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 Church of England’s present turmoil over homosexuality may seem irrelevant to most of us but, as someone commented on TV this month: “Until the Church accepts gays there’s little hope of progress in parliament.” Consequently, the Church’s own press is full of homosexuality at the moment.

After publishing its brave editorial in support of the Osborne report (“The next question is the unbanning of homosexuals” — 16 Feb), The Church Times received the predictable drubbing from the Rev Tony Higton: “I am sad to see that The Church Times has become a vehicle for homosexual propaganda,” he says, overlooking the fact that it is also a regular vehicle for his anti-gay diatribes. “I deeply deplore The Church Times’s call for acceptance of homosexual practice, and totally reject, on a factual basis, its arguments.”

Mr Higton claims that “scientific opinion” is on his side, and quotes a Professor Bouchard of Minnesota University as saying, “heredity is the major factor in determining much behaviour” but that “homosexuality was the exception and not genetically determined but a response to environmental pressure.” Mr Higton maintains that this means homosexuals can be educated or even prayed into being heterosexuals.

The Church Times, however, was unrepentant and continued to fall short of Mr Higton’s ideal. In the same issue it published an interview by Betty Saunders with a gay vicar and his boyfriend. It was remarkably sympathetic, and Ms Saunders obviously finds it hard to reconcile the inoffensive vicar (code-named “Martin”) and his lover (“Alan”) with the hell-fire ravings of Tony Higton. The article ends on this note: “Martin is sceptical about any possibility that in the foreseeable future the Church establishment might allow couples like himself and Alan to acknowledge each other openly. In the meanwhile: ‘Our relationship is the basic stability of my emotional life. If, God forbid, there should ever have to be a choice between him and my job, I know which would come first.’ The question hangs in the air. He glances across at this partner. ‘The answer is that he would, of course. Wouldn’t any husband or wife say the same?”

In the following issue the letters columns were once more awash with Higton-bashers: “His style of polemic is so ignorant and arrogant that serious discussion becomes impossible,” wrote the Rev Kenneth Leech, who continued: “Here we are confronted with the phenomenon of the closed mind. Of course, Mr Higton is pleased with the conclusions of Bouchard since they fit with the position he has already adopted. There is no place here for open and adult debate.”

The Rev Roy Akerman wrote: “My guess is that if we drop our defensiveness and prejudice and look at the matter in an open and non-judgmental way, then possibly well into the next century the Church may have an informed and definitive ruling to give.”

Other thoughtful letters also made the case against Higton in measured language, which might lead you to conclude that the debate within the Church was going our way. Not so, according to the other Anglican journal, The Church of England Newspaper, which questioned its readers on their attitudes to homosexuality. This “poll” was reported in The Daily Mail (7 Mar) “More than 19 out of 20 said Christians should not condone homosexuality,” we were told. “And the same number said the Church should not sanction ‘gay weddings’. Nine out of ten believed that practising homosexuals among the clergy should be sacked, according to the survey.”

But looking at the CEN itself (9 Mar) we find that the “poll” was actually an invitation to their readers to respond to a questionnaire. Five per cent of them did (624 people) — and of that number the majority were “drawn from the evangelical wing of the Church of England” and “the largest group of respondents were 60 plus”. So how representative was the “poll” and how much credence can we put on it? Does it give a clear picture of Anglican opinion or is it just another case of zealous fundamentalists tipping the scales in their favour by taking the trouble to respond en massewhilst others with more moderate opinions simply didn’t bother?

The comment most oft repeated by respondents to the survey was “Love the sinner but hate the sin”. But one gay man had come up with his own retort to that: “Love God … hate the Church.”

* * *

As Aids now begins to intrude into the lives of an increasing number of heterosexual women and children, the tabloids have a problem: how are they to elicit sympathy for these “innocent victims” while keeping the hatred of gays intact?

The answer is, of course, to invent two categories of Aids — the kind which affects “mums, dads and children who have contracted the virus through no fault of their own” (as The Sun so offensively put it on 22 Feb) and the other which infects those who have “brought it upon themselves” (homosexuals, drug abusers, prostitutes).

There has been a great flood of such stories recently (“My dark days of despair with Aids” — Daily Express 26 Feb; “Agony of innocent mum” — Sun, 22 Feb; “My husband died of Aids” — Guardian 19 Feb; “Aids babies die unloved, unwanted” — Sunday Times, 4 Mar; “A tormented wife speaks of her man’s gay betrayal” — Sun 2 Mar).

Thus, we now have a rise in the disgusting notion of a two-class system of sympathy which brings further shame on the monsters who encourage such dreadful inhumanity.

* * *

Much as I admire Jimmy Somerville I must take exception to a remark he is purported to have made in an interview with The Guardian (13 Mar): “I don’t see myself as a gay spokesperson, but nobody else seems to be challenging the discrimination against us and saying it is wrong.”

Er, um, I think all those gay men and lesbians working their butts off in the cause of gay rights might wonder what the hell they’ve been doing with their time.

***

In its doomed efforts to make the “community charge” palatable, The Sun invited its readers to ring in with horror stories of profligate local authorities “wasting ratepayers’ money” and so forcing up the poll tax.

There was, it seems, no shortage of “outraged callers” ready to blow the whistle on Southwark council in London who put on a disco for Cypriot lesbians and gays. “An outraged Southwark shopkeeper” is quoted as saying: “The streets are filthy, the drains stink and the gays dance the night away on us. It’s obscene.” There are also tales of Camden council’s “lesbian day centre”, and the Gay Bereavement Project took a nasty drubbing.

