) in which she questioned the definition of what is ‘normal’ these days. “It is ‘normal’ and legal to collect in Berkshire weapons that are standard issue of war in Beirut—it is abnormal to smoke marijuana and get a bit giggly.” she wrote. “It is normal and legal to gloat over huge collections of pornography—it is abnormal and illegal under the age of 21 to be a homosexual, no matter how unpright and monogamously inclined. In fact, normal has come to mean ‘whatever white, nominally heterosexual men who live in the Home Counties do’—no matter how ugly or morally bankrupt those things are.” 

Of course, The Sunand The Starand all the other crappy tabloids are produced for just such a ‘normal’ audience. They relentlessly promote the idea that those who will not tow the ‘normal’ line are worthy of contempt and, indeed, violence. 

This was illustrated in a SUNDAY MIRRORstory (30 Aug) headed “Holiday Brit killed a sex pest.” It told of how a young man called Michael Kennedy had murdered a Spanish taxi driver who had made sexual advances towards him. “He touched me up and I must have gone spare,” says Kennedy after admitting he had been on a 24-hour drinking binge. The paper quotes Kennedy as saying he feels he has let his country down. And when he saw his wife and child “I broke up. Judith and I have been sweethearts since our teens. It’s a nightmare.” 

We are not told what the family of the murdered man felt about it all. We aren’t even told his name. But I’d like to bet that Michael Kennedy is a consumer of tabloid newspapers. 

***

You thought THE STAR couldn’t sink any lower without emerging in Australia? Think again, for now it has been joined in unholv matrimony to the detestable SUNDAY SPORT.

Michael Gabbert – the man who made “newspaper” into a dirty word – is the new editor. Within days of his takeover there was a fifteen-year-old girl, topless on the front page. While the other tabloids work themselves to screaming pitch over the question of “child abuse”, The Startells its salivating readers how “sexy” under-age girls are. 

                  Can you imagine the brouhaha that would have erupted if Gay Times had the audacity to feature a semi-nude fifteen-year-old boy and describe him as “sexy”? There would be questions asked in the House and several MPs would have made a career out of denouncing us. 

Under the new regime, our old friend Mills can really feel at home. If you thought that it was impossible for this dreadful man to get any more offensive, cheap and nasty, then you haven’t seen anything yet. He wears his snarling hatred like a badge of honour. His constant despicable harping on gay issues is like a green light to gay-bashers. The language he uses (“woofters”, “liezzies”. “perverts”, “degenerates”), dehumanises us to the extent that we are made to appear legitimate targets by those with a grudge. 

I’m not alone in finding this new-style Star alarming Robin Corbett, opposition spokesman on broadcasting, and a former executive member of the NUJ, said: “Mr Gabbert is plumbing even deeper depths of pornography and filth. The paper is a disgrace to British journalism and it deserves to fail.” Members of the National Union of Journalists chapel on the Starunanimously passed a resolution expressing “dismay and disgust” at the direction the paper had taken and wanted to “secure adequate severance pay” for those journalists who couldn’t stand it any longer. 

NUJ representative Barbara Gurnell spoke at the Trades Union Congress of “the sheer awfulness of the press which is spreading into the broadcasting media”. The Sunday Times called it “debased”. It seems that in the Tory ‘free market’ even common human decency can be dispensed with if it stands in the way of a fat profit. And if big money is involved, you can be sure that it won’t be long before the other tabloids follow The Starinto the seemingly bottomless cesspit. 

• • • 

LAST month I reported an article entitled “Predatory Homosexuals” by Roy Kerridge which appeared in the SPECTATOR. I am pleased to say that the readers of that magazine were quick to let the editor know what they thought of Mr Kerridge’s over-the-top fantasy. “Ignorant” “silly” “ugly” and “a perversion of truth” said Francis King in the correspondence column. “Sad and curiously repellent,” was what Ronnie Mutch thought of the article. “Hysterical rantings and grotesque generalisations… a sad discredit to your publication,” said M Gourley. 

Adam Mars-Jones was allowed equal space to put our point of view (15 Aug) and very eloquently he did it too: “Homosexuals are the softest of soft targets,” he. wrote. “They – I suspect I have left it too late to modulate gracefully into the first person plural—are poorly placed to rebut even the most preposterous description of homosexuality. This isn’t true of me, many gay people may think, but perhaps it is true of the majority of my minority. How can I know?” 

If you missed it, this is an article worth looking out in the back numbers department of your local library. 

• • • 

WHEN the history of the gay struggle is written the names of our persecutors will be many and varied. According to THE GUARDIAN (4 Sep), another is about to emerge—the Rev Tony Higton of Hawkswell, Essex. He’s the man who is trying to make Aids into a “moral issue” with the General Synod of the Church of England. “Moral issue”, when translated from religious gobbledygook, is a simple euphemism for “get the gays”. Or as Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said: “We’re afraid of homophobia in the guise of concerns for Aids.” Mr Higton has assiduously collected 168 signatures from members of the Synod to a “three-point motion against promiscuity—’that sexual intercourse should take place only between a man and a woman who are married to each other; that fornication, adultery and homosexual acts are sinful in all circumstances; and that Christian leaders are called to be exemplary in all spheres of morality, including sexual morality as a condition of being appointed or remaining in office.”‘ 

Hopefully the Synod will realise that the business of rooting out ‘heretics’ belongs to the Church’s shameful and bloody past. Mr Higton’s bid to resurrect a sort of personal Inquisition with himself as witchfinder general needs to be nipped in the bud—and quick. Otherwise history has a nasty habit of repeating itself.

***

WE all know that high summer is the silly season in newspapers (although it could be argued that most British tabloids extend the season throughout the year), but surely the most ludicruous  story so far was carried in THE NEWS OF THE WORLD(30 Aug). It concerned a French man by the name of Rene Le Grange who has received a heart transplant from a female donor. He claims he has been ‘taken over’ by the personality of the woman whose heart now beats in his breast. 

“Rene says the heart swap saved his life—but doomed him to a fate WORSE than death. He complains: ‘Now I fancy other men. It’s terrible.'” Le Grange says that since his op. his marriage “is in ruins” and “now the former stud spends his nights cruising Paris’s seedy gay bars” whilst his “wife weeps alone in their marriage bed.”

I’ve heard some pretty feeble excuses from closet cases trying to explain their gayness, but Monsieur Le Grange must surely take the biscuit. 

***

A Gallup poll about attitudes to Aids was carried in the Sunday Telegraph (13 September) and found that “one in five respondents were “taking more care to avoid homosexuals or those they thought were homosexuals or avoiding places where homosexuals meet”.

I have to say again, it is the British and their malevolent refusal to treat Aids seriously that has led to this appalling situation. The survey shows that ignorance is still widespread and the tabloids are doing nothing to relieve their readers of this lack of knowledge.