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’s taken 25 years, but at last the newspapers seem to have conceded that the gay movement is here to stay. Some of them even admitted that we have made progress and that we might be worth taking seriously. Not seriously enough to cover Pride properly, of course, but we can’t complain that Stonewall 25 was totally ignored — and we didn’t even need a serial killer to get their attention this time round.

The Independent (June 23rd) gave some background to the riot that started it all in New York back in 1969. We’ve heard it all before — although, like most historical events no one can be really sure which parts of the present-day versions are true and which have changed over the years for the sake of political expedience. The Indy notes that the June issue of the US gay mag The Advocate has been trying to get to the bottom of what really happened that sultry night. Did a drag queen called Sylvia Riviera “really throw the bottle that triggered the riot? And was the riot planned, or a spontaneous reaction to the death of Judy Garland, a gay icon because of her own homosexual experiences?”

No one seems to know for certain. But what we do know is that we haven’t looked back since. The Sunday Times (June 26th) headlined its own summary of the state of gay rights in America today as: “The rise and rise of the gay global village” and sub-headed it “In 25 years, homosexuals have transformed themselves into a powerful political and financial lobby.” The two-page feature by a resentfully admiring Brian Deer concentrated on the experiences of the gay community in Oak Lawn, a suburb of Dallas (variously described as the “Buckle on the Bible Belt” and “murder capital of the world”). Gay Oak Lawners want their share of the Jesus action and have built themselves a $3.5million church with bullet proof windows from which they call on God to equip them for “any challenge”. You’ve got to admire the gay community’s guts in setting up home in the most fundamentalist city in America.

Deer says, “Urban areas that, for as long as they have existed, witnessed division by class and race are now splitting along the lines of what people do in bed. In a development that is pushing the so-called ‘gay issue’ up the public agenda almost everywhere, and gathering pace at an exponential rate, we are seeing the emergence of a global homosexual tribe.”

Now in Dallas there are “70 homosexual organisations ranging from the Federal Club, a high-profile political fund-raising group for which membership costs up to $10,000 a year, to the Turtle Creek Chorale, a nationally renowned gay men’s choir. There are 25 gay and lesbian bars, the most popular of which turned over $2.5 million in sales. Two of the 15-member Dallas city council are open about being gay.”

Not that everything is hunky dory. Deer reports acts of violence and injustice against gay people all over the world, from “horrific stonings in Iran to sporadic and sometimes serious physical assaults virtually everywhere.”

Time magazine (June 27th) did its own survey of the state of play and found that a poll it conducted showed that 65 per cent of Americans thought homosexual rights were being “paid too much attention”. The magazine says: “Strikingly, those who described homosexuality as morally wrong made up the same proportion — 53 per cent — as in a poll in 1978.”

Other findings in the survey were that “Americans are willing to accept that gays have equal rights under the law — 53 per cent favoured allowing them to serve in the military, and a plurality of 47 per cent to 45 per cent supports giving them the same civil rights protection as racial and religious minorities — but are distinctly less comfortable when asked about gays close at hand. By 57 per cent to 36 per cent, poll respondents say that gays cannot be good role models for children; 21 per cent say they would not even buy from a homosexual salesman or woman.”

Time comes to the conclusion that “If the view over the past quarter century suggests that gay progress is inevitable, the picture today suggests that gays may instead be, as their opponents argue, a unique case rather than just another minority group. Far from continuing towards inclusion, gays may already be bumping up against the limits of tolerance.”

Certainly we have bumped up against the limits of William Oddie’s tolerance. Writing in The Sunday Times (May 29th), he warned us that “The present assumption of the gay lobby appears to be that all it has to do is to continue agitating in order to make further advances. But I suspect we have reached the point at which, as Quentin Crisp said, ‘the more gay people now insist on their rights, the greater the distance becomes between the gay world and the straight world, and that is a pity.’ It is more than just a pity: it is potentially a tragedy, and one that will make our society nastier and less tolerant than it was before.” He says that people should keep their noses out of what does not concern them “and treat each other as decently as possible”. Surely, on that basis, he should be lecturing heterosexuals, not gays.

Peter Tatchell certainly doesn’t seem to mind the idea of distance between the straight and gay world. In an opinion piece in The Observer (June 19th) he “took issue with homosexuals who argue for greater assimilation into ‘straight’ society” and argued “for gay self-help through an organised ‘queer’ counter culture.”

“While we do not intend to give up the fight for law reform,” wrote Peter, “many of us now feel that the key to queer advancement is self-help and community empowerment. That way we are less at the mercy of institutions dominated by heterosexuals and more in control of our own destiny. With self-reliance, we can create our own homo-affirming community and safe queer space where we do not have to justify ourselves or plead with heterosexuals for acceptance. We can give each other the support that straight society denies us.”

Even the reactionary old Sunday Telegraph joined in (June 26th), was carrying a piece about the emergence of the Rainbow Flag as a gay symbol. It helpfully revealed, just as we did in the June issue of Gay Times, that the six colours the flag contains represent: “red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sun, green for nature, blue for art and violet for spirit.” The original idea was to have eight colours, the two lost ones — which, the paper says, were originally thought of as “vital” — were pink for sexuality and indigo for harmony.

The Sunday Telegraph says that “the gay community hopes (the flag) will become an accepted symbol of shops and business that are either run by or cater predominantly for homosexuals.”

Who decided this on behalf of all of us? The only time the rainbow flag ever comes my way is when someone is trying to sell something — a tea towel, a bedspread, a mug (as in coffee, not you’ve been taken for a…). I’ll stick with the pink triangle, thanks. At least it has an important and meaningful symbolism for homosexuals.

***

Usually, when I’m gathering material for Mediawatch there is very little — often nothing — directly relevant to lesbians. Gay girls have been invisible in the straight media for most of the 25 years of gay liberation. All that changed in the last couple of months. My clippings pile is bulging with features, news stories and commentary on all things lesbian — from Martina’s proposed baby to The Sun’s familiar assertion that all this attention will only result in young girls having their heads turned and opting for abnormality.

Linda Grant wrote in the Independent on Sunday about the confusion of heterosexual men when faced with lesbianism — and their desperate efforts to explain it away. She quotes Harry Carpenter writing in The Sun about being appalled when he discovered a favourite tennis star — the legendary Maria Bueno —was lesbian. “I couldn’t help thinking it was such a waste. She had stunning natural black hair and a beautiful face with a flawless complexion.”

Ms Grant commented: “When confronted with the rumour that a beautiful woman is gay the male brain finds the information does not compute. It’s not as if she can’t get a man, it puzzles, though no one has ever suggested that it was impossible for Rock Hudson to be homosexual because he was a hunk.”

Linda Grant also wonders whether the lesbian media image will ever be more than a “silly season filler”. I think it will because there have been much more significant events than porny pictures in Harper’s and Queens.

The decision by a Manchester court to award a lesbian couple joint legal rights over the upbringing of their 22-month-old son really set the cat among the pigeons. The Daily Mail fulminated that it demonstrated that Britain is existing in a “moral vacuum”. The back-bench bilge-merchants were also provoked into waving their pathetic prejudices once more.

But leaving the Neanderthals in Jurassic Park (SW1A OAA), the papers have not, as they usually do, risen with one voice in condemnation of the women. Indeed, supportive comment far outweighs the disapproval.

Carol Sarler in The People (June 3rd) said that there were no “qualifications” for parenthood other than a desire to love your children. She cited the case of two little girls aged two and six in Newcastle upon Tyne who, a court was told, “had to eat out of dogs’ bowls; who growled in place of speech; whose flesh was ingrained with dirt and whose bodies were riddled with worms”. Ms Sarler pointed out (and this is the first time I’ve ever seen this in a tabloid newspaper) that their mother was not lesbian. “She is married — and the children do have a father.”

Suzanne Moore in The Guardian (July 1st) said that “Lesbian friends of mine who were having difficulty with a teacher who had never before encountered a gay couple with a child finally went into school to explain why their daughter had two people she called mum. The teacher’s hostility soon vanished. ‘Oh, so she’s got two parents, then? Well, that puts her one up on most kids in the class.”

MP Emma Nicholson’s remark that she is “immensely unhappy when adult sexual behaviour inflicts a distorted lifestyle on children” brought this retort from Libby Purves in The Times (July 1st): “If you are looking for distortion caused by adult sexual behaviour, however, we live in a positive Hall of Mirrors. The children of MPs, royalty, journalists and other moral prodnoses do not need to read underclass horror stories to find out about the lifestyle problems which adult sexuality inflicts on children. They are familiar with it all: access arrangements, vendettas, embarrassment, law-suits, confusion, hypocrisy…As for the… ‘perversion’ of the women’s lives, if normal parental sex-life is anything to go by, it will probably be pretty underwhelming. Most children grow up with a heterosexual relationship in the background and barely notice. Frankly, the incidence of sizzling sexual energy in the average family household is depressingly low.”

Meanwhile in The Mail on Sunday (July 3rd), Dillie Keane also came to the women’s defence: “Children need to see true loving kindness demonstrated day after mundane day. Security gives kids a fighting chance of survival as adults. And if those two parents are women, so be it.”

However, she finishes by saying: “Moral battles aren’t won by High Court rulings. They are won by sheer hard slog. The battle that homosexuals and lesbians are fighting won’t be won for 20, 30, 40 years when and if the children they rear turn out to be happy, balanced adults who tell us that having two parents of the same sex is just fine. Until then I reserve my judgement.”

Well, Dillie, scrap the forty-year wait, lovey, because although you might not have heard of them before, lesbian couples aren’t actually a new phenomenon. Indeed, The Guardian (July 2nd) revealed that there have been “four big controlled studies — one in the UK and three in America — comparing children being brought up in lesbian homes with the children of heterosexual mothers.”

The results showed that the lesbian-reared children didn’t suffer from any of the problems which are being anticipated by the “family values” brigade. “The studies have found no difference in the children’s social functioning, self-esteem or ability to express themselves. The psychologists said they appeared able to put their parents’ lifestyle ‘in a broader cultural context.’ The last study, not yet published, followed the children they interviewed in the seventies through their adolescence in the eighties, to adulthood. They found that it is a myth to believe that children brought up in lesbian homes will automatically be homosexual.”

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 newspaper circulation war which is currently being waged in Fleet Street (or, these days, the less dramatic-sounding Canary Wharf) is threatening two of the gay community’s most consistent allies. The Independent and The Guardian are both feeling the pressure, but it seems that The Independent is on the point of buckling. As its circulation plummets towards the crucial quarter-million mark, the alarm bells must be ringing. There is no information at the time of writing as to whether its price cut (to 30p) will stem this haemorrhage of readership, or for how long the paper will be able to sustain the inevitable huge losses.

The Guardian, on the other hand, claims not to be losing readers at quite such a rate and has stated that it has no need to cut its price. It alone among the broadsheets sails serenely on, apparently indifferent to the blood-letting. But then again, at the beginning, so did The Independent.

Architect of this rather sinister power play is, of course, Rupert Murdoch, using the profits from his TV interests to support his now loss-making newspapers as they seek to drive the competition out of business. Murdoch has said that he envisages a future in which Britain has only three national daily newspapers: The Times, The Sun and the Daily Mail. Not only would that development be a disservice to democracy, it would be horrendous news for gay rights. None of the titles mentioned in Mr Murdoch’s scenario can be said to be enamoured of our community — all have been actively hostile towards us. (Although The Times has made some concessions with the employment of Matthew Parris as a columnist and the inclusion of the occasional “other point of view” feature.) But when it came to the crunch — with the age of consent debate — of the national press, only The Independent and The Guardian gave unequivocal support for equality.