But meanwhile The Sunday Telegraph was quoting (4 Mar) Ian Willmore, chairman of Haringey’s finance sub-committee as being “quick to show that, however much Tory councillors may rile against activities, like last June’s lesbian swim-in, the council’s support for such events is primarily moral and only secondarily financial”.

This is a point often missed when charges of “waste” are levelled at spending on the needs of gay people — the actual amounts involved are comparatively tiny. As an angry woman wrote in The Sun’s letters column (5 Mar): “You seem to forget that these (gay) people are ratepayers, too. Why shouldn’t they get some benefit out of what they pay like everyone else?”

***

I like The Sunday Correspondent on several counts, not least because it does not worship at the temple of Maggie. It is also not afraid to include a few pleasingly contrary items. One such was a column by Brian Sewell who (25 Feb) revealed the damage that had been done to him as a child by ill-informed sex education. (“I bargained with God; I told him I would not masturbate after midnight if he would accept eight hours of hard-won purity as enough to pass a state of grace and let me take Communion without feeling sullied and sacrilegious.”)

After an entertaining and utterly sensible gallop through the bizarre British attitudes to sex he says: “Sex education may be much better now, but men of my generation are the men of influence on the Bench, in the Church and in the House of Commons, and their quirky judgments in which sex plays some part compel me to think that many are flawed to the point of hysteria and hypocrisy by sexual attitudes imposed on them when they were boys and never honestly reviewed in the light of adult experience. We adopt moral stances at variance with common sense, history and practice.”

He challenges members of the House of Commons to put their hand on their hearts and swear that they have never looked at pornography, never masturbated or had sexual fantasies that extend beyond the marriage bond. “These private matters they should bear in mind when they lay down the rules for the rest of us.”

Some hope.

***

A poll of students published in the Oxford University newspaper Cherwell (reproduced in The Sunday Correspondent, 4 Mar) revealed that “Only 3 per cent think that homosexuality should be illegal while 48 per cent think it is natural and harmless.” This is only one of many overwhelmingly liberal opinions expressed by the students. Does it give hope for a better society to come after the despatch of La Thatch.

* * *

The man who poses as The Sun’s TV critic, Mr Garry (reds-under-the-bed) Bushell, was boasting (2 Mar) that he had received the following letter from “an avid reader”: “I am a 6ft 4in, 15st labourer. I am also gay and object to reading your constant attacks on “poofs”, “woofters” and “shirtlifters”. I am coming up to London soon and when I get there I will sort you out —you big, beautiful, bearded b******!”

Bushell’s attempt to destroy the career of gay comedian Simon Fanshawe also brought some harsh words from Esther Rantzen (who employs Simon on ‘That’s Life’) She likened criticism of Fanshawe on the basis of his gayness rather than his comedic skills to that of racism. Bushell wrote a sarky riposte (7 Mar): “Esther, who admits she wouldn’t want her son to be queer but doesn’t mind encouraging yours to be, was debating whether TV shirtlifters get a fair showing. Fair? There’s no escaping them … I don’t mind if telly poofs are OUT ON TUESDAY — as long as they’re locked up for the rest of the week!”

Esther wasn’t having that and a couple of days later The Sun was carrying one of its pathetic “Sorry about that, Esther” headlines. “The Sun withdraws Garry’s allegation and is happy to put on record that we did not intend to cause offence to Esther, her family or the charitable work of Child-Line.” No apology was proffered for the offence caused to the millions of gay men and lesbians who are at the centre of Bushell’s abuse. However, our Gazza hasn’t yet reckoned with the wrath of the gay community.

Be warned, Mr Bushell. The poofters are angry.

***

In announcing a record number of complaints against newspapers, The Press Council revealed that of 1,871 complaints they had ‘handled’, only 142 ran through the whole complaints procedure. The rest were withdrawn or just faded away. And this reveals one of the Press Council’s weaknesses (or maybe one of its chief functions): the complaints procedure is so long, drawn-out and convoluted that very few people manage to see it through to the end. After the fifteenth exchange of letters most complainants just give up the ghost, having almost forgotten what they were complaining about in the first place.

The Press Council in this respect acts as a buffer for the newspapers, defusing people’s anger, absorbing their fury and simply wearing down those who have felt outraged enough to make a complaint. You need the stamina of a marathon runner and the writing capacity of Charles Dickens to get to an adjudication.

We should not lose sight of the fact that the Press Council is funded by the newspapers themselves, and like most self-regulating bodies it has to work hard to be credible. The Press Council does not work hard enough.

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 just outrageous to suggest this sort of thing,” said Prince Edward in The Daily Mirror (10 Apr). “It’s so unfair to me and my family. The scurrilous rumours are preposterous. They cause hurt not only to me but to my mother, father, brothers and sister.”

What? What? He’s a mass murderer, perhaps? Or he pushes heroin to kiddies? No — the rumours simply suggest he might be gay. “How would you feel if someone said you were gay?” he asks. Well, now you come to mention it, not bad at all. I certainly wouldn’t carry on as though I’d just been accused of torturing the Queen Mum with red hot pokers.

But such is the strange world of the tabloid journalist, who must first create rumours so that he can then report them being denied.

The challenge was — how to make a three-sentence denial into a front page lead and centre-page spread? Easy, pad it out with a lot of gratuitous gay-bashing. The Mirror provided us with an unedifying potted biography of Prince Edward who has, we’re assured, been plagued by rumours about his sexuality right from his early teenage years when he was known as a “Mummy’s boy”. Later in Buckingham Palace (“where homosexuality is a way of life among many royal servants”) it was suggested he was a “closet queen”. His closest friends apparently knew him as “AC/DC — a ditherer unable to make up his mind one way or the other”. At Cambridge he was known, according to The Mirror as “wimp”. At a charity show a journalist is supposed to have said “he behaved like a petulant ballerina with a ladder in her tights”.

