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=

“Let 16-year olds have gay sex and stand as MPs, say young Lib Dems.” This was the sneering headline over The Daily Express’s report (September 21st) on the Liberal Democrat Conference.

Michael Winner, though, thought the whole idea of teenage parliamentarians was a good one (although he was equivocal about an equal age of consent). He wrote in The News of the World (September 24th): “Why not? Most 16-year olds are exceedingly bright and untainted by ‘adult’ stupidity… If it came off we could have dozens of gay 16-year olds in the House of Commons. I don’t know why, but I find that immensely desirable! Make a change at least, wouldn’t it? And let’s face it, a few hundred straight MPs haven’t done such a great job anyway.”

Mr Winner has a point. But the likelihood of “dozens of gay MPs” is receding by the moment. The Independent reported that “the Conservatives are choosing ‘safe’ married men as candidates for the next election and rejecting single men, women and non-whites.”

A survey by the paper showed that of the 26 candidates so far selected for Tory seats, all are white and all but three are married (one of them is divorced) and, worst of all, one of them is Dr Adrian Rogers!

The Independent says that “single men on the Tory candidates’ list claim that they are being weeded out by local associations to avoid suggestions of homosexuality or philandering. Three disappointed hopefuls say their marital status was a factor.”

Do the Conservative grass roots honestly believe that marriage is an automatic guarantee of sexual probity? I merely mention the names Tim Yeo and David Mellor and then rest my case.

Dame Angela Rumbold, the Conservative vice-chairman (sic), says that in selecting married men, some constituency associations imagine they are getting “two for the price of one”, with wifey “doing the donkey work”. But even she admits that such thinking is “frightfully old-fashioned”. The truth is, they are rejecting bachelors because they don’t want to see them popping up on the front page of The News of the World.

At the last election it became clear that Labour, too, was screening out potentially gay candidates in order to avoid what they considered “adverse publicity”.

It seems that before Parliament starts making righteous noises about equality in society it ought to put its own House in order. Where’s the democracy they keep squawking about when a whole section of the population is, in effect, denied the opportunity to participate in the legislature? Unless they lie their heads off, of course.

***

BARRYMORE WATCH: This new feature will bring you news of the tabloids’ pursuit of Michael Barrymore in the run-up to the launch of his new TV series. We start with “Barrymore Pal is Rent Boy” which was The Sunday Mirror’s splash front page headline (September 10th).

You had to turn to the double-page spread inside to discover that it was only virtual reality. Barrymore had simply shared a drink and a chat with the supposed rent boy and, even the paper had to admit, didn’t know anything about his “profession”. No story, but plenty of innuendo.

Although Private Eye reported that the editor of The Sun had told his journalists to lay off Barrymore, its September 23rd edition carried a picture of Michael with Paul Wincott, a young man in his 20s. According to the paper, they “shared an evening at an East London flat” and the star left at 6am. Did the journo sit outside all night long just for that? No wonder these Sun chaps often appear deranged.

Even more unpleasant was a piece by religious maniac John Macleod in The Glasgow Herald (September 29th). He used the Barrymore episode to launch an all-out attack on homosexuality. “A homosexual lifestyle is unnatural, dangerous and evil,” he wrote. “It is a lifestyle remarkable in its practice — as has been borne out by study after study — for promiscuity, instability, neurosis, substance-abuse, and suicide, untold depths of degradation and misery and self-loathing. It may seem a very easy way at present to Michael Barrymore… but it will end, in the next world, if not in this, in his utter destruction.”

When will the Barrymore bomb burst in the tabloids? Watch this space.

***

The Republicans in the USA — often regarded as the sworn enemies of homosexuals — are finding that “the gay lobby” is as much inside as outside their ranks these days. An interview with Andrew Sullivan appears elsewhere in this issue of Gay Times and, in the meantime, the London Evening Standard’s Washington Correspondent, Jeremy Campbell, told us (September 13th) that “the religious Right, implacable foe of deviant pleasures and egregious couplings, is mellowing on gays.” He cites the 1994 elections that swept the conservatives into power and says that exit polls showed that “34 per cent of gays voted Republican.” The Republicans have found that fanatical and dishonest opposition to gay life is actually counterproductive. It turns many voters off.