Writing about the price war in The Guardian (July 7th), Anthony Lewis foresees Murdoch’s papers becoming “increasingly irresponsible and nasty”. He gave as an example of the downward trend of journalistic values in the Murdoch press, The Sunday Times’ recent campaign questioning the connection between HIV and Aids, and denying that there is an Aids epidemic in Africa. “Until recently, I doubt that even a circulation-hungry tabloid would have run such cruelly irresponsible anti-science.” (In contrast, The Independent marked the tenth anniversary on August 4th of the identification of HIV with a whole-page update of the Aids situation. It also carried an editorial headed: “Aids is not an issue for moralisers”.)

The Government seems unwilling to act to stop this wholesale wrecking of diversity in the newspaper industry, even though it has the power to do so. Many would say its inaction stems from fear of the propaganda power that Murdoch wields.

The loss of The Independent, a friend and ally to the gay community, would represent a major set-back. It has set the pace in its coverage of the gay rights struggle and has carried supportive editorials on most our issues: it called for an end to discrimination against gays in the military, it favoured gay adoption and fostering, an equal age of consent, and more police action to combat queer-bashing. It has been sensible and responsible in its reporting of Aids. It has had the attention of those in power and has taken over in many instances from The Times as the platform for official views on matters of the day.

If the price-cutting continues over any length of time — and there is every indication that it has become a war of attrition — The Guardian, too, will fall under the shadow of Murdoch’s superior cash reserves. What many gay people regard as “our paper” may also eventually disappear. (It editorialised on August 5ththat “dismissing gay service staff is denying them their civil right to fight for their country.”)

We can only do our bit by ensuring we support papers that support us, and encourage our friends and family to do likewise.

But it isn’t all going Murdoch’s way. Sky television has taken a step back from tabloidisation — at least for the moment — with the ungainly departure of oik-in-chief, Kelvin MacKenzie. The ex-editor of The Sun (whom Murdoch once described as “my little Hitler”) failed in his attempts to do for television what he has done for tabloids — take it into the gutter.

MacKenzie just did not understand the difference between the printed word and the televisual image. In the newspapers, you can create demons to attack — as MacKenzie successfully did with gays as well as left-wingers — but it ain’t so simple on television, where people can speak for themselves.

All this upheaval in Murdoch’s empire was music to the ears of his foes in the newspaper industry who were all anxious to report that BSkyB, Murdoch’s great white hope in the heavens, is beginning to show a dramatic slow-down in growth. “Hard though it is to get clear facts and figures on the satellite market — or on News International’s finances — it is clear that the year so far has not been wholly good for the organisation,” wrote Georgina Henry in The Guardian (August 4th) while The Independent (August 3rd) told us that “BSkyB suffered a drop of 18 per cent in average viewing per customer between 1993 and 1994” and that it costs seven or eight times as much to watch a film on satellite as it does on the BBC (45p an hour as opposed to 6p). It then went on to say: “Not long ago publishers thought newspapers were an incurable addiction. Now they slash their cover prices and cut each other’s throats. Mr Murdoch is said to have started the press’s price war believing that only four dailies have the strength and diversity of appeal to flourish in the next century. And perhaps only four big, universally appealing television channels?”

The Sun, in the meantime, hit back at The Independent, saying: “At 30p it is a high price to pay for paper to hang in the smallest room:” Don’t people say the same about The Sun?

Meanwhile, Mr Richard Littlejohn — The Sun’s favourite columnist — assures us that rumours of the cancellation of his proposed nightly show on Sky are greatly exaggerated. In a letter to the London Evening Standard (August 5th), the would-be TV shock-horror merchant says that his satellite programme will be a mix of “hard news, intelligent debate, comment, politics, the arts and sport” and will begin on September 19th. However, if his new London Weekend TV programme (“Littlejohn Live and Uncut”), which aims for the same formula, is anything to go by, it will he just as crappy as everything else on BSkyB.

Given that a couple of days before the first show (July 8th) he had been writing in The Sun about “designer dykes” and the fact that “the NHS has no business wasting time and money impregnating self-centred sexual deviants”, it was almost inevitable that he would open his TV series with the same topic.

Reading the autocue like some sort of zombie, Littlejohn tried pathetically to make jokes about a yoghurt pot, but his uncomprehending audience weren’t quite sure what he was on about. He sniped at the women he’d invited and made the sort of remarks that would have been regarded as crude even in Kelvin MacKenzie’s living room. It rapidly became apparent that saying things like “I couldn’t care less what lesbians get up to just so long as I am not forced to pay for it… the antics of some of them leave a particularly nasty taste in the mouth” might be all right in The Sun, but it’s not quite the same on the telly.

The women he was attacking remained calm and dignified, refusing to rise to his bait. His tactics were transparent: he was being nasty to real, likeable people, and that isn’t quite the same as slagging off the “shaven-headed dykes” he’d demonised in print. He too discovered the hard way that The Sun does not shine in television.

When film director Michael Winner, another guest on the show, was asked what he thought, he opined that Littlejohn was an arsehole. (Round of applause from audience.)

The Evening Standard’s TV reviewer Matthew Norman shared Winner’s opinion, preparing one of the most damning critiques I’ve ever read in a newspaper: “A 90-minute cold collation of simplistic current affairs debate, showbiz chat and nutter-baiting romp, its aim was undisguised — to get maximum ratings for minimum expense by trying to shock. And shock it certainly did — though for no other reason than the paucity of its ambition and the crassness of the execution.”

As for Johnny Littledick, Mr Norman thought that “in the farmyard of humanity” he would “surely occupy a sty”.

The following week, the attention-seeking Littlejohn somehow managed to allow ten seconds of “lesbian porn” to be broadcast —a “mistake” by his technicians, apparently. The week after that, one of his guests, David Icke, could stand the pillorying no longer and walked out of the studio. All grist to the mill for someone who thinks people are interesting so long as they are “barmy” and don’t answer back, and whose humiliation can make money for him. LWT should be ashamed of being responsible for such amateurish, self-seeking bilge and for going along with Littlejohn’s pathetic attempts to build some kind of dubious reputation for himself.

***

David Nicholson-Ward wrote revealingly in The Independent on Sunday (July 10th) about “factoids”, that apparently “undisputed” data which comes out of research commissioned by vested interests. Often such spurious statistics and “findings” are then obligingly presented in the media as “the truth”. For instance, the Washington Family Institute last year issued a “survey” which “revealed” that “a gay lifestyle reduces life expectancy from 75 to 42”.

This “factoid” was much touted by Christian activists during the age of consent debate — even in the House of Lords. The people who were using the figures were never asked to reveal how they had been arrived at or who exactly the Washington Family Institute is (it is, in fact, a right-wing Christian pressure group).

“Tactical research”, as it is called, is often used to justify the unjustifiable and create confusion in the minds of consumers. For example, is butter any worse for your health than margarine? It depends whose factoids you’ve been reading.

Or, as Mr Nicholson-Ward wrote: “In the new and prosperous world of tactical research, constructed around commercial horizons and compliant media, truth has become a commodity, and one with a limited shelf life. Much more important than truth is what people believe — or what you can get them to believe.”

Another recent use of the “factoid” concerned insurance. The Association of British Insurers announced last month that “insurance companies are to the drop a controversial question about Aids on life assurance proposal forms” (Daily Telegraph, June 27th). Most of the papers reported this piece of blatant public relations guff unquestioningly, failing to mention that “lifestyle” questionnaires will probably still be sent to those suspected of being gay.

Only the Financial Times (July 30th/31st) bothered to find out that: “Even when insurers produce new forms which drop the question about Aids-testing, they will still be able to find out whether you have had an Aids-test from your GP’s medical records.” And you cannot refuse permission for them to contact your GP — if you do they will simply turn down your application.

The hidden influence of the advertising and public relations industry cannot be underestimated, and it is more important than ever that we read our newspapers with a sharp and cynical eye.

And anecdotal evidence was supplied by The Sunday Times (July 3rd) when a 34 year old man told of his own experience in being raised by two women in a lesbian relationship. “Don’t knock lesbian mothers… Any court that obstructs access to a child, or refuses a residence order because a parent is gay is wrong. As a teenager I looked among the parents of friends and could not see one happy marriage. I was raised in a house of love.”

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=

And so, Brian (Bonehead) Hitchen has been promoted from the editorship of The Daily Star to that of the equally grotty and declining Sunday Express. As a leaving present, the Press Complaints Commission wagged a finger severely at Bonehead (who probably wagged two fingers back). Fleet Street’s leading homophobe was censured for making “prejudicial and pejorative references to homosexuals in breach of Clause 15(i) of the Code of Practice” in an article about the BBC’s equal opportunities policy. “Working at the BBC must be a poofter’s idea of paradise,” wrote the editor who describes himself as being to the right of Atilla the Hun. “It’s so wonderful that queer couples who ‘marry’ could, before yesterday, qualify for a £75 ‘wedding gift voucher’ and a week’s honeymoon… doesn’t it make you want to vomit?… it’s a good thing the pansies can’t get pregnant.”

Interestingly, the Press Complaints Commission said in its adjudication of this case that it is “unwilling to compile a list of proscribed words or phrases” and upholds the “traditional right of columnists to express personal views and even to use language which some may find offensive.” That should be good news for Bushell, Littlejohn, Junor et al — it seems to be giving them the green light to start the unrestrained slagging once more. Bring on the poofters, woofters, lezzies and queers.

The Press Complaints Commission might well have found against Hitchen on this occasion, but what in the end does the adjudication mean? I haven’t seen it reproduced in The Daily Star (unless I missed it, which is quite likely — the tabloids have made an art form of burying and concealing rights of reply, PCC adjudications and apologies).

But there is a clue to show that Hitchen was irritated by the complaint. By way of a farewell in The Daily Star (August 30th), he returned to that topic much favoured by right-wing pundits — political correctness. Commenting on discord among deaf people at the suggestion that they should modify their sign language so as to make it less offensive to minorities, he said: “The sign for a Japanese person is a twist of the little finger at the corner of one eye to denote a slanted eye. To indicate a black person the deaf normally flatten their nose. And to indicate a homosexual — you’ve guessed it — a limp wrist! There is no record of the Japanese complaining or of black people objecting to their sign-language description. But the homosexuals are outraged. It must be very tiresome to be continually outraged about things.”

There has been a flurry of excitement among other right-wing columnists about Hitchen’s elevation. Frank Johnson, writing in The Daily Telegraph (September 8th) seems to be something of an admirer of Hitchen’s extremism: “As a long-standing member of the Association of Traders in Right Wing Opinions, I ask: how can the rest of us match such competition? In particular, this new Hitchen column is a threat to one of our oldest members, Sir John Junor in the rival Mail on Sunday.” Mr Johnson says that if any of the other raving right-wingers wrote in such disgusting terms, the editor would probably ask for some kind of moderation. Hitchen, though, is the editor and has no such restraining influence. Stand by for blasting.

The other part of Clause 15 of the PCC’s Code of Practice says that there should be no reference to a person’s sexuality in a newspaper unless it is “relevant to the story”. And yet when the solicitor who was working on a high-profile murder case was sacked by his client, he was gratuitously described by The Daily Mail (August 13th) as “a self-confessed homosexual”. The Mail quoted him as saying “I didn’t particularly want (my homosexuality) to be public knowledge” but that didn’t stop them printing a photo of him and his lover — whom they also named. The London Evening Standard (August 12th) also referred to the solicitor as “a self-confessed homosexual” while boasting on the facing page that the paper would not be publishing a snatched photograph of Princess Diana because it breached the PCC’s Code of Practice. One has to ask if this comes into the “one law for the rich” category.