Moving on to the Royal Marines (from which he made an ignominious exit) he was “dubbed The Apple Juice Kid” because he wasn’t a big drinker like the other rookies. He made an “even worse gaffe” by joining the “darlings and dear-boys of theatre-land”. He rapidly came to be known —according to the Mirror — as “Mavis”.

And there you have the complete picture of how tabloid journalists perceive gay men. Why bother with original thought when stereotypes are so easily at hand? Credit for the above romp through HRH’s history goes to drivelling ignoramus (or ‘Royal expert’) Harry Arnold. But even he couldn’t outdo John Junor (Mail on Sunday 15 Apr): “My own intense dislike of the grotesquely-named gay movement is not directed at homosexuals who suffer their infirmity in silence but at those who sleazily flaunt it almost as a badge of honour and seek to pervert the innocent young.”

The Sun, furious at being upstaged in its specialty of royalty-baiting, informed us (11 Apr) that Cathy McGowan was rushing to New York to be with her boyfriend Michael Ball, star of “Aspects of Love”. “She is deeply hurt and upset,’” we are told, “Cathy is totally devastated by the rumours. It was a great shock to her.” Ms McGowan’s trauma stems from another newspaper rumour (this time originated by Nigel Dempster) suggesting that Mr Ball and Eddie (as he is now rather familiarly known in headlines) are having a “touching” friendship.

The editor of Burke’s Peerage, Harold Brooks-Baker, says that such innuendo could “destroy the monarchy.” “How many thousands of people now really believe that there is something between Mr Ball and Prince Edward? Are they reading between the lines and saying there is something more than friendship between the two men?”

But the co-editor of Debretts, David Williamson, was much more laid-back about it: “If it was ever revealed that a member of the Royal Family was homosexual, I don’t think it would be a great blow to the monarchy. It is an entirely different age we live in now.”

According to Today (11 Apr) Prince Edward is being cynically used as a PR accessory by his employer, Andrew Lloyd-Webber: “The Prince, kept under the watchful eye of a pushy publicist, was dutifully wheeled around the room at appointed intervals to shake hands and make small-talk with the habitual first night hangers-on,” said the paper. “Edward is paid to assist on the production of the show, not to be paraded around as a rent-a-royal for King Lloyd Webber.”

Of course, something really useful could have come out of this farrago if the suggestions of a letter-writer to The London Evening Standard (1 Apr) had been followed up: “What a pity that Prince Edward is not gay. A Royal with an interest in homosexual causes — rather like Prince Charles campaigns for architecture or his wife for the fashion industry — could only have done some good at a time when there is so much anti-homosexual hysteria around. Practically every minority has a Royal backing it. Why shouldn’t the gays?”

Julie Burchill (Mail on Sunday 15 Apr) saw even more advantages to having a gay Prince: “No more boring Royal marriages,’” she wrote, “No more boring Royal pregnancies … No more boring English films, usually directed by Bryan Forbes, as the year’s Royal Premiere. But instead glorious, glamorous revivals of the bitchy, brilliant films of George Cukor and Bette Davis.”

And it isn’t as though there haven’t been precedents. The London Evening Standard (11 Apr) treated us to a list of historical royal personages who have been rather more upfront than present-day ones: “William Rufus was gay and French, which was worse, and everyone knew about Richard the Lionheart … he and Blondel were the talk of the Middle Ages.” Edward II and Piers Gaveston; James I “possibly our campest king’”. Apparently, there were rumours about William of William and Mary and “there seems little doubt about the Queen’s great uncle Albert, Duke of Clarence … There was a notorious male bordello in Cleveland Street in his day. The police raided it and there, it is said, he was.”

Describing the “Aspects of Love” party at which the whole thing started, Today said: “The problem for the Prince is that first nights are notorious for attracting homosexuals to the glitz and glamour. ‘I don’t think there is one straight man here,’ complained one glamorous New York socialite.” Oh really? What about Prince Edward and Michael Ball?

One thing this whole episode has shown is that the newspapers have not changed one bit. Their “codes of practice’” are nothing but hucksters’ window-dressing, and their behaviour positively screams for legislation.

***

The award for slimy hypocrisy goes, once again, to The People’s crappy columnist John Smith. Under the heading “Ghastly gay propaganda” he was commenting on “radical gays” in America who are threatening to expose famous homosexuals”. “What a thoroughly nasty idea,” he says. “Everyone is entitled to keep their sex life secret. And that secrecy shouldn’t be sacrificed so that gossipy gays can ruin people’s lives for the sake of poofter propaganda.”

I hate to intrude into Mr Smith’s fantasy, but I would rather like to remind him that the paper he works for has made the exposure of homosexuals into an art form. Wasn’t it The People (30 July, 1988) that “exposed’” the gay sex life of Sea Lord Admiral Sir David Empson? And wasn’t it only a year ago that the paper carried on its front page the revelation that Coronation Street actor Roy Barraclough was gay?

Is my memory playing tricks or was it The People who named several gay vicars on the weekend before the General Synod debate on homosexuality?

I expect Mr Smith will be resigning from his job when he finds out what sort of a filthy rag he works for. If it’s propaganda he wants, The People beats the poofters hands down.

***

“My attacks have not been on homosexuals … I make no apology for the language I use. It is the language of Sun readers, and indeed, the majority of British people.’” — Sun TV critic Gary Bushell in a letter to the Press Council, March 1990.

“It must be true what they say about nobody being all bad . . . even STALIN banned poofs’” — Gary Bushell, The Sun, 21 March.

***

“A Labour council and a charity have launched a social club for gay PENSIONERS. Camden Council and Age Concern set up the group for camp codgers at a day centre in North London.’” —Sun, 3 Mar.