According to Campbell, Bill Bennett, an arch-conservative, hero of the Right and author of a best-selling book on “virtue”, has “signalled a new armistice with gays by calling for an end to scapegoating them for the decline of the family, when wholesale divorce must surely be laid at the door of heterosexuals”.

“Tolerance rather than acceptance” is how Bennett describes his shifting stance. Campbell thinks it is “more of a change than it sounds”.

Meanwhile, an American scholar, Professor W Scott Thompson of Tufts University, a prominent member of the gay Log Cabin Republicans, has written an essay about the founder of the Republican party, Abraham Lincoln. Its title, “Was Abe Gay?”, and its assertion that Lincoln shared a bed for four years with a merchant named Joshua Speed has caused a furore among traditionalists (as reported in The Daily Express, October 3rd). Although he subsequently married, Lincoln continued to write “extraordinarily tender letters” to Speed. Carl Sandburg’s biography of Lincoln describes the two as having “a streak of lavender and spots as soft as May violets”.

Even our own raving Right-wingers couldn’t wait to get in on the act, and in The Daily Mail letters column (October 5th), R. Beardsmore says that “obviously the Gay Lobby will stop at nothing in its quest for moral acceptance… Does this latest accusation about President Lincoln mean that we should look at Morecambe and Wise in a new light?… Maybe it would be better to say that the Gay Lobby can’t see a belt without hitting below it.”

I don’t know about you, but I can think of better things to do below the belt than hitting.

***

The Daily Express (October 5th) told us that “Labour’s pledge to give lesbian, gay and unmarried couples equal rights to their partners’ pension benefits will hit traditional families.”

Apparently, the Labour Party’s leadership had given its backing to a resolution allowing people to nominate who should benefit from their pension if they should die. Very few pension schemes give equal rights to unmarried couples, gay or straight, though even our very own Conservative Government has said that they don’t mind if they do (see Employment Focus, Gay Times, August).

The Express quoted Jim Brooks of the Clerical and Medical insurance company as saying that the change would cost millions. “What would have been a widow’s pension will become eligible to all.”

On a point of information, Mr Brooks — could you tell me how gay couples can ever benefit from the billions of quid they have contributed to pension schemes over the years and then seen disappearing into the pockets of “traditional families”? Given that we aren’t allowed to marry, how can we protect our partners if one of us dies?

The time for change is approaching, but I have a feeling that if the papers are going to present it as “the gays are trying to take our money away from us”, the opposition will be fierce. Indeed, The Express invited its readers to ring in and vote on whether they thought equal pension rights should be extended to gay men and lesbians. 90% said “no”.

Of course, it would be better if pension schemes adopted a fairer policy of their own volition, but they won’t do it without pressure. Start lobbying your pension scheme trustees today!

***

The Bishop of Portsmouth, the Right Revd Timothy Bavin, was one of those named in the infamous OutRage! outing incident earlier this year, and went public shortly afterwards to admit as much. Now The Times (September 15th) has announced that the Revd Tim has given away all his worldly goods (except his collection of opera records) and will move into a Benedictine monastery in Hampshire. There he will be able to forget all about homosexuality. Benedictines don’t do that sort of thing. Do they?

Well, I’m afraid Father Andrew Brenninkmeyer does. Characterised in The Daily Mirror (September 16th) as “the dirty monk”, Father Brenninkmeyer’s taste for young men led him into all kinds of trouble at the Benedictine abbey at Worth in West Sussex. One of his victims told how Brenninkmeyer “stripped during confession and suggested that the young man take off his clothes as well.” There are also tales of seductions on the sofa, and candlelit dinners for two. “Younger priests easily fell under his spell,” says The Mirror.

The good father has now been suspended and is believed to be in Switzerland. He has expressed “his deep remorse for any distress and suffering that may have resulted from his actions”.

Well, that’s OK then.

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=

Some of the gay community’s most vicious and implacable enemies must be putting the flags out this month, for it seems that their day has come. A right-wing conspiracy, orchestrated by The Daily Mail, has caused the Government to ditch a major piece of social legislation because, according to critics, it would damage “family values.”

The Family Homes and Domestic Violence Bill, which would have extended protection from violence to all members of the family, was the first casualty of the new-found power of the right-wingers. This humane piece of legislation was progressing nicely until it was spotted by former hell-fire preacher William Oddie. Mr Oddie, who has a raft of anti-gay journalism under his belt, wrote an article in The Daily Mail claiming that the new legislation would give equal rights to unmarried partners and “go most of the way towards abolishing matrimony as a legally distinct state”.