Anyway, Gay Times reader Mike Allaway also noticed this seemingly straightforward breach of Clause 15 (ii) and put in a complaint to the PCC about it. A letter duly arrived informing him that the Commission had previously received “a complaint along similar lines against an article in The Daily Star”. The Commissioners noted in that case that the solicitor “had been quoted as saying that his homosexuality was ‘an open secret’ and the Commission did not consider that his privacy had been invaded.” After being “outed” by the lousy Daily Star it certainly was an open secret — a very open secret!

The message to Mr Allaway was clear — don’t bother proceeding with the complaint because we’ll only throw it out. What price gay privacy?

***

Reporting the 10th Annual International Conference on Aids in Yokohama, The Independent (August 10th) said that prejudice and ignorance about HIV in Japan is alarmingly high. “Aids has been portrayed by many in Japan as a foreigners’ disease,” says the paper. “Attitudes change very slowly in Japan and the stigma attached to the disease is still very high.” Indeed, the Ministry of Health had to send out circulars to hotels and restaurants around the conference venue asking them not to refuse to serve people with HIV — who represented 10 per cent of the 12,000 delegates. The traders needed to be reminded that they cannot contract the virus “from casual contact with luggage, sheets or tableware used by an infected person.”

Perhaps our own Department of Health should put out similar information to British tabloid journalists who still seem in dire need of educating about HIV and Aids. The Sunday Mirror (August 28th) originated a story about a block of flats in Birmingham, which was enthusiastically taken up by The Daily Star (August 29th), with a front page report about a “council skyscraper branded Britain’s first ‘Aids Ghetto’”.

According to the paper “scared families are flocking to leave” the flats. It tells how the relatives of one “gran” are too frightened to visit her because “many of her neighbours — half are gay —are dying from the HIV virus”. The report also says that other residents are “scared of touching lift buttons” unless they are wearing protective gloves and there is much more of the kind of ignorant panic-mongering little seen in newspapers since the mid-eighties. Nowhere in the article is there any contradiction of the superstitious clap-trap about lift buttons, but there is plenty of inference that homosexuality and Aids are synonymous (“This is a ghetto for gays. My wife Vinetta is terrified. We don’t want to be in contact with people suffering from Aids” says one man).

The Pink Paper (September 9th) told of the effects these largely untrue reports had on the residents of the flats: gay-bashing, graffiti, bitterness and an increase in misunderstandings between neighbours.

Brian Hitchen was still the editor of The Daily Star when this drivel was published. In the Sunday Express he will have three times as many readers to assail with his psychotic gay-bashing.

***

You’ve heard of the Pretty Police, well here come the Pretty Hacks. In a throw-back to the old days, The News of the World (September 4th) carried an article headed “Vicar dumps wife for rolls with sandwich boy…” The article concerned a gay clergyman who had been set up by so-called “undercover reporters” who had discovered that he was having an affair with a 17-year-old youth.

Posing as a gay man, The News of the World journo appears to have charmed his way into the confidence of the younger man and persuaded him to talk extensively about the affair. Having thus got his “exclusive”, the reporter sent in his colleague to pose “as a new gay pal” in order to get them both talking together. The vicar’s estranged wife was extensively quoted, but the article does not make clear her role in all of this.

The men responsible for this cruel and ruinous bit of gay-baiting (the vicar is now “suspended pending a Church investigation” into the NoW story) are Phil Taylor and Mazher Mahmood.

Hang on — Mazher Mahmood — doesn’t that name ring a bell? Is this the same Mazher Mahmood who outed Michael Brown, MP for Brigg and Cleethorpes in the May 8th edition of The News of the World, using the same underhand tactics? On that occasion, being tipped off by a member of the Conservative Party (who was paid £10,000 for his trouble), Mahmood posed as a diplomat and inveigled himself into the confidence of one of Mr Brown’s friends. Using hidden tape recorders, he provoked the men into indiscreet conversations which he subsequently splashed all over the paper.

The justification for this intrusion into private lives was that Mr Brown had broken the law by having an affair with a 20-year-old man (after Parliament voted for 18 but before the Royal Assent).

Following this exposé, Mr Brown was forced to resign his Government position.

Easy money, of course. The tragedy is that gay people are so vulnerable to this kind of subterfuge.

Perhaps if OutRage! is looking for a new campaign, it should consider tracking down this Mazher Mahmood chappy and photographing him. Then we can all see what this sneaking back-stabber looks like — and prevent him further lining his pockets by ruining gay lives.

[Note: Mazher Mahmood continued using subterfuge to create stories but eventually went too far and was convicted in October 2016 of conspiring to pervert the course of justice and was given 15-month jail sentence.]

***

Tabloid sub-editors are really alchemists: they can turn good news into bad and make a positive story negative without your even noticing. Subs are the people who write the headlines and who make sure that stories fit the paper’s political line.

An example of sub-editors at work came in the case of the Appeals Court decision to reject a father’s challenge and allow a lesbian mother to keep custody of her children. The judges upheld a previous decision which said that the mother could give her two daughters “a more normal family life than the father”. Judges do not take these decisions lightly. They have all the facts before them as well as the opinions of experts in the field.

However, by the time the subs on The Daily Mail and The Daily Express (September 3rd) had finished with it, triumph had become tragedy. “Lesbians Preferred” was the headline over The Mail’s report, which was written entirely from the father’s perspective. “A devoted father has lost the legal battle to stop his two daughters moving in with his ex-wife and lesbian lover” it began. Notice the old tabloid trick — if gays gain anything it is invariably at the expense of straights. In the world of the middle-market tabloids “they” (gays) are always taking things away from “us” (straights). At one time we were gobbling up “ratepayers’ money”, now we’re taking away the children. The Express’s headline made this even more explicit: “Father loses daughters to ex-wife and lesbian lover”.

The Sun (September 9th) went one better and carried a lengthy interview with the father in which he naturally expressed his disappointment, but also took the opportunity to repeatedly slander his wife’s relationship. The mother’s side of the story, however, remains untold. Commenting on the matter The Sun said in an editorial: “The judges ruled that the girls will have a more normal life with their mother and her LESBIAN lover. How can two women sleeping together be normal in the eyes of two little girls? Every parent will be scared by the implications of this disturbing case.”

And every lesbian mum will be angry at The Sun’s continual wilful distortion of their lives.

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 papers just can’t get enough of gay parenting. After last month’s court decision to award the custody of two children to their lesbian mother and her partner, the focus this month has been on writer and comedian Sandi Toskvig.

While promoting her latest Channel Four show, Ms Toskvig told The Sunday Times (September 18th) that she and her female partner, Peta, had three children, all of which were conceived with the help of a man friend and a syringe from Boots. The Daily Mail enthusiastically reproduced this story on September 21st.

Sandi and Peta, it seems, have generated an admirable amount of love and happiness within their little pretend family. Journalist Chrissy Hey, who conducted the interview, describes the set-up thus: “Jessie is six — she has just learned to ride her two-wheeler. And Megan, who is four, can sing — word-perfect — every song in the musical, Annie. Both parents delight in the baby, Theodore — they want to send telegrams around the world because, just yesterday, he learned to roll over. At the end of the day, when Jessie is kissed goodnight, she says to her parents: ‘Leave the door open so I can hear you laughing.’ The atmosphere is cosseting, calm. No arguments. Their lovely house, in a corner of the home counties, is always full of people.”

Who wouldn’t be pleased to see children in such a sensitive and caring — not to say privileged — household? Well, The Daily Mail wouldn’t, to start with. It tacked on to the original interview some comments by Diana Verity, the mother-in-law of the man who donated his sperm to the women. “God didn’t intend two women to be parents,” she is alleged to have said, providing the requisite downbeat headline over the otherwise optimistic story.

Mrs Verity unquestioningly trotted out all the usual drivel about lesbian mums: “I think it is wrong for children to be brought up in such an environment. You just wonder what sort of life, what sort of persuasions they are inflicting on the kids… It does not seem natural to me. I feel for childless couples and I think that artificial insemination is great. But this is not what we had in mind by scientific progress.”

Then The Independent carried interviews with three children who had been raised in lesbian households, to find out how they felt about it. All of them were positive about their situation and expressed nothing but unconditional love for their “two mums”. None of them suffered the deleterious consequences which our detractors keep droning on about. The Daily Mail decided to reproduce these stories, too (September 22nd) and once again decorated them with headlines that totally undermined what was said: “At first I cried when I learned that my mother was a lesbian” and “I wouldn’t want to be gay myself”. Once more the positive had been rendered negative to the casual reader.

This all came on the heels of the tabloid campaign against the two women who had been awarded custody in a Manchester appeals court (see last month’s Mediawatch). The Sun carried an interview with the father who had lost the appeal. He was presented throughout the article as the victim of a wicked gay conspiracy to rob him of his children. The two women were slandered and misrepresented throughout. After reading this inflammatory presentation, readers were asked to ring one of The Sun’s notorious “You the Jury” phone lines. “Was the judge right to take away Tom’s girls?” was the loaded question. The “jury” had only heard the prosecution, of course. The defence had not been allowed to say a word.

By Monday (September 12th) — suitably charged up by this emotionally slanted and utterly one-sided piece — 34,000 readers had responded. 26,303 of them said “the judge was wrong to force a dad to hand over his daughters to a lesbian mum and her lover”.

Just another piece of lucrative tabloid gay-bashing you may think (I work out that Mr Murdoch made at least £2,000 from the premium-rate telephone calls). But The Sun’s phone-in actually encouraged 26,303 people to be actively anti-gay. Homosexuality was probably a matter of indifference to these people, until The Sun encouraged them to take a stand, to make a decision. Now 26,303 positively believe that lesbian mothers are not a good idea and, as we all know, once minds are made up, it is difficult to change them. If they had been given the whole story, heard all the evidence, it might have been a different matter. That is why The Sun and its insidious and continuous gay-bashing are so dangerous.

This inflaming of anti-gay feeling and the encouragement to act on those feelings is very dangerous. Far from being harmless irritants, the tabloids are cleverly undoing much of the bridge-building work that gay people have done with their straight friends and families.

***

The pretty hacks have been at it again. This time The Sun’s hunky tempters teamed up with a scuzzy male prostitute calling himself Jason. Jason has convictions for theft and grievous bodily harm, but — thank the Lord — he says he is not homosexual. Acting on a tip-off from Jason, handsome reporters Guy Patrick and Alistair Taylor, homed in on a circuit judge in a Durham hotel room.

Jason introduced Guy Patrick to the judge as another rent boy, and then the two of them commenced provoking His Honour into being indiscreet (as you would be when dealing with a possible sexual partner). The judge’s comments were recorded with the help of hidden tape recorders and then faithfully and humiliatingly reproduced on the front page of The Sun (September 24th).

Jason, Guy and Alistair — what a crew! — walked away with a handsome pay-off from Mr Murdoch and the judge found his job on the line after the Lord Chancellor ordered an enquiry into the matter.

Following this up, The Sunday Telegraph (September 25th) quoted one of the judge’s colleagues, who said of him: “He is one of the kindest, most generous, nicest people I have ever met. As a barrister he is efficient and good at his job. I can’t speak too highly of him. Everyone knows about his sexuality, but he never allows it to interfere with his judgement, his professional life or his relationship with his friends. Knowing him, he will take this publicity very badly.”

As an example of his generosity, the Judge had lent Jason £500 to pay compensation to a man he had beaten up. The way a sneaking rat like Jason repays such kindness is to sell his benefactor down the river. And yet even Jason must feel he’s in bad company when mixing with Scum journalists like Guy Patrick and Alistair Taylor.

That didn’t stop The Sun editorialising: “A man who pays for homosexual sex, consorts with criminals and revels in hard-porn videos lays himself open to blackmail. (He) is unfit to sit in judgement of others. Not to put too fine a point on it: he’s a bloody disgrace.”