“Loony Labour councillors have launched a drive to encourage gays and lesbians to foster and ADOPT children, it was revealed last night.’” — Sun, 28 Mar.

“Southwark Council is pioneering a scheme to make gays and lesbians foster parents . . . As a white hetero, I do rather feel, now, in the minority.’” — Sun, 30 Mar.

“Camden Council have no idea how to cut £4,400,000 from their budget as the Government demands. But Dr Skolar says: ‘For a start they could get rid of the gay and lesbian, ethnic minority and political protest groups’. — Sun, 10 Apr.

“Other donations include … Reading Matters — a group which specialises in providing books for GAYS.’” — Sun, 23 Mar.

Could it be that there is a local Government election in the offing? And could it be that The Sun is getting rather desperate to distract attention from the THATCHER-SMASHING poll tax?

***

The papers have been keen to announce the appointment of their “readers’ representatives’” or ombudsmen. These gents (yes, you’ll be surprised to hear that they’re all men) are supposed to facilitate complaints from readers about breaches of the recent self-imposed code of conduct.

Almost all of them come from within the management of the newspapers concerned. An Independent reader, Kate Tuck, asked (31 Mar): “What confidence can women, those from ethnic minorities, or young people have that this homogenous group of individuals, however eminent in their respective fields, can effectively represent the interests of anyone other than white, middle-aged men?’” She might also have asked what hope is there for gay men and lesbians who are vilified daily in newspapers. A complaint I made to Mr Kenneth Donlan, The Sun’s ombudsman, brought the response that the gay community brings hostility on itself because of the antics of a noisy minority.

The main characteristic of ombudsmen, of course, is their independence from the organisations they monitor and their freedom from any conflict of interest in arriving at decisions. By this definition newspaper ombudsmen are just tawdry frontmen whose purpose is to deflect criticism.

* * *

The Independent reported from America (7 Apr) about the case of Joe Steffan, who was hounded out of the United States Navy because he had confessed to being gay. There was no evidence that he had “committed homosexual acts’” and admitted only to a homosexual orientation. But, according to the official policy, as stated in 1982 by the then Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger, “homosexuality is not compatible with military service’”.

Like most Americans, Mr Steffan is anxious to protect his rights, and is now about to launch litigation aimed at gaining readmission to the navy.

The Independent’s reporter, Keith Botsford, is generally sympathetic to Mr Steffan’s plight, and the article is very informative about American attitudes to homosexuality. But near the end he suddenly swerves towards the incoherent when describing arguments within the military against homosexuality. “There are two more arguments stated rarely in public but often enough in private,” he says. “The first holds that as homosexuals divide into active and passive (or male and female) roles, to allow them into an all-male society introduces three sexes into a group unswervingly by tradition devoted to one.”

We’ll leave the mind-boggling daftness of that statement and go on to the second which goes: “As any army contains a fair proportion of sadistic individuals, it would be unwise to offer them a supply of potential masochists: particularly in enclosed situations (Joe Steffan was to be a submariner).”

If these are the best “reasons” the navy can come up with it says something about the depth of their ignorance and their desperation to resist change.

But at least in America individuals have the right of appeal when they are treated unjustly by Courts Martial. In Britain, a case was reported (almost gleefully by the tabloids) of an Army Officer who was “dismissed from the service for the ‘sudden impulse’ which made him kiss Sapper Andrew Green on the lips in his car in a dark country lane”. (Daily Mail, 5 Apr). The officer, “a 42-year-old divorced father of two”, had 26 years exemplary service and had earned the Long Service Good Conduct Medal and General Service Medals for time in Northern Ireland and Saudi Arabia. He was “kicked out” of the service charged with “disgraceful conduct”. He stands to lose his £15,000 a year pension.

By anybody’s standards that is cruel and unusual punishment for snatching a kiss. Changes are long-overdue.

* * *

Long before the National Union of Teachers even had their conference there was “controversy” about a plan to debate whether “all pupils should be given sex education in homosexuality” (The Daily Mail, 6 Apr). Immediately the right-wingers are lining up to start the ritual chant: “I think parents would be horrified,” says Nick Seaton, chairman of the Campaign for Real Education. “It sounds more like promotion of homosexuality than acceptance of it.”

Westminster Council’s education “Chairman’”, Marie-Louise Rossi “pledged’”, according to The London Evening Standard (11 Apr), that “even if the conference passed the motion it would not be implemented”, while Mrs Katie Ivens, Governor of Westminster School, said: “It is outrageous that union activists think gay sex is more important than English.” Not to be outdone, a local teacher, Martin Spafford, got even more hot under the collar screeching: “Left-wing pressure groups are indoctrinating our children and hijacking their schooldays for gay sex propaganda.”

All this misrepresentation weeks before the conference even began. Why don’t these Neanderthals listen to what is being proposed before they start shooting their hateful mouths off?

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 controversy over “outing” —dragging the rich and famous out of the closet against their will — shows no signs of abating, and it has led to some surprisingly well-informed features about gay politics.

Bryan Appleyard in The Sunday Times (6 May) turned to ex-Tory MP Matthew Parris for his opinion on the state of gay rights in Britain today. Mr Parris responded by repeating his familiar and fatuous arguments such as that Mrs Thatcher is not anti-gay (“She has the attitude of an enlightened, intelligent woman of the 1950s. She thinks it is an illness or misfortune requiring sympathy and help but not legislation.”) Mrs Thatcher has never contradicted a Sunday Times report that she personally was behind Section 28. If she isn’t anti-gay why does she allow her party to make such vicious homophobic propaganda? Is she a hypocrite by any chance?