It was untrue nonsense, but The Mail’s puritanical editor, Paul Dacre, decided to turn the issue into a “campaign”, dubbing it “The Live-in Lovers Charter”. The ploy succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

Behind the scenes, groups like Family and Youth Concern (for whom William Oddie’s wife works), the All-Party Pro-Life Group, Christian Action Research and Education or CARE (sic), the Conservative Family Campaign as well as Catholic MPs (whipped up by John Patten) mounted a “family values” offensive which eventually caused the Government to cave in to their demands.

There was a triumphalist air at The Daily Mail, which suddenly realised that it had the power to dictate to Parliament. Immediately it followed up with other “campaigns” against proposed changes to the divorce legislation and laws on mental incapacity.

The paper’s distorted and untruthful presentations of these reforms as “subverting family values” and “introducing euthanasia by the back door” did not go entirely unchallenged, however. The Independent called them “claptrap” and editorialised (October 27th) “The possession of a small majority in the House of Commons must be irksome in many ways for Her Majesty’s ministers. But of all the myriad disadvantages it confers, that of having to take Lady Olga Maitland seriously must be the pits.”

The paper went on to say that it was a classic case of the “rump wagging the dog” and that any changes forced on to legislation by right-wing Tory idiots “would substitute nostalgia for wisdom and authoritarianism for enlightenment”.

The Independent warns us that “as the election approaches there will be more of this [right-wing social authoritarianism]”. The Tory bigots have been bolstered by the fact that Labour seems afraid to be too critical in case it is perceived as opposing “family values”.

The implications of all this for the gay community are plain to see. The prospect of any pro-gay legislation being introduced into be fallen upon by the forces that have already dictated the fate of these other reforms. They would claim once more that “the country has shifted to the Right and has dumped the permissive morality of the sixties”. They will claim that Britain has embraced this mad fundamentalist agenda that they are promoting.

This is not true, of course. Opinion polls show that the British are not a moralistic nation, and they demonstrate this in the ways that they live — a third of children are born out of wedlock, for instance. In truth, the country is having these reactionary opinions inflicted upon it by a relatively small group of people who are taking advantage of the Government’s weakness.

Then The Mail turned its malign focus upon gays (3rd November). It published a “confidential letter” from the Commander of the Fleet which “reveals furious opposition among all ranks to lifting the current ban on gays in the military”. The letter, written by Admiral Sir Hugo White (married 29 years, we’re told), is the usual mish-mash of bigotry and prejudice, and says nothing new, but The Mail devotes three screaming, ranting pages to it.

One of the points made by the Admiral is that: “There is a silent majority in the UK who understand and sympathise with our corporate stance.” He provides no evidence for this (or for much else of what he says). The Daily Express (October 10th) asked its readers: “Should homosexuals be allowed in the forces?” Surprisingly, 84% of those who rang in said “yes”. On the same day, Teletext held its own phone-in on the same topic. Sixty-eight per cent of its respondents thought gays should not be allowed in the forces. Even so, this hardly represents overwhelming support for the military top brass’s virulent homophobia.

I doubt whether that is going to stop The Daily Mail fulminating against us. The scary part is that in these final days of a hopeless Government, The Mail’s disgusting rhetoric may be taken seriously and acted upon.

***

Andrew Sullivan’s book Virtually Normal was launched last month on a wave of hype unprecedented for a gay polemic. Just about every newspaper interviewed him, The Guardian serialised the book and finally there was a full-scale debate at the prestigious Cafe Royal in London. But what exactly was “the argument of his life” which Mr Sullivan “had to win”?

At the London debate, he was joined on the platform by — among others — Lynette Burrows, the Sunday Telegraph’s gay-baiter-in-chief. Ms Burrows recounted her experience of being “a token ‘straight’ at the homosexual debate” in the following Sunday’s Telegraph (October 15th). “A typical collection of homosexuals displays the same po-faced bigotry, the same denial of any common ground and the same herd instinct to attack which have informed the very worst of the anti-homosexual mobs in the past,” she said. “This was certainly the case last week; my arguments were ignored and I was accused of being simply dangerous. It struck  me, as I am sure it struck Mr Sullivan, that if I had been the only homosexual in a large group of hostile heterosexuals, someone would have stood up for me out of a civility and courage that are usually very strong among the English.”