What we have to hope is that the Lord Chancellor will make good his promise that homosexuality in itself is no bar to being appointed a judge. It should be a signal to the Murdoch press that the real disgrace in this episode lies with their disgusting policy of paying criminals to help them ruin the lives of useful citizens.

***

The following day The News of the World made the earth-shattering revelation that 26 years ago the new Bishop of Durham, Michael Turnbull, had “committed an act of gross indecency” in a public lavatory.

This piece of edifying information had been unearthed by a reporter by the name of Chris Blythe. Mr Blythe has a long pedigree of “outing” clergymen. In fact he’s persecuted more Christians than a Roman emperor. As long ago as 1989 he was posing as “a friend and admirer” of some aged clergyman, getting him to fantasise about naked boys at the beach while secretly taping the conversation. (“Evil fantasies of the Kinky Canon” — NoW, June 4th 1989). Chris Blythe’s by-line has appeared under several similar headlines since then.

But the Turnbull case raises some interesting issues. Given that he has spoken out against homosexuality among the clergy (following the party line) are we really sorry that he was “outed” by the press? After all, even those who oppose outing as a general rule say they will make exceptions in the case of hypocrites who condemn gays with one hand and shove their todgers through glory holes with the other.

“The Murdoch press voice an undiscriminating contempt for homosexuality that is still widespread,” said The Church Times (September 30th) on page 10, while on page 18 it averred that Murdoch’s rags “felt easier condemning hypocrisy than homosexuality”. Confusion obviously reigns at The Church Times as it does throughout the rest of the C of E.

Then there’s the issue of his sexuality. Turnbull swears on a stack of Bibles that he isn’t homosexual. But, as The Guardian (September 28th) asked, “What is a homosexual? Who decides?” As the paper says, the whole issue is “bedevilled by confusion, sexual politics, bigotry, fear and outright fibbing.”

But Guardian reporter Tim Radford himself seems confused by “self-declared celibates who rather bafflingly also describe themselves as homosexuals”. I don’t think he would be similarly puzzled by heterosexual celibates such as Cliff Richard (now that really has clouded the issue).

As double-talk collides with hypocrisy, it will be interesting to see how this affair affects the debate on gay clergymen within the Church of England. It seems that the Bishop of Durham can frequent a cottage, then repent and be forgiven (and subsequently be elevated to the fourth most senior position in the Church), while other clergymen don’t fare so well. One such wrote to The Guardian (September 30th) telling that “after a similar incident, I was forced to resign my living, lost my home, and was told ‘really there is no place in the church for someone who has done what you have done.” He says that he has lived with the shame and hurt for many years, but now feels nothing but contempt for a church that can apparently pick and choose who it forgives.

Come on Archbishop of Cant. Get this sorted out.

***

The Sunday Telegraph (September 25th) carried a letter from Stephen Misander which sought to “correct the impression often given of The Sunday Telegraph as unsympathetic to the concerns of gay men”. Mr Misander said that “the photographs of sportsmen in your pages are by far the most erotic published, and give great comfort, especially to elderly gay men — retired officers and the like — who are unable to ‘come out’ in the way of their younger brethren and must therefore rely on ordinary family newspapers like your own for a little light entertainment of that kind.”

Quickly turning to the sports section, which I generally cast aside without a glance, I saw what Mr Misander meant. There were certainly plenty of photographs of footballers in “action”, leaping in the air, rolling together on the ground and generally contorting themselves so as to cause distress to their shorts at both front and back. Intimate fondling and kissing, as well as legs being wrapped around each other were also evident.

The following week, the fogeys responded, as I suspect they were meant to. PHW Rayner of Birmingham wrote: “If I seriously thought that the editor of The Sunday Telegraph chose sports illustrations on the basis of the `gay thrill factor’, I would immediately tell my newsagent that I had decided to ‘come out’ and into another Sunday newspaper.”

We should not forget, of course, that The Sunday Telegraph’s correspondence column was once the medium of expression chosen by that other great letter writer, Mrs Edna Welthorpe —endlessly outraged alter ego of Joe Orton.

***

Theatre critics on the national press are at each other’s throats about the number of gay plays presently adorning the London stage. The Daily Telegraph’s Charles Spencer complained of a “flood” of homosexually-themed plays which he said were deliberately written to make heterosexuals feel “uncomfortable, if not downright unwelcome”. Milton Schulman supported this stand in the London Evening Standard. The headline over his piece (“Stop the plague of pink plays”) said it all.

The only known gay critic in captivity, Nicholas de Jongh, also of The London Evening Standard, was quick to contradict the idea that the West End had been “taken over” by queer carryings on. The vast majority of plays explored heterosexual relationships, he said, and anyway, “the theatre works best and most powerfully as a mirror to the entire spectrum of humanity, not as an old-fashioned suburban net curtain.”

Of course, it’s sheer coincidence that so many gay-themed shows have arrived at once. No conspiracy is involved. My only complaint is that so many of them are crap. It’s a long time since I cringed with embarrassment in a theatre, but I certainly did at a performance of Jonathan Harvey’s Babies at the Royal Court.

I may be siding with the gay playwrights, but please — give us quality not quantity.

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=

Piers Morgan, the 29-year old editor of The News of the World, was asked in an interview (The Spectator, October 15th) how he justified running sex-scandal stories that ruined people’s lives. He replied: “My ultimate defence of these stories is that they are one hundred per cent true. I don’t make moral judgements.”

Is that so? Well, let’s have a look at one of Mr Morgan’s “100 per cent true” stories. It concerns three ageing vicars who were heartlessly set up by a couple of supposed rent boys at the behest of The News of the World. This, the paper rather disingenuously described as “investigative journalism”, although the only investigation required seems to have been to find the appropriate cheque book.

“We snare vicars in gay vice ring” screeched the headline (October 30th) over the story which had been brought to The NoW by two pathetic young men of dubious morals — Simon Vallard and his lover Kingsley Graves. Fancifully described as “£500-a-night rent boys”, the two men “opened their address book to News of the World reporters” — for a fee so far undisclosed. The whole piece is based on the uncorroborated evidence of this treacherous pair, who took kindness and friendship from the clergymen and then used it as a money-making scam.

The first question left hanging by The NoW is how vicars, on £12,000 a year, are supposed to be able to afford the services of £500-a-night rentboys.

Simon Vallard claims in The NoW that one of the vicars named in the piece, Canon David Haslam, “liked me so much that I ended up staying at the vicarage for a week.” But Mr Mark Porterfield, a friend of Canon Haslam, told Gay Times that Vallard and his boyfriend Graves had been friendly with the vicar for some considerable time and had been accommodated at the vicarage by Canon Haslam for over a year until they became “a damned nuisance and wouldn’t move out”.

He also believes that The News of the World provided the two men with an expensive camera in order to get “incriminating” photographs of the clergymen. Certainly the article was decorated with pictures of a high quality and low cunning — they certainly weren’t taken with an Instamatic.

At present Canon Haslam is suspended, awaiting an investigation by Church authorities. He has received death threats and his car has been decorated with such messages as “Fuck off, you faggot bastard.” All the same, he says he forgives Vallard and Graves for what they have done.

It’s a sorry tale of lonely men being exploited, first by mercenary little rats who I’m ashamed to share a sexuality with, and then by a ruthless money-grabbing scandal-sheet that justifies its exploitation with the dubious claims of “truth”.

This story — like so many in the past — has been brought to you by Mazher Mahmood, the so-called “chief investigative reporter” of The News of the World. Regular readers will recognise Mr Mahmood’s name. This is the man who takes the easy option, outing defenceless clergymen (most of them on the verge of retirement after decades of selfless service) on the say-so of greedy youths, and then justifying his copy with sickeningly self-righteous phrases like “In secret these ‘men of God’ are perverts who lust after young boys.” Vallard, by the way, is 29, Graves is 22 and so is another man emotively described by the paper as “a college lad”. No one involved in the story could be described as “a boy” or even a “youth”. Everyone involved is over the age of consent. [Note: Mazher Mahmood was jailed for 15 months in 2016 for perverting the course of justice while carrying out one of his so-called “exposés”.]

The Church of England is, of course, also in the dock over this. Its ridiculous policy towards its gay clergy actively promotes the isolation of these men and makes them vulnerable to this kind of nasty abuse.

Attitudes are changing, but the Church is not keeping pace. Andrew Brown, writing in The Times about the Bishop of Durham, said: “Before the storm, the lives of gay clergy were to a surprising extent shrouded by camp and ambiguity (within which) they were able to lead useful and productive lives, with their natures quietly acknowledged by their bishops.” In other words, it was OK to be a gay vicar so long as you were dishonest about it. This is no good. If they were allowed to live openly and with dignity there would be less scope for The News of the World to inflict such cruelty on the Church’s “good and faithful servants”.

But then, perhaps Piers Morgan has secretly set himself the Higtonian task of ridding the Church of all “unrepentant” homosexuals. Or perhaps he just sees these vulnerable old men as an easy way to line his pockets.

As Jacqueline Tratt wrote in The Guardian’s Face to Faith feature (October 29th): “The Church’s preoccupation with sexual matters at the expense of more important issues is a historical perversity. Self-appointed sexual arbiters have too easily hijacked the term ‘morality’ that should encompass the whole range of people’s relationships one with another — political, economic and social as well as emotional, personal and sexual… The Church needs to point out that morality is not synonymous with sexual conformity. Then it should get out of people’s bedrooms and into the market place where the real corruption of souls takes place.”

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Before leaving the hypocritical environs of the Church of England, it should be recorded that Sebastian Sandys, an ex-Franciscan friar and now a Sister of Perpetual Indulgence, managed to effect the first successful gay-inspired “outing” in Britain. On the day before the Bishop of Durham was enthroned (and wasn’t the frock lovely?), Mr Sandys named three clergymen at a debate at Durham University union. Reports of this “outing” were carried in several papers, but only The Guardian and The News of the World printed the names. Given the amount of hysteria which is usually generated at the prospect of gay people doing the “outing” (“a cruel witch hunt”, “dreadful invasion of privacy” etc.) this first successful one passed unremarked by the commentators who are usually so anxious to make a fuss. Perhaps they’ve realised: outing can’t work without the collusion of the media which purports to condemn it. Whether Mr Sandys’ outings were any more justifiable than those of The News of the World is a matter for debate.

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What does the British public really think about gay people? Has our agitation and demand for justice over the past few years made any dent in their celebrated homophobia? Perhaps for the answer we should steer clear of opinion polls and start looking instead at Fleet Street. After all, if Francis Williams, a Fleet Street tycoon of old, was correct when he said that “newspapers indicate more plainly than anything else the climates of the societies to which they belong” then our daily papers should act as a barometer of public opinion.

So, let’s see the kind of story that newspapers have been carrying about us and the kind of comment they’ve been making.

A survey by the Health Education Authority (reported in The Times, November 1st) showed that “Schools should teach children about sex but should be wary of tackling homosexuality too early.” The report revealed that a quarter of parents believed that “lessons on homosexuality” should only be given to pupils aged 16 and over. “Seven in ten said they would not withdraw children from sex education classes but one in eight said they might if they included ‘sexual preferences’ or matters they considered Inappropriate’.”

On that front, it seems that those of a Section 28 frame of mind still hold sway.

The other great wall of bigotry surrounds the issue of adoption and fostering. The Guardian reported (October 28th) that The Children’s Society is operating a policy “which prohibits homosexuals from acting as foster carers”. The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement condemned the Children’s Society, but Teletext asked its viewers to ring in to say yes or no to the question “Was the Children’s Society right to ban gay foster carers?” It received 2,047 calls of which 73 per cent said yes, the ban was right.