Mr Parris also thinks that abusive press coverage of gay matters is “helpful”: “The homophobic kind of tabloid story has actually helped the gay cause more than any other phenomenon in the last 20 or 30 years. The worst thing for gays is the kind of courteous way in which the subject used to be treated in the press. There was always some sensitively designed euphemism. But what screaming words like ‘poof’ do is get people used to the idea that “homosexuality is around.”

It’s a disarming argument, but couldn’t the press have simply ditched the euphemisms and used less contemptuous words to describe us? Couldn’t they have allowed us to be real people instead of “poofters”, “woofters”, “lezzies” and “queers”? They had the option to cover gay issues —which seem to fascinate them so much — in a balanced and fair way. Instead they chose to vilify us. Homosexuals have nothing to thank Rupert Murdoch for — unlike Mr Parris, who writes a column for one of his papers.

Parris also repeats his other nonsense about gay rights being hijacked by the “far left”, and suggesting that only the Tories have the real answer. Doesn’t he realise that it is the aggressive loonies of his own party who have turned our lives into a political battleground? Only a minority of gays are seduced by the empty promises of the far left; readership surveys in both Capital Gay and Him have found that large numbers of their readers were enthusiastic Conservatives.

Mr Parris should think long and hard about what he is saying — he is no longer an MP, he can stop making excuses for the Tories.

The Sunday Correspondent (29 Apr) also covered “outing” and quoted this excerpt from a letter sent to Outweek magazine: “I for one am looking forward to the next gay craze: ‘innings’. This is when a famous person is known to be gay or lesbian, but the gay and lesbian community finds them so reprehensible, we deny that they are in any way part of us. These celebrities are such an embarrassment that we rise up as one and thrust them back into their closets.”

Nigella Lawson explored the issue sensibly, too, in the London Evening Standard (9 May). In order for her — and perhaps some of her readers —to understand better what “outing” is all about, she made the analogy of hiding her own Jewishness in times of anti-Semitic persecution. “This would be shameful behaviour, though perhaps there would be many who would understand what I was doing and why I was doing it, even while they condemned me for it. But what if I went further and actually took part in the persecution of the Jews?” This, she asserts, is the kind of thing that gay MPs who supported Section 28 did. All the same, in the end she comes out against “outing”.

But the sport is not only an American phenomenon. Those readers in the East Midlands with eagle eyes might have spotted a tiny item in Out Right, their local gay freesheet, revealing that a certain Tory MP (whose name was named) was “Seen recently in that well-known gay watering hole, Gatsbys … with a companion (get those fishnet tights) … and left clutching their copy of The Pink Paper. Well, there’s a thing: it’s nice to know the boys in blue are in the pink!”

***

Writing in The Spectator (21 Apr & 28 Apr), worn-out Thatcherite Paul Johnson said: “It is now becoming increasingly difficult, for example, to discuss homosexuality or the related problem of Aids, except in terms approved by the homosexual lobby … Although a good deal of pro-homosexual material appears on the duopoly (of television) it is now almost inconceivable that a programme critical of such activities could be broadcast. That is censorship, and all the more objectionable in that it is imposed by the controlling elements in the media, rather than by the law and Parliament.” “Liberal fascism” he calls it, propounded by “homo-yobs”.

I’m afraid the latest Press Council adjudication against the use of the words “poof” and “poofter” (see elsewhere for details) will add fuel to Mr Johnson’s already considerable hysteria. But what he omits to mention is that in the popular press the opposite argument applies — anti-homosexual propaganda is the norm, with balancing opinions few and far between.

It is one of Mr Johnson’s sillier contradictions: he denies that it is possible to criticise homosexuals in print whilst doing so vituperatively.

***

On the front pages of local newspapers in Ealing, West London last month were to be found reports of the brutal murder of gay actor Michael Boothe (“Killers who stalk gays” — Ealing Gazette 4 May). A spokesman for the local Gay Association, Mr Peter Knight, was quoted as being “shocked and angered” and laid part of the blame with the media, MPs and councillors “who don’t think of us as real people.” As if to underline his point, the letters column of the same issue contained a missive from someone called R G Saxena who proclaimed: “I am not afraid to say it: the practice of homosexual acts is filthy, unnatural, sinful and vile.”

The Ealing Guardian (4 May), in the meantime, also featured the murder on the front page. In its letters column local Tories were still screeching about “the promotion of homosexuality in our schools” — an issue which had been laid to rest by the local council a couple of years previously when they dropped their commitment to teaching that homosexuality was an “equally valid” lifestyle. Coincidentally, the Ealing Gay Association also had a letter included asking local Tories to “consider carefully the tenor of their election campaign, who they are fighting and who takes the brunt of their appeals to the public’s baser instincts.”

Through each letterbox in Ealing’s Springfield ward also came the local Conservative’s own newsletter In Touch. This reproduced “loony left” stories from national newspapers, some of them more than four years old, and most of them long-discredited as lies and invention. Naturally the majority of them concerned ratepayers’ money “wasted” on lesbian and gay issues.

The Tories will naturally deny that their hate-mongering contributed anything to the climate which led to the murder of Michael Boothe; the local Jesus-in-jackboots brigade will also say it has nothing to do with them; rentagob MP for Ealing North, Harry Greenway will pooh-pooh such a suggestion, even though his homophobic activities in Parliament are ceaseless.

Mr Knight has a point when he says (Ealing Recorder, 4 May) that such worthies should “hang their heads in shame”. The problem is that they appear to have no shame.

***

THE Calcutt Committee — set up by the Government to look into press abuses of privacy — has now finished its report and seems to have set its face against any new law to protect privacy. Instead the committee will recommend that the Press Council be restructured and reformed —short of giving it statutory powers — perhaps giving it greater independence from the newspaper industry which, at present, finances it. The committee believes that any legislation restraining the press would be seen as interfering with free speech.