I was at the debate, and the reason that Ms Burrows’ arguments were laughed at was because they were laughable. I had fleeting feelings of sympathy for her plight — it cannot have been pleasant standing on a platform hearing her most cherished beliefs earning the titters they so richly deserve. But I did not come to her defence because her opinions were disgusting. She was saying in essence that because she finds gay sexual behaviour “repugnant” we should not have the same human rights as other citizens. Such opinions deserve derision.

The reviews then started to come in. After the hype, what did the critics think? Charlotte Raven didn’t like the book at all. In The London Evening Standard (October 16th) she wrote: “Apparently, our time would be much better spent in persuading the straights, by means of meticulous and exhaustive argument, that gays aren’t necessarily going to jump on your first-born, upset your grandma or pull down every picket fence they pass. In fact, as well as being potentially respectable, we are actually virtually sane. Especially the ones who join the Army… This is not an argument about homosexuality so much as an apology for it.”

Matthew Parris, in The Times (October 19th) has some sympathy with Sullivan’s right-wing credentials, but in the end parted company with him. “Having so bravely taken on the moral Right, having wrenched himself away from Senator Pat Buchanan’s anti-Sodom and anti-Gomorrah rhetoric and set out on an odyssey of his own, Sullivan turns back for one last glance at the burning city and tries one last time to form a bridge, frame an argument that his Church and those he has defied, would understand. ‘I can’t help it!’ he cries. ‘I’m virtually normal. I’m only a little bit queer.’ In saying this he wrecks the integrity of his case.”

Jeanette Winterson reviewed the book for The Daily Telegraph(October 21). “Sullivan’s desired goals of equal access to marriage and the military are not prizes worthy of capture… Heterosexuals are deeply questioning both institutions, and while lesbians and gay men should never abandon their fight for equal rights, nor should they abandon their critique of the mainstream.”

Sullivan did have some takers, though. James Collard in The Independent on Sunday (October 15th) thought that: “Virtually Normal is not just some primer for a political struggle, but the product of a long hard-won personal fight. As such, the book moves hearts as well as minds.” Roy Porter in The Sunday Times (October 15th) liked the idea of assimilation, as proposed by the book. “Sullivan’s rose-tinted silent revolution (equality before the law, sharing benefits and responsibilities) offers an attractive solution; to its sweet reasonableness one can only say amen. It remains to be discovered, if virtual normality were achieved, what would become of the gay scene.”

Although Virtually Normal is an interesting contribution to the debate on gay rights, it is not the answer its publishers purported it to be. The struggle goes on, and it won’t be won by long-winded theory. Give me action-persons Angela Mason and Peter Tatchell any day.

***

XQ28 IS BACK! Yes, the “gay gene” controversy has been re-opened by an article in Nature Genetics in which Dr Dean Hamer claims to have successfully recreated his original 1993 research proving that nature plays a large part in the creation of our sexuality. No other scientist has been able to repeat Hamer’s results.

Two years ago, when the original research was published, The Daily Mail famously headed its report: “Abortion hope after ‘gay genes’ find”. This time round The Daily Express echoed that sentiment with its own effort: “Test to see if your unborn son is gay” (November 1st).

Of course, there is no such test and, according to Dr Hamer, no “gay gene” either. The Independent (November 1st) told us: “Dr Hamer does not himself believe in a gay gene despite trying more than any other scientist to prove the existence of a genetic — and therefore inherited — component to sexual orientation. The primary conclusion of his latest work… is that there is a region on the X chromosome that influences variations in sexual orientation in men, but not in women.” That is not the same as having identified a specific “gay gene” that can be manipulated.

It’s all much too complicated for the layman to understand, but Hamer imagines that one day someone will find the gay gene. And it will be at that point that the moral debate begins in earnest. Hamer says that he will try to prevent anyone using his research to develop a pre-natal “test” for homosexuality. But if he doesn’t want his findings misused, why did he undertake what many regard as unnecessary research in the first place?

He may well be creating a monster which will eventually get out of control, just like that other dabbling doctor — Frankenstein.