Oh dear — a lot (and I mean a very great deal) of work is still needed in that field.

As we’ve already seen, the Bishop of Durham’s sexual activity, if not his sexuality, provoked a great deal of comment last month. Pundits had a field day with it. Philip Crowe of The Times (October 22nd) made the point that if Michael Turnbull had divorced and married again, he could not have become a Bishop, but the fact that he was once “grossly indecent” in a public lavatory meant that he could be completely forgiven and rehabilitated.

Peter Tatchell will be gratified to learn that Fiona Webster, a columnist on The Daily Star (October 27th) nominated him her “man of the week” for his now famous sprint across the cathedral grounds. “The reason young people are turning away from the Church,” she says, “is not because there might be gays in its ranks. It’s because the Church’s hierarchy preaches one thing and practises another. And to anyone not too blinded by their own self-importance, that’s hypocrisy.” I think we can say that satisfactory progress is being made on that front.

Nevertheless, we’re making progress with the Labour Party, aren’t we? That nice Mr Blair even went so far as to take his clingy little wife, Cherie, to the Stonewall Equality Show at the Albert Hall. Not that he escaped without criticism. Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s ex- propagandist and now an even more miserable old bastard, wrote in The Daily Mail (October 27th): “If Mr Blair is seeking to establish a new image for the Labour Party he would do better than to associate with perverted exhibitionists who have nothing in common with its solid, decent bed-rock.”

More intelligent journalists, however, are struggling to overcome their own personal homophobic demons, a task in which they should be encouraged. The help of those in the media — both print and broadcast — is, unfortunately, essential in our push for justice. But for many of them, as for the country at large, it is a long, hard struggle.

For instance, interviewing Holly Johnson for The Daily Telegraph (October 31st), Martyn Harris was trying hard to shake off the standard journalistic approach that it is wrong to feel sympathy for people with HIV and Aids. Despite himself, he still harbours the “they’ve brought it on themselves” kind of attitude which makes Holly Johnson “in many respects, a nightmare figure to the respectable, middle-class reader of this paper.” Before he even arrived at the interview he was coaching himself “to be casual about the handshake, the shared bottle of wine, even the air-kiss. You know perfectly well there is no way you’ll get Aids from a speck of spit, but it’s never absolutely 100 per cent certain, is it? I mean, these doctors can be wrong…” Finally, Mr Harris ends up liking Holly Johnson and feeling mean about his prejudice.

Meanwhile, over in The Observer (October 30th), another heterosexual, Column McCann, was recalling rather sweetly “the first time he saw two men kiss”. It happened in New Orleans where he was befriended by a gay couple who gave him a job and a home. Mr McCann now feels vaguely ashamed of the lurid fantasies he conjured up about the two men’s life together. He had convinced himself that they led an alien existence, completely removed from his own. Despite their kindness to him — and all the evidence to the contrary — he still suspected that out of sight they were living a life of unspeakable sexual depravity. Only after he came to know them well did he realise that “in truth [theirs] was a very prosaic and loving and uneventful world… no different from mine” and that he had created “a stereotype of them from my own fear”. He has since returned to New Orleans to try to locate his two friends and share his new understanding, but sadly they are no longer to be found. Mr McCann, though, is grateful for the profound favour they did him. They ridded him of his homophobia.

If only more heterosexual men — journalists and non-journalists —could make that leap from fantasy to reality, the world would be a happier place for us all.

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=

“Just how widespread is homosexuality in the priesthood?” wondered John Junor in The Mail on Sunday. Given the to-do we’ve had about `pervy priests’ over the past few weeks it’s a legitimate question.

It depends, of course, where you look for evidence. According to Mr John Root, in a letter to the Church of England Newspaper (November 18 1994) the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement (LGCM) once told Time magazine that 30 per cent of C of E clergy were gay. However, he says: “by the recent ‘Heart of the Matter’ programme the proportion had dropped to 20 per cent. Somewhat similarly a LGCM leaflet said that 10 per cent of the population was homosexual.” The letter-writer wants to know how LGCM came to the conclusion that 20 per cent of vicars are gay, “is it propaganda masquerading as fact?” he asks.

It’s a difficult issue, but if the outing of clergy in both Catholic and Anglican churches continues at the present rate, we should soon have the definitive answer. There won’t be a single priest, vicar, canon or bishop left in hiding.

First we had Father Liam Cosgrave who popped his clogs in a Dublin gay sauna. Two other priests who were enjoying the facilities at the same time administered the last rites. The owner of the sauna informed the press that he had at least twenty priests on his membership list.

Then, The News of the World’s hard-working “investigative reporter”, Mazher Mahmood, opened his cheque book to yet another rent boy (“burly six-footer, Dave” — a “young boy”, according to Mahmood, of only 26!). Dave obliged by “outing” Father Gerard Cobham, of Liverpool (November 13th).

The following week Mr Mahmood was gleefully telling readers that one of his previous victims, Canon David Haslam (see last month’s Mediawatch), has had his licence to officiate at services suspended (“Gay canon fired over rent boys”).

But it took OutRage!’s outing of ten bishops to really make the establishment’s arse tighten. “Homosexual terrorism,” fulminated The Daily Telegraph (December 1st), condemning the gay group’s “pernicious tactic” of naming closet cases.

The Guardian also thought that OutRage!’s actions were “persecution by another name”. The paper went on to say that the Church is entitled to keep its “traditional position” in condemning homosexuality as sinful. I wonder if it would be arguing the same thing if the church revived its “traditional position” on stoning adulterers or burning witches? (And besides, wasn’t The Guardian one of the two newspapers which published some of the names? Do I detect double-standards?)

What these self-righteous papers don’t understand is that gay people have been on the receiving end of persecution and “pernicious tactics” for centuries. The catalogue of abuse is endless — and not all from the church. Much of it has originated from and been perpetuated within the pages of the press. Such defenders of the closet shouldn’t be surprised when those who cannot, or will not, stay concealed get angry and frustrated at those who remain hidden in order to enjoy privileges that are denied to others. Such closet cases only perpetuate the idea that homosexuality is shameful. How can such dissembling and deceit help young people who want desperately to be honest and open?

The only problem I have with OutRage!’s tactics is that they can’t always confirm that what they say is true. This fact was immediately seized on by The Daily Mail (“Fury as gay militants ‘out’ bishops but say they have no proof”, December 11th). Now The Sunday Times (December 4th) tells us that OutRage! intends to kick down the closet doors of 50 MPs “most of them Tories”. I don’t object to that — except that I don’t think OutRage! knows with any certainty the names of 50 gay MPs. The danger is that if even one of those named is not gay, and they make a fuss about it, the whole outing ploy is immediately discredited. Accusations of witch hunting then become legitimate.

OutRage! must be sure of its facts before employing outing. It is one of the most effective weapons the gay community has ever had, and it would be a shame to lose it through indiscriminate and unjust over-use.

Meanwhile, Richard Ingrams (Observer, December 4th) said that OutRage! had been engaged for some time in a “one-sided war against the Roman Catholic Church”. He said that such attacks were no less than “homofascism”. Oh please! With a fuhrer in the Vatican who could give lessons in iron control to any totalitarian regime, I don’t think the Catholic Church has much to teach us in the way of morality.

Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote in The Independent (November 26th) about the Pope’s “offensive” assertion (in his book ‘Crossing the Threshold of Hope’) that he loves the young. “It is the vocation to love that naturally allows us to draw close to the young,” writes the pontiff. O’Brien says: “This form of words seems to imply that the Pope has altogether forgotten that the complacent institution over which he presides has deliberately covered up for priestly paedophiles, transferring known malefactors of this type from parish to parish, diocese to diocese, and knowingly allowing them to combine paedophilia with their pastoral functions.”

Indeed, in Ireland — where the present paedophile controversy brought down the Government — Catholicism teeters on the brink of losing its traditional vice-like grip. It was unfortunate that the newspapers constantly referred to Father Liam Cosgrave (he of the sauna) in the same sentence as Father Brendan Smyth (the revolting “paedophile priest”). Both cases were presented in the British press as “scandals” of equal magnitude, but that was not, according to Beatrix Campbell (Independent, November 22nd) the way the Irish saw it “People knew the difference between Fr Smith and Fr Cosgrave. The paedophile priest had committed crimes against children. The gay priest had committed no crime…. The funeral of the gay priest was attended by hundreds. Mass was said by his bishop. He was much loved.”

Ms Campbell says that in their grief people were feeling that it was “not OK that he should go to a sauna secretly and die secretly.” She feels that the British can hardly even understand this. “The English no longer know what matters. One sex scandal is the same as another. English sexual politics is about reputations, not about what is going on between men, women and children.”

This may be looking at life through slightly rose-tinted glasses. John Lyttle (Independent, November 23rd) went to Dublin to find out what gay life is really like since the law was reformed. He finds optimism, but Dublin isn’t the same as the rural backwaters, as calls to the gay switchboard illustrate. Susie Byrne, one of the volunteers says she has just spent time “mopping up a young couple who attempted suicide. They thought their parents would never accept them.”

When OutRage! released inflated condoms into Westminster Cathedral during a Mass, its actions supposedly “offended” Catholics. “A church is not the appropriate place for such a demonstration, especially when it is being used by people who want to pray,” said Fr. George Stack in The London Evening Standard (November 28th). I hope those same praying individuals will contemplate the meaning of the protest. Pope John Paul’s unyielding opposition to condoms is evil in the extreme. It is costing the lives of innocent people through Aids. It is causing overpopulation in countries that are already starving. There is no justification for it, and if members of OutRage! can kick the Church out of its inhumane complacency, then I wish them well in their efforts.

It seems that the love affair between the newspapers and Sir Ian McKellen is over. Since he stood on an Edinburgh stage and tore a page out of the Bible which referred to homosexuality as “an abomination”, he has been relegated to the Tatchellian status of “fanatic” and “extremist”.

“Sir Ian does the gay cause more harm than good by such petulant protests,” advised John Smith of The People (December 4th). “Homosexuals have a valid point to make about all kinds of discriminatory issues. But they will make little progress if, like Sir Ian, they continue to come across as a bunch of precious poofs.”

We are not fooled by Mr Smith’s cod concern for our welfare. We know from a thousand previous comments how profoundly he hates us.

Readers of The Daily Mail are less mealy-mouthed about their contempt for gay people. “Sir Ian McKellen will need to tear more than Leviticus 18:22 from the Bible if he wants to deny people God’s view on homosexuality. They can still turn to Genesis 19, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:18-32 and 1 Corinthians 6:9-11”, wrote Mr Lancaster of Bristol. Mr Hanks of Herts says: “Seeing Sir Ian McKellen publicly ripping a page from the Bible and urging other people to do the same made me want to ask him if he would have the courage to do the same to the Koran.”

Well, I’d like to ask Mr Hanks if he’d approve of Sir Ian being driven into hiding under threat of death by Christian fundamentalists? Is that what he’s advocating?

Dominic Lawson in The Daily Telegraph (December 3rd) asks where it will all end. “What will the Spastics Society, for instance, make of this from Leviticus 21 xvi? ‘No one of your offspring throughout their generations who has a blemish may approach to offer the food of his God. For no-one who has a blemish shall draw near, one who is blind or lame, or one who has a mutilated face or a limb too long, or one who has a broken foot or a broken hand, or a hunchback, or a dwarf, or a man with a blemish in his eyes or an itching disease or scabs or crushed testicles…that he may not profane my sanctuaries.”

Amazing which parts of the Bible Christians can gloss over as being “inappropriate” and which parts they feel they must protect as “traditional”.