It’s a difficult issue and there is no doubt that the press has tried to clean up its act. There is even a rumour circulating that The Daily Star has made a new editorial policy not to include any more anti-gay stories. I don’t know how true this is, but there certainly hasn’t been anything that gays could object to in that paper for a couple of months now.

The newspapers self-imposed “Code of Conduct” sometimes seems precarious, but generally the salaciousness and gay-baiting has calmed down considerably. Is this going to be a permanent development, or are they just waiting until the fuss dies down before they start their tricks again?

***

As an antidote to Garry Bushell’s offensive diatribes posing as TV criticism, his opposite number on The Daily Mirror, Hilary Kingsley, was writing recently about her own attitudes to gays on television.

First of all, establishing her own unblemished straight credentials (“Well, I haven’t started fancying the leaning lesbians on 4’s Out on Tuesday. Yet.”) she objected to the outmoded approach to homosexuals in TV sitcoms. Specifically, she weighed into Don’t Wait Up: “It’s the sort of sitcom that feels as though it was written in 1962 — full of frightful old snobs, young snobs and, last Sunday, two unmarried men at whom we were supposed to hoot because, you know, nudge, nudge, wink, wink. One of them liked knitting. Scream! And dear brain-dead old Angela made it even more side-splitting (I don’t think) wittering on about them ‘finding Miss Right’. They don’t say ‘gay’ on Don’t Wait Up. They just lap up the cheap laughs. Pathetic, in other words.”

She concludes: “Gayness can’t remain just a joke on TV. Arts shows and drama can’t be straight-only zones. I’m not saying Percy Sugden should suddenly Come Out. But in a careful, realistic way, things must change.”

It was Miss Kingsley, by the way, who helped Gorden Kaye to come out with dignity when The Sun was planning to do a number on him. She was also responsible for a charming interview with Michael Cashman. Let’s have more journalists of her calibre, please.

***

The Guardian carried a report by Judy Rumbold of what life is like for gays in South Africa (12 May). And pretty grim reading it made, too. It’s a primitive country torn apart by so much hatred that there seems no end to the injustices. Gays get stick from everyone.

Aids education is next to impossible because on the white side there is a strong Calvinist influence which makes even “heterosexual sex an undesirable notion outside of marriage” while on the black side Aids is regarded as “a white man’s disease” and “because it is invisible in its early stages (few blacks have contracted full-blown Aids yet), they won’t believe it will kill them”. One Aids educator says that in some sections of black South African society it is taboo to talk about sex. “There aren’t any words that are polite in the language for penis, vagina or sperm, so how do you get the message across?”

The famous gay activist Simon Nkoli says: “None will be free till all are free.” But I don’t think he’ll get many takers for that philosophy on either side of the racial divide.

***

I owe an apology to Martin Spafford for reproducing, in last month’s Mediawatch, anti-gay comments which were attributed to him by The London Standard. These comments were related to the NUT’s annual conference. In fact, Mr Spafford was seconder of a motion to the conference calling for the repeal of Section 28 and for better sex education in schools. In other words — he’s on the right side, not the Right side. I’m sorry to have reproduced such an error, and apologise most profusely.

Terry Sanderson’s new 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 Press Council’s “poof” and “poofter adjudication has reverberated like a ricocheting bullet around the newspaper world. It has opened up a long overdue debate about press treatment of homosexuals and also about the role of the press council itself. [Note: In May 1990 the Press Council, under its new liberal chairman, Louis Blom-Cooper, issued the adjudication we had been pushing for. It said that it was “not within the discretion of an editor to include crude and abusive words to describe an identifiable group.”]

The reactions were predictable. Those who take every opportunity to slander and criticise gays were quick to take this new chance to lay in with the proverbial Doc Martens. “We can no longer describe queers as poofters,” wrote George Gale (Daily Mail, 18 May). “Come to that we probably can’t call them queers either… There is another world, no dissimilar to words like poofs and poofters which well describes members of the Press Council. It begins with a ‘w’ – but I fear to use it for the repercussions.”

Richard Ingrams in The Observer (3 June) had no doubt what was going on. “It is all part of the campaign by militant homosexuals to dictate the vocabulary. On the whole, their campaign has been very successful… It is noticeable how many reports nowadays use the expression homosexual community in the sense of a group of people sharing certain traditions or living in the same locality… But the expression ‘homosexual community’, suggesting a persecuted racial minority, helps lend respectability to the cause.”

This brought a stinging response the following week from Deirdre Blackmore of London SW1 who wrote: “Will I be accused of ‘heterophobia’ if I am disparaging (on moral grounds of Mr Ingrams’s much-advertised heterosexuality? This sort of arrogant, militant, intolerant and boorish behaviour is just what gives heterosexuals a bad name.” And so say all of us.

The papers examined whether or not these words are, as The Sun claims, the language of their readers. There was no doubt in the mind of John Junor, who wrote (Mail on Sunday, 27 May): “The utter idiocy of its solemn decision to ban newspapers from using words… when that is exactly what they are called by 90 per cent of the adult population.” But his view was not shared by Paul Johnson, writing in his usual hysterical fashion in The Spectator (26 May): “’Poof” and ‘poofter’ I have often seen written, but I have never heard them used in speech… My impression is that (manual workers) never refer to homosexuality at all if they can help it. They find it embarrassing, a middle and upper class thing which has nothing to do with them… What they find unacceptable is sheer guesswork. The only reliable judges are readers. If they object they will make their views plain. The rest should keep their middle-class traps shut.”