Sir Ian says that he always rips the offending page out of Gideon bibles he finds in hotel rooms and suggests we all follow suit. But why stop at one page? Why not rip up the whole thing, together with the hymn book, catechism, Church Times, Catholic Herald and War Cry? I certainly do.

Book burners! Fascists! Abominations! cry the Christians. They can certainly dish out the abuse, but they can’t take it.

Clifford Longley, for example, in The Daily Telegraph (December 2nd) began his article with a quotation from an unidentified “male homosexual”. “Most of my friends are people I first picked up and had sex with, and we liked one another. Most gay couples have to make some kind of decision about sex after a while. … He was going to work on the subway and getting offers and I go to work in Manhattan and I get offers, and you get tired of saying no all the time. So, we trick out, as we say, without guilt.”

Mr Longley says: “This is the voice of real homosexuality” before going on to say that the Church should not feel guilty about keeping up its restrictions on gay relationships. But like all propagandists, Mr Longley’s argument depends as much on what he leaves out as what he puts in. Who is supposed to have said the words he quotes? No indication. How does he know that this is “the real voice of homosexuality” and not just the voice of an individual homosexual?

Using the same technique of selective quotation, perhaps we have to turn to The Sunday Telegraph to find the “real truth” about Christianity. In its December 4th issue, the paper told of an Anglican minister, the Rev Andrew Arbuthnot, who practises a “healing ministry” for those who have been’ sexually abused. The “laying on of hands” takes on a whole new meaning, as Mr Arbuthnot is required to “lay his hands” on the genitals of the people he is healing. Not only that but he is required to insert his fingers in order to make the sign of the cross.

Mr Arbuthnot is under investigation, but claims he only did it out of Christian duty.

Funny old world, innit?

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=

We are told (Independent, January 7th) that Tony Blair has been dining with Rupert Murdoch, with a view to the Murdoch press supporting the new, “improved” Labour Party. This development should not make us run away with the idea that Murdoch has suddenly embraced socialism. Not at all. If Murdoch gives Blair support he will want something in return — like no new cross-media ownership rules that might interfere with the onward march of News International. And if, come the election, there is any sign that the Conservative Party’s fortunes are reviving, Mr Murdoch will dump Mr Blair like he dumps everybody who fails to line his pockets or further his interests.

What, you might ask, has this got to do with the representation of homosexuality in the media?

Well, while Mr Murdoch may be regarded as unpredictable in his political loyalties, other media tycoons are not. Their loyalty has been, and always will be, to the Conservative Party. As Lord Stevens, Chairman of United Newspapers, publishers of The Daily Express, Sunday Express and Star has said: “I think it would be very unlikely that I would have a newspaper that would support the socialist party. That isn’t what some people call press freedom, but why should I want a product I didn’t approve of? I believe it is in the best interests of United Newspapers in terms of profits and shareholders to support the Conservatives.”

The middle-market, true blue Express and Mail have realised that their natural ally, the Conservative Party, is in deep trouble. Having indulged themselves in a little bit of Tory bashing over the past year, when there was not an election in sight, they now see that it has got to stop. They have to return to the loyal Tory fold. Any honeymoon that might have been enjoyed by Bambi Blair is now over and he is under heavy fire from the Fleet Street propaganda battalions. Nothing that he or any of his colleagues do or say will any longer be taken at face value. Mr Blair is finding out just how nasty and dishonest the press can be when it sees the Conservative Party teetering on the brink of destruction.

Not only that, but the price war is beginning to bite in a big way. The papers know that one way to attract and hold on to readers is to get tough, swing to the right, provide simple solutions to complicated problems. Anyone reading the Tory press over the past month would have been left in no doubt that they’re all trying to out-tough each other. Tabloid machismo is back in fashion.

And it is not just in the arena of politics, but also in social policy that the papers are getting increasingly reactionary. The Daily Express and The Daily Mail are full of fifties-style photographs of idealised family groups. You’ve seen them — dad, mum, and the kids sitting round the fire, dad smoking his pipe, mum doing her sewing — everyone in their rightful place and all is well with the world. In this fantasy world there is no room for you-know-what.

On December 24th The Daily Mail even treated us to a gruesome group photograph of the Jakobovits family. It decorated an extended interview with Lord Jakobovits, the ex-Chief Rabbi and proponent of the genetic annihilation of gays. The title of the piece, “Why we must all fight to rescue the family”, should have been warning enough of the reactionary stuff to come. For who is the prime enemy of the family? You’ve guessed it.

Lynda Lee-Potter, who was conducting the interview wrote: “His trenchant view that homosexual behaviour is always wrong has made him the victim of abusive attacks and hatred, but he is unrelenting.” She quotes Jakobovits as saying: “I have every sympathy but I cannot condone it. The urge I can understand, but to give in, to perform marriage ceremonies between males, or between females is horrendous. It debases the sanctity of life in every way. I think that the act itself should be regarded as illegal in the same way as incest is illegal. The state has legislated on incest and I would like the same attitude to homosexual acts. It is just as much an affront… It’s a perversion. It’s also a violation of nature and a violation of the natural law and the moral law. Moreover it frustrates the whole meaning of marriage. I think the majority of citizens still feel a sense of outrage over this.”

Meanwhile, in The Daily Express (December 22nd), Bernard Ingham, Mrs Thatcher’s ex-propagandist, who has a face as sour as his opinions, wrote: “Homosexuals are still a minority. At most they probably number no more than one in 100, which is still too many.”

Then came the first of two controversies over gay kisses on TV. The BBC’s children’s programme Byker Grove featured one boy, Noddy, giving another, Gary, a peck on the cheek. It lasted one quarter of a second. The Sun (December 15th) said — as it usually does in times of national crisis — that “protests from parents jammed BBC switchboards”. Mary Whitehouse was pulled out of her dotage to screech, “They should not touch this issue on a children’s programme.” In an editorial, the paper said that the BBC was “defiling teatime” by showing the kiss and giving “kids as young as five the impression that homosexuality is normal or something they should try.”

The Daily Mail invited greasy Tory MP Harry Greenway to say “disgraceful” and then followed up with other dimwits like Nicholas Winterton and Stephen Green venting their homophobic spleens in the most extreme fashion.

Over in The Sunday Express, Brian Hitchen — who considers himself the ultimate macho journalist — wrote: “What will happen next? Normal Gary could give naughty Noddy a whack in the mouth. But don’t hold your breath. This is the BBC we’re talking about. They don’t have people like me writing the scripts.” Are we to understand from this that Mr Hitchen would approve of a 15-year-old boy being smashed in the face because he happened to be gay? Would Big Brian like to do it himself?

The Sunday Express’s new female columnist, Janie Allan (who is basically Hitchen in drag) was writing about “why Britain has gone wrong” — a favourite theme of right-wing ratbags. Ms Allan’s rather predictable conclusion is that our present state of decay has been brought about because we are no longer a Christian nation. She says. “Today, awash with misguided liberal compassion, Britain seems to regard the Ten Commandments as the Ten Suggestions.” She says that it is fashionable to “defy God openly” and cites the case of “Sir (Lady?) Ian McKellen, honoured by a Monarch who is Defender of the Faith, [who] encourages everyone to rip pages out of the book of Leviticus which refer to the sin of homosexuality. The sad Sir Ian knows he has nothing to fear from the Defender of the Faith.”

In the hands of these ranting journos, Christianity becomes just like a branch of the Nazi Party.

There was also a spate of “children must be protected from gays” stories.

The Daily Mail (December 12th) reported that “Mother wins a ban on gay propaganda” and claimed that a woman in Shropshire had obtained an injunction stopping youth workers from contacting her son, aged 15, because she says they are trying to “influence” him into a homosexual lifestyle.

Although this purported to be a straightforward news story (can there be such a thing in The Daily Mail?), the paper said: “The mother’s battle reflects widespread fears that, following the lowering of the age of consent to 18, immature youngsters are increasingly being pressurised to accept themselves as homosexual.” Is that news reporting, or is that opinion masquerading as fact? Where is the evidence for this supposed “widespread concern” (and concern within a tiny minority of loony MPs and religious bigots does not count as “widespread”.)

The story was expanded by The Sunday Telegraph (December 18th) which headed its version: “My boy was lured away by gays and youth workers”. The story began with an interview with the boy’s mother who is trying to convince herself that her son isn’t gay — never mind what he thinks about it! She says, “I have always made it clear that I thought homosexuality on television was disgusting. And I have always told my son that he should respect women and only have sex when he really loved a girl.” She says that if he is heterosexual “all well and good” but if he is gay “I don’t know how I’ll face up to it.” This is obviously a woman with a big problem about sexuality. The court should have been issuing injunctions to protect the boy against her.

On December 22nd, The Daily Express told us that social workers at Islington Council “sent a 14-year-old boy in their care to a gay group” which turned out to be Hackney Outreach Project, described as “a confidential environment for gay young people with counselling for sexuality, Aids and equal opportunities”. The boy also apparently visited a West End night-club in drag and returned to the children’s home with unexplained cash.

The message from these stories was clear — gays are trying to “recruit” children through support, counselling and information groups. This was most directly put by Valerie Riches of the ludicrously named “Family and Youth Concern” religious group. According to The Sunday Telegraph, she “makes the bitter but logical observation” about homosexuals that “since they can’t procreate they have to proselytise”.

Having lost the argument during the age of consent debate, the religious right has now come up with this new line of attack. It is sinister and worrying, and it could herald a new campaign to defame and undermine the work of gay groups offering support to young people. This is an area we need to keep an eye on.

The Daily Express (December 17th) gave space for the certifiable bigot, Terry Dicks MP, to say “Don’t help Aids victims”. He was referring to the handing out of National Lottery money to charities and demanding that none should go to Aids research or education groups. Mr Dicks, I understand, considers himself to be a good Christian.

Then came the second “gay kiss” brouhaha, this time a lesbian smacker on Brookside. “Steamiest lesbian shots hot up soap” declared The Daily Express, while the Mail said: “Brookside flirts with new storm of protest as Beth meets her latest, and most passionate lesbian lover.”

There was a rather different reaction to this kiss, though. No one said that they felt sick when they saw it (even though Channel 4 caved in and excised the scene from the Saturday afternoon omnibus edition). This might be explained by a remark made by a Brookside spokesperson who made the point that the kiss was “so hot and sexy that it will appeal to both men and women”. For let us not forget that lesbianism is a big turn-on for straight men. (Indeed, on January 8th, The News of the World told us of a Government minister, Gerry Malone, spending an hour watching a “lesbian sex show” in which “naked girls played sex games with whipped cream”.)

Perhaps Brookside’s gay story-line is not quite as politically correct as it seems. Maybe, after all, it is not there to increase understanding, or for lesbians to identify with, but for straight men to get off on. Could it have been a coincidence that a large photograph of the kiss appeared on page three of The Sun, in a space traditionally reserved for straight male wank-fodder?

The Daily Mail (January 3rd) then tracked down the Romanian soldier who is claiming political asylum in Britain on the grounds that he is gay. The reporter found that 25-year-old Ioan Vraciu had “centrefolds of naked girls” decorating the walls of his bedsit. When questioned about this, the young man said that they were there as a cover for visiting friends who didn’t know he was gay. The Daily Mail’s reporter had clearly concluded that Vraciu is not gay. The other inescapable conclusion was that The Daily Mail didn’t think he should be in this country at all, whether he is gay, straight or hermaphrodite. In its opinion, no foreigner should be here “sponging” off the state — even if being sent back means he’ll have his throat cut. Remember, righteous right-wing “Christians” don’t believe in “compassion” — particularly if it costs them money.

A story in The Daily Telegraph (December 27th) headed “Bleak outlook for the gay community” summed up the situation wonderfully. The fact that it was referring to the situation in Romania seemed irrelevant.