Mr Johnson, in another of his laughable contradictions, seems to suggest that middle-class opinion is worthless but at the same time promoted it with fanatical zeal.

His point, however,  is supported by Philip Howard in The Times (18 May)who said: “Street slang for homosexuals is no longer poof or poofter, if indeed it ever was… The world would be a better place, no doubt, if we were all more tolerant of those poor sods who are unfortunate enough not to be like us in every respect, from string vest to tattooed arms and shaven heads with six packs of strong Danish brew within easy reach. But since we live in a fallen world, the Press Council makes itself ridiculous by stooping to such matters, and the blessed Sun is seriously out of touch with its natural lingo.”

The Sunday Telegraph (20 May), as you’d expect, also raised the issue of class, only in a different way: “The root of the problem lies in the behaviour of some homosexuals who positively seek to give scandal. It has always been thus. Oscar Wilde would never have been persecuted had he not gone out of his way to goad respectable opinion into outrage. Today’s gay lobby is not content with the legalisation of their perversion. They now demand that heterosexuals accept it as natural and normal.”

So, while Paul Johnson thinks we are an outrage to the working class, The Sunday Telegraph imagines we are an affront to “respectable opinion”. It seems we have no friends at all.

As for what words are “really” preferred, we have to look to the telephone poll conducted by The Sun’s sister paper, The News of the World (20 May). It invited its heterosexual readers and its homosexual readers to ring separate numbers in order to nominate their preferred term. Voters could choose from ‘poofter’, ‘pansy, ‘fairy, ‘queer’, ‘gay’ and ‘homosexual’. The result, published the following week, was that both homosexual and heterosexual readers (presumably the working class) had plumped for ‘gay’, which settles the argument as far as I’m concerned. So, shut your silly trap Paul Johnson.

In The Observer (20 May), Adam Raphael wrote: “The [Press] Council plunged into the morass of what is good taste… The Council’s excuse for overturning its rulings is that public opinion has changed. Sadly, the council is deceiving itself. What has changed is not public opinion, which remains hostile to homosexuality, but the fact that the council has a new distinguished ‘liberal’ lawyer as chairman… It undermines the council’s work in curbing reallyserious abuses.” (My emphasis).

Meanwhile, Private Eye reported that The Sun was considering “doorstepping” Mr Blom-Cooper in an effort to find out whether he himself is gay.

Feeling embattled, as I’m sure he did under the weight of all this criticism, Blom-Cooper wrote a piece in The Observer (27 May) about the future of the Press Council if its adjudications were not respected. “These commentators miss the point of the adjudication. The Press Council has said that a newspaper was fully entitled to express as much hostility as it liked towards homosexuals. It could do so even in intemperate language and with evident intolerance. What was journalistically unethical was deliberately to insult a definable class of people in society. Similarly, black people cannot be described as ‘niggers’, Jews as ‘yids’ or Arabs as ‘wogs’… The Royal Commission on the Press in 1977 said that acceptance and conformity to the rulings of the Press Council is the only alternative to the introduction of a statutory Press Council.”

The Sun’s reaction has predictably been petulant and nasty. It has carried a spate of anti-gay stories and comments that would offend anyone with an ounce of sensitivity, gay or straight. It does the press in general a disservice because a self-serving maverick like The Sun could cause legislation to be enacted that would affect every newspaper, even the responsible ones. So, it is up to other newspapers as well as readers to put pressure on The Sun to stop its disgraceful antics lest they all end up tarred with the same brush.

But has the adjudication been effective or, as Paul Johnson clamed, will The Sun take no notice?

The answer is s far that after an initial bout of vengeance-seeking The Sun has stopped using “poof” and “poofter” as terms of abuse for gays although it has tested one or two alternatives “dyke”, “bender”, “shirtlifter” – subject of another Press Council complaint – “fairy”, “iron hoof”). The ruling covered not only The Sun, of course, but all British newspapers. This message does not seem to have reached The People, whose columnist John Smith wrote (3 Jun) about The Gay Pride Carnival. “The highlight will be a procession. With all those poofs on parade, I’ll bet it’s going to be a real bitch choosing a Carnival Queen.”

By making a complaint about this, I have asked the Press Council to reinforce its adjudication.

***

The Independent has been taking very seriously the increasing violence being suffered by gay people in Britain. It devoted a half page on 14 May to presenting the subject to its readers. Reporter Heather Mills revealed that the police are not taking attacks on gay people seriously enough and that the catalogue of violence and murder is increasing alarmingly.

An editorial in the same issue said: “The persecution of homosexuals is spiritually akin to anti-Semitism. Hitler proved the point by despatching homosexuals as well as Jews and gypsies to his concentration camps. It is intolerable that people should be persecuted for not belonging to the same race as the majority. It is no less excusable that they should be vilified and assaulted because their sexual orientation differs from the norm. A report on our news pages, and a Press Council ruling which breaks new ground, come as a reminder today that in this particular form of aggressive intolerance the British are among the worst offenders.”

The leader then goes on to blame the problem on an inadequate education system which has created an underclass of “resentful youths whose lives seem to have no meaning. Left with only their maleness to believe in, their anger focuses on those who diverge from their own narrow view of the norm.”

This may be part of the problem but it isn’t the whole answer. What about those other gay-bashers, George Gale, Richard Ingrams, John Junor and Peregrine Worsthorne? Hardly the underclass.

Don Milligan agreed with the Independent’s theory in a letter to the editor (16 May) “In have been beaten up twice… The first attack carried out by a group of male university students… The second was the work of two middle-aged men – both of them overwhelmed by the free drink dished out at a gallery opening… the educated are just as likely to sanction discrimination in the workplace and social life as the uneducated.”