All in all, it was a depressing month in the papers, and I fear that as the political battle hots up we are going to see homosexuality increasingly used as an instrument for cranking the country further to the right. How much further right can the Mail and Express go, you might ask, short of putting swastikas on their masthead?

Watch this space and you’ll see.

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 Nicholas de Jongh, theatre critic of The London Evening Standard, who kept the “outing” pot boiling this month, with a revelation that was deeply satisfying to those of us who want vengeance on the hypocrites who hurt innocent gay people.

The subject of the outing, John Osborne, the playwright, was, unfortunately, dead and so could not be made to squirm for his sins. Immediately after Osborne popped it, de Jongh observed that the playwright’s homophobia was so vicious and spiteful that it probably represented a classic case of repressed homosexuality. One of Mr de Jongh’s columnist colleagues on The Standard immediately objected to the theory. She said it was unfair to assume that those who voiced strong anti-homosexual sentiments were hiding their own gay feelings. Any denial, she said, just seemed to reinforce the accusation. Undaunted by this criticism, Nicholas tracked down Anthony Creighton, an actor who claimed to have been Osborne’s lover for many years, both before and during his first two marriages. The subsequent interview occupied two pages in The Standard (January 24th) and contained documentary evidence of Osborne’s abiding love for “Mouse” (as he nicknamed the diminutive Creighton).

Here we have John Osborne, the man who had written so extensively and contemptuously about “fairies” and “poofs” turning out to be one himself. The anti-gay lobby in the press must be quaking in their boots at the thought of which other of their cronies might be carrying an invisible closet on their back. It also gave the opportunity for Osborne’s enemies to get back at him. “Johnnie was an actor with a big chip on his shoulder, who could turn a few fine phrases. And he knew a good act when he found it. Bless him. But angry? Butch? Forget it dears. He was just a silly old tart,” wrote Peter Tory in The Daily Express (January 21st).

Lynda Lee-Potter in The Daily Mail (January 27th) rushed to interview Osborne’s last wife, Helen, who told touching tales of the playwright’s final years and exclaimed of the Creighton claims: “It’s absolute tosh. There’s no truth in it whatsoever. He was not John’s lover and hadn’t seen John for more than 30 years. He’s just a pathetic old man.”

Petronella Wyatt, writing in The Sunday Telegraph (January 29th) had the answer to that one: “Miss Lane seems to think that a homosexual affair is like a heterosexual one. Or at least that it is as easy to tell when your husband is having sex with a man as it is when he is having sex with another woman. But that cannot be the case, even when the wife and the husband and the `other man’ are living in close proximity.”

Benedict Nightingale in The Times (January 28th) also found it hard to accept that Osborne was a “nancy boy”, but he said that it was inevitable that his oeuvre would now be “ransacked for give-away hints”. Nightingale said that if Osborne had, in his plays, “translated homosexuality into straight terms” he wouldn’t have been the first to do so. He tells of Terence Rattigan writing The Deep Blue Sea after a former male lover committed suicide. Because of the law and theatrical censorship Rattigan eventually transformed the lover into a judge’s wife in despair at her failing affair with a young pilot. He also comments that Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest is seen as a “camouflaged account of [Wilde’s] own double life” with its telling talk of “Bunburying”. Noel Coward, too, hid camp sensibility in many of his ostensibly heterosexual plays.

Adding to the fun, Tom Lubbock, The Observer’s radio critic, even detected a gay sub-text in One Foot in the Grave. “What puzzles me about this symbol of true-British grumpiness,” he said “and what seems to escape the notice of both the audiences and the other characters, is that Victor Meldrew is surely, obviously, ‘wife’ not withstanding, an outrageous old queen. No?”

Despite the understandable resistance to the news from some quarters, it is generally accepted that Nicholas de Jongh’s initial assessment of Osborne was correct. As Chrissy lley put it in The Sunday Times (January 29th): “Osborne’s prurient fascination with homosexuals, yet outward show of loathing for them, was a classic projection — away from himself, by reviling other people. He found most disturbing in others what he found most disgusting in himself.”

Which brings us to another outing-related topic, that of the Bishop of Portsmouth, one of those named in the OutRage! action last November. The Right Reverend Timothy Bavin has decided to resign his post and join an order of monks. He says, rather unconvincingly, that his decision has nothing to do with his outing. In The Daily Telegraph (January 31st) David Allison of OutRage! is quoted as saying “Instead of deciding to spend more time with his God, it would be far better for the bishop to remain in the Church and help win acceptance for gay clergy. His decision gives comfort to all those who want to drive homosexual clergy out of the church.”

Many of us consider the Bishop’s decision weak and cowardly. It seems even more so when set against the decision of the Reverend Simon Bailey, a young parish priest in Dinnington near Sheffield, who is staying resolutely at his post despite the fact that he is gay and has Aids. He was the subject of a recent Everyman TV programme and his story was also told by his sister, Rosemary, in The Independent on Sunday (January 15th). His decision must have been a hard one, but he says that he was determined not to take the easy way out: “The obvious answer is to resign, so that all the issues would go away. But, of course, they wouldn’t. They remain here and they remain in the church. The church’s reaction is usually to resign and go away. I’d really rather face the issues.”

And in the unlikely setting of a Yorkshire pit village homosexuality and Aids have been brought to the community and, despite expectations, the parishioners have responded admirably. But they responded admirably only because they were not relieved of the obligation to do so. By backing down and running away, Bishop Bavin has let the Anglican homophobes off the hook.

***

Before leaving the issue of outing (which I imagine will flare again quite soon if Peter Tatchell’s threat to “assist” a few MPs from their closet is carried out), we may once more see examples of that strange double standard that the press specialises in. Every newspaper in the land, without exception, condemns outing. “Homosexual terrorism” they call it. “Spiteful witch-hunting” they call it. That’s when OutRage! does it. But what are we to make of the front pages of The Sun and The Daily Mirror (January 19th) which both ran the headline: “Peter Lilley Nephew is Dying of Aids”. Or The People and the News of the World (February 5th) which announced on their front pages “Gay peer dying of Aids”.

Is this not outing par excellence? How come we don’t have thunderingly righteous editorials in The Times about “tabloid terrorism” or The Guardian lecturing us about “persecution by periodical”? Oh, but of course I forgot, when Fleet Street does it, it isn’t outing, it’s “investigative journalism”.

***

The Daily Express (January 17th) published an ICM opinion poll to find out how attitudes to “sex and life” had changed in the years between 1969 and 1995. The same questions were asked this year as were asked 25 years ago. One of them was “How do you feel about people who fall in love with members of their own sex?” In 1969 24% said “revulsion and disgust” while in 1995, 54% said “tolerance”. To the question “Have you ever felt any attraction towards a person of your own sex?” 12% answered yes in 1995, while in 1969 only 2% had answered in the affirmative.

Meanwhile, another ICM poll on a similar topic, this time for The Sunday Mirror (February 5th), revealed that 11% of men and 10% of women “fantasise about making love to a member of the same sex”.

Then The Independent (January 23rd) told us that a Mintel survey had found that “61% of 16-24 year olds feel homosexuality was acceptable compared with 48% in 1989.”

Progress, it seems, is slow but sure.

***

Natalie Wilson and her partner Denise are now probably the most famous lesbian mothers in Britain. For some reason, probably financial, they took the story of their baby (achieved with the help of artificial insemination and a gay male friend) to The Sun. When the baby was born, the paper returned to do a follow up and this was duly published on January 18th. The women appear to have co-operated quite happily with the paper and the report was, in the main, factual.

But if these women thought that by giving their story voluntarily to a tabloid they could somehow keep control of it and preserve their dignity, they were sadly mistaken. “It is a grotesque parody of decent family life,” thundered a Sun editorial over the page from the photograph of the happy couple and their baby Ellesse. “A child cannot flourish emotionally and spiritually in a home where the bedroom is shared by two women (or two men, for that matter). That is not what Nature intended.”

And what of the gay man who provided the sperm that made the whole thing possible? It seems he chose to give his version of the tale to The People. The resulting feature (January 22nd) had a photograph stretched across the front page of “outrageous Silvio Gigante” in full make-up and wearing some kind of dish cloth round his waist. “What a tosser!” was the charming accompanying headline. So, was The People any more sympathetic to this naive trio? “Wherever possible children should have a mother AND a father, which is the family unit nature intended. To come into the world via a yoghurt pot and syringe with the help of a gay man is not natural.”

The Daily Mail (January 18th) chose to emphasise the fact that the women were both out of work and living on benefits (and, presumably, the occasional hand-out from News International). They also brought the Jesus-in-jackboots brigade goose-stepping out to comment. General Synod member Rev David Holloway said: “Some children born this way resent their mother’s lover as they grow up. Others are tempted to turn to homosexuality because of the role models they are given.” (The fact that every study ever conducted into this phenomenon has proved the opposite to be true is of no interest to Holloway or his ilk.)

Mary Kenny, on the other hand (Daily Mail January 23rd) thought that far from causing an affront to “family values”, the women were actually paying them a compliment. By aping the traditional concept of “Just honey and me/ and baby makes three,” Denise and Natalie were demonstrating “an historic rejection of ‘gay values’”. She says: “Today, the trend among self-declared homosexuals… is the yearning to be ordinary, respectable, even suburban — to be seen as ‘normal’ and in so many cases to share in the most acceptable way of everyday family life, complete with children. In that sense, the yearning for ordinariness is part of the rejection of the exotic difference of ‘traditional’ homosexuality.”

You’ve got to give Mary Kenny some credit for her amazing capacity for self-deception. Either that, or her ingenuity in taking the needs of some gay people and presenting them as a total sea-change in homosexuality. Given that her audience (Daily Mail and Sunday Telegraph) is, for the large part, totally ignorant and uninformed about homosexual lifestyles anyway, she is unlikely to be contradicted, however barmy her theories. Ms Kenny is, of course, a fanatical Roman Catholic, and this shines through in everything she writes. It does mean, however, that if the truth doesn’t correspond with her beliefs, then that truth is not true and has to be subjugated. I can’t make my mind up whether she is a ruthlessly clever propagandist or just pathetically deluded.

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=

Ever since right-wing newspapers discovered that they could make easy political capital from lesbian and gay issues, journalists have become skilled at angling stories to fit their agenda. They have been assisted in this by ruthless Tory councillors who comb council minutes looking for instances of Labour’s support for gay rights. Once discovered, these often-trivial matters are fed to the press who then invert, distort and inflate them.

One of the favourite techniques for bashing the Labour Party with the gay cudgel is to suggest that if gay people get a slice of the public pie — however small — then it must inevitably be at the expense of heterosexuals. The latest instance of this came when Avon City Council decided to make a grant of £2,320 to Bristol Young Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Group. “Gays win, Scouts lose” was the baldly stated headline over the story in The Daily Telegraph (March 2nd). Couldn’t be clearer than that, could it? The lesbians were getting money that rightly belonged to the Scouts.

The Daily Mail, which more or less invented this trick, headed its version of the story: “The lesbians cash in — Scouts lose grant as ‘politically correct’ councillors fund a women’s group instead” (March 2nd).

All the ingredients were there. First of all, everything rests on the assumption that the very idea of giving public money to gays is “scandalous”. It then moves on to suggest that gays have somehow stolen the money from the Scouts (which is, of course, a worthy organisation for ‘normal’ people). How did they manage this? Well, with the connivance of “Socialists and their left-wing lackeys — and the Liberal Democrats who support them in a coalition” (this is a direct quote). Another essential element in the scenario is the “outraged Tory councillor”. In this instance it is Mr Michael Roe who says: “The decision shows what a myth it is for people to speak of ‘New Labour’ because when they control the tax-payers’ money, they pursue politically correct ideals”.

So, what’s the truth behind all this? Well, the Scouts have done very well out of Avon Council over the years. Six years ago their grant was £28,000. This has been steadily eroded by what a Labour councillor, Betty Perry, claims are Government cuts. All the same, the amount of money given to the Scouts over the years amounts to hundreds of thousands of pounds. This makes the grant to the lesbian group seem like small beer indeed. I’m not saying that the Scouts are undeserving. It would be good if everyone could get what they need, but it isn’t the Labour Party that capped Avon council’s spending.

No, this story was a clever concoction of mischievous half-truths put together by a local Tory councillor and a journalist with a political agenda. The angle they created for it ruthlessly exploited the lives of lesbians and gay men, with no regard for the possible consequences on them.

And this wasn’t the only example of the if-gays-win-straights-must-lose approach. The Sunday Times (an increasingly despicable rag) told us that “BBC spends £4m on gays and women” (February 19th). The story stated that “the Corporation is set on creating its own politically correct world out of touch with reality” simply because it wants to be fair to women, the disabled and its lesbian and gay employees.

The paper said: “The policies mean that black and disabled people should be represented in every department, lesbian and gay staff are invited to enrol on free self-defence courses and anybody who feels harassed about anything can ring a free helpline.”

How terrible! The BBC actually wants to treat its employees fairly! This is something that The Sunday Times seems incapable of understanding. But, of course, “licence-payers’ money” is being used to finance this “nonsense” and so, once more, homosexuals are portrayed as sponges that soak up heterosexual taxes.

The Sunday Times, of course, is owned by Rupert Murdoch whose own television interests would be greatly enhanced if the BBC didn’t exist. His newspapers let pass no opportunity to defame the Beeb. One has to ask: is this journalism or is it commercial propaganda? The very existence of this story — and many others like it —shows that a once-great newspaper has been reduced to filling its pages with distortion in order to promote its proprietor’s financial interests.

Next up with The Trick was The Mail on Sunday which returned to the gays in the military “scandal” (February 26th). “Forces won’t give in to ‘gays’” was its front-page headline, reviving the habit of placing the word gay in quotation marks. In an editorial the paper said that the idea of homosexuals being allowed to serve openly in the forces was a “threat” that “must be fought”. It quickly got on to the “they’re stealing our money” gambit by saying that if those gay service people who have been unfairly dismissed from the forces were to be compensated, “millions could be paid out to those who knowingly broke quite sensible and long-standing rules designed to uphold military discipline.”

According to The Mail on Sunday, if such people receive reparation: “war widows, crippled service personnel and those who gave unstinting service to their country might feel bitter”. Well, so they might — and some of them might even be gay themselves. But surely anyone with a just cause for compensation should receive it — why should gays be excluded from the fight for justice? The paper then went on to say that if this leads to the legalisation of homosexuality in the armed forces it will “be a triumph for political correctness”.

Finally, The Sun — an old hand at this game — couldn’t let an opportunity pass and told its readers (February 27th): “What a scandal it would be if a penny of tax-payers’ money is handed over to these men. For Queen and Country was never meant to mean that.”

***

On the anniversary of the age of consent debate, Nigel Nelson, The People’s political editor had been retailing the details of a persistent rumour that a Government minister is gay (February 19th). “I gather that the path of true love might not be running smoothly between this minister and his gay lover,” he wrote. “I hear the politician formed a close relationship with an airline steward called Karl last year. So much so that he was prepared to set his fly-boy up in a London flat, a necessary addition to his domestic arrangements as he is supposed to be happily married.”

Mr Nelson says that something seems to have gone wrong in the relationship as the pair haven’t yet “got their pad together”, but he invites Karl to contact him — presumably to provide the scoop of the century.

I don’t know what we are to make of it all, but if you are into conspiracy theories, the minister — whoever he might be — could be little more than the victim of a political plot aimed at destroying his career by rumour-mongering. Whether the rumours are true or not, there is little about this affair to enhance public perceptions of homosexuality.

***

More statistics are emerging that give an insight into attitudes towards lesbians and gay men in this country. The Daily Express ran an excerpt (February 8th) from a new book called “Teenage Religion and Values” which is based on a survey of 15,361 British schoolchildren aged 13-15. It revealed that “Despite the emergence of gay rights and a general increase in tolerance, the young have a conservative attitude towards homosexuality: two in five think it is wrong and just over one in five aren’t sure. Fewer than two in five find it acceptable. Remarks from those we spoke to crossed the range from: ‘It’s disgusting, the idea makes me feel sick’ to ‘It’s all right if they do it out of my sight’.”

Meanwhile, MTV, the satellite youth channel, interviewed 3,000 young people in nine European countries, including the UK, about their attitudes. It was reported in The Independent (February 14th) that: “In some areas, the British were less tolerant than other Europeans. The UK had the lowest percentage (59 per cent) who found homosexuality acceptable, a figure equal to Spain but far lower than every other country.”

One of the reasons the younger generation seems to be inheriting its parents’ hang-ups about sexuality is surely because proper sex education is discouraged. This was well illustrated by the case of biology teacher, Vincent Pedley, who had — during the course of his sex education lessons — discussed oral sex and told pupils that masturbation was normal. He did not deny this but said that his remarks had been taken out of context. For this he was sacked by the governors of the Jewish comprehensive school where he worked. They said that such matters should be “left to religious teachers” (Daily Mail, February 17th).

Mr Pedley subsequently took his case to an industrial tribunal which agreed that he had been unfairly dismissed and awarded him maximum compensation. The tribunal said that the governors and the headmaster were “liars” and had “fabricated” elements of their case against Mr Pedley. Perhaps they need a bit of moral education themselves.

However, this kind of thing is inevitable when children’s education is put into the hands of Holy Joes. Then sex education becomes the one school subject where truth-telling is discouraged.

***

Michelangelo Signorile — the American who is credited with the invention of outing — wrote of the “alarming breakdown of safe sex among gay men” which is indicated by recent research in the USA (Guardian, March 1st). Signorile asks us to make a separation between “political rhetoric” and health education.

He maintains that we must face up to the complex motivations and thought processes that attend decisions about safer sex. When that unadorned cock is probing our arsehole, being well informed about safer sex is no guarantee that we are going to make a responsible choice. Signorile even admits to having had unsafe sex himself quite recently.

Signorile’s main point, however, is that most of the onus for safer sex has, until now, been put upon those who are HIV-negative. The message has been: if you don’t have HIV, then you must take precautions to ensure that you don’t get it. Signorile says that perhaps more emphasis should be put on the responsibilities of those who know they are HIV-positive. He tells of conversations he has had with HIV-positive men who “regularly engage in unprotected sex, rationalising that the other guy is responsible for himself and must know what he’s doing.”

He quotes clinical psychologist Walt Odets as saying: “Many HIV-positive men quite understandably have different ideas and feelings about life and live with different values and objectives from HIV-negative men. Despite what we would like to believe politically, many positive men are not taking responsibility for protecting negative men from HIV and do not see why they should.”

Although this could be seen as in some way “blaming” HIV positive people, Signorile is simply trying to face up to the truth of the situation. He says: “The gay community has the power to alter the course of the Aids crisis if we face this challenge and change the things that are in our control. That responsibility now rests with our Aids organisations as well as with each of us as individuals.”

It’s a hard message, but this is a merciless virus, and we need to be ruthless in fighting its onslaught.

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 inevitable that the outing volcano, which has been rumbling for a couple of years now, would eventually erupt. It happened last month. Out spewed all the drivel, the bollocks, and the shite that the media has been dying to get out of its system all this time. Thousands of column inches and hours of air time on TV and radio were devoted to it. And, unusually for the British media, there was only one opinion: outing is the worst threat to civilisation since Hitler. In fact, if you took the hysteria seriously, Peter Tatchell might well be Hitler reincarnated. Or, at the very least, Damien the Antichrist. He was certainly accused of dealing death when one of his alleged “victims”, Sir James Kilfedder MP, dropped dead on a train. The extra stress, the papers claimed, had brought on the heart attack.

But no one mentioned the life-long stress closet cases have to endure.

The whole thing had been brought to a head by the Bishop of London, David Hope (he of the “grey” sexuality) who called a press conference to reveal to the world a letter he had received from Peter Tatchell. The letter was a gentle, courteous and completely non-threatening request for the Bishop to come out with dignity.

Bishop Hope used the press conference to present himself as a desperate man under intense pressure. In truth, it was a shrewd move from a consummate church politician. The image Mr Hope was aiming for was that of the persecuted innocent. This was summed up by a photograph of him on the front page of The Times (March 14th). He is shown thrusting a large golden cross before him, as if trying to render unto ashes the demon Tatchell.

The press conference offered an opportunity for the Bishop to give reassurance to those young people struggling with their sexuality; he could have told them that it was OK to be gay. Instead, he moaned about “greyness” and “intimidatory tactics”. His moral cowardice shone like a beacon.

The papers in the meantime needed a hook for their story, and it came when someone labelled the letter “a blackmail note”. From then on, every variation on the blackmail theme was employed — even though the letter contained no such thing. Calls were made by some papers to make outing illegal (not, though, by The News of the World — how would they make a living without it?).

For a month, Peter — the first “enemy of the people” to live in a council flat — became the only man in the country whose name could not be written without the addition of an insulting adjective or abusive tirade. “An odious, nasty, vicious rat,” said Norman Tebbitt in The Sun; “Rabid,” said Nigella Lawson in The Telegraph; “Fascistic, cruel, wicked and evil,” said Cruella Currie in The Times; “Revolting,” quoth Richard Littlejohn; “Reptilian,” was the opinion of John Junor. The Daily Mail thought Tatchell “an insidious bully” while The Independent voted him “the least attractive character in public life”. A couple of papers even suggested that they wouldn’t grieve if he were assassinated.

Poor Pete was not even safe from those gay public figures who consider themselves to be on the “respectable” end of gay politics. “Brutal, savage and fascist,” was the opinion of the actor Simon Callow in The Daily Express. “He’s so palpably vengeful. He’s a fanatic, a person intoxicated by his own importance.” (Careful of the pot-and-kettle syndrome, Simon)

Michael Cashman — ex-soap star and a Stonewall high-up —also thought OutRage!’s tactics were “revolting”. He apparently told The Daily Mirror that Tatchell and company see themselves as “the sex police of the gay world” and said that victims of outing were “thrown on to a bonfire of discrimination fuelled by fear, hatred and ignorance.”

The media encouraged this gay in-fighting, of course. It gave them justification for their gay-bashing and helped them further avoid addressing the real issues. Even The Guardian, which can usually be relied upon to give both sides of the story, was reluctant to come off the sanctimonious bandwagon that the rest of Fleet Street was riding.

Of course, this concentration of hatred upon OutRage! and Peter Tatchell was a simple projection of the generalised disgust felt for homosexuality. It put me in mind of the correspondence which has been raging all month in The Daily Telegraph about how “that lovely little word gay” has been made to mean something distasteful by homosexuals. The correspondents don’t have “anything against” homosexuals, of course, just the word that describes their disgusting existence.

And so it is with outing. Those who oppose it couldn’t give a stuff about the misery and oppression that the closet represents. They just want to make sure we stay in it so they can be spared uncomfortable feelings. Heterosexuals don’t have closets, and they have no right to foist them on other people. Moreover, respected gay figures have no business justifying the cowardice of powerful closet cases.

In an early day motion, Labour MPs called for the media not to collude with OutRage! in its campaign. That might be hard for newspapers to do — especially if OutRage! comes up with something they just can’t ignore — but it wouldn’t surprise me if we heard nothing more of OutRage! or outing in the straight press for a considerable time to come.