The class theory of homophobia doesn’t really hold water. Bigots come from all walks of life. Disaffected youth may actually do the beating up, but their elders are less likely to disapprove if they know their victim was gay.

This certainly seems true of The Sun’s vulgar columnist Richard Littlejohn who wrote in support of that other well-known (and far from under-privileged) group of gay-bashers (21 May): “I am glad police in many areas have decided to target public toilets used by homosexuals as singles bars, despite inevitable allegations of harassment.”

***

The Sunday Mirror seems to be trying to make up for its previous nasty ways. Over the past couple of months, it has carried a series of very pleasant articles about gay celebrities. Michael Cashman was given a double page spread to talk – on his own terms – about his relationship with his boyfriend; Julian Clary was affectionately interviewed during his recent tour and Chris Smith was politely profiled on 27 May. “The brave stand of Labour campaigner Chris Smith,” it is headed and is respectfully written by Peter MacMahon, the paper’s political editor.

I couldn’t say it is a deliberate policy on the part of The Sunday Mirror to try to put right some of the damage they have done in the past, but it’s very welcome and a welcome and refreshing change for a Sunday tabloid. Let’s keep our fingers crossed that it continues that way.

***

Religious news (1) “The Observer has obtained a copy of the secret and highly controversial English draft of the new Universal Catechism of the Catholic Church – understood to be intended as a checklist of what a true Catholic must believe… In particular, it condemns…homosexuality as ‘degrading if it expresses itself in sexual acts.” (Observer 27 May)

Religious news (2) “Homosexual practices were attacked as ‘flagrant sin and abomination’ at the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland in Edinburgh yesterday. The Church was called on to condemn rather than condone this ‘moral evil’”, Glasgow Herald.

Religious news (3) Oh forget it. Join the Lesbian and Gay Humanist Association.

***

“Potty gays reckon comic screen legends Laurel and Hardy were lovers – who enjoyed wearing women’s clothes” said The Sun (31 May), referring to an article about the adorable duo in last month’s Gay Times.

Meanwhile, The Daily Mail (1 June) said: “Steel yourself for the revised history scoop to beat them all – Laurel and Hardy, the screen’s epitome of childishly innocent clowning, were homosexuals, secret lovers.”

But now let’s return to the original article by Jonathan Sanders. It opens: “Privately, Stan Laurel was a man with a tenacious commitment to heterosexuality. He married five times, twice to the same woman.” So where did The Mail and The Sun get the idea that anyone was claiming they were gay?

The answer could be, of course, that Laurel and Hardy used their real names for their screen characters. It seems that the tabloids are incapable of making the distinction. The point that Jonathan Sanders was making concerned the regular bed-sharing and drag wearing that occurred in the Laurel and Hardy films. This seems like a perfectly legitimate area of exploration for a film historian – every film that has survived long eno ugh to be become a “classic” is analysed in this way.

The truth is that The Sun and The Mail deliberately distorted the article in the full knowledge that very few of their readers would see the original. In short, they lied.

So what’s new?

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So now we have the full recommendations of the Calcutt Committee and, once more, the Press have been given a “final warning” (the third one in as many years), and told to put their house in order before the law does it for them.

There is good news for gays, though, in Calcutt’s tough, 18-point code of practice for the press, which includes “The press should avoid prejudicial or pejorative references, to a person’s race, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation or to any physical or mental illness or handicap. It should not publish details of a person’s race, colour, religion, sex or sexual orientation, unless these are directly relevant to the story.”

Since Calcutt was published, the papers have whinged ceaselessly about the threats to free speech and the restrictions the recommendations will put on legitimate investigative journalism. And yes, it is a shame that every newspaper will feel the heavy hand of the proposed Press Complaints Commission, which would replace the existing Press Council. After all, it was basically the behaviour of The Sun and its imitators that brought this all about, so why — ask the broadsheets — do all the papers have to be punished?

In a letter to The Guardian (June 29th), Bob Jones wrote: “By choosing not to deprecate … the clear evidence of gradually declining standards in tabloids such as The Sun and later The Star and other imitations; and by refusing to offer genuine opposition to the gradual take-over of most of the press media by Murdoch and his ilk, you (the responsible papers) have allowed this situation to come to pass. It may be too late now; but this whole Calcutt nonsense could be laid to rest, and British journalism become the richer if all you ‘quality’ papers got together in a determined effort to oppose and get rid once and for all of the worm in the bud … of British journalism.”

The Guardian’s media editor, Georgina Henry, must have taken this on board, because on July 5th she roundly condemned The Sun for openly flouting the Calcutt recommendations: “Was it only two weeks today that the report on privacy and related matters was published to howls of anguish from the press? … Turn to yesterday’s front page of The Sun. A ‘picture exclusive’ of Mandy Smith … taken, the story said, when (Bill) Wyman visited her at … a convalescent home … where she has been recovering from a disease which has caused dramatic weight loss. And it was taken with a telephoto lens.”

This, Georgina Henry says, flies straight in the face of Calcutt who recommended that it should be a criminal offence to “take a photograph… of an individual who is on private property, without his consent, with a view to publication and with the intent that the individual shall be identifiable.” The Sun’s editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, in his typically arrogant manner, had nothing to say.

Calcutt also says that “Making enquiries about the personal lives of individuals without their consent is generally unacceptable. Publishing material about the personal lives of individuals without their consent is not acceptable. An individual’s personal life includes matters of health, home, personal relationships …”

So, how does The News of the World convince anyone that it is taking Calcutt seriously when it publishes a story (June 17th) about comedian Joe Longthorne revealing “Mimic’s astonishing life with his boyfriend”? Where is respect for privacy when the paper talks about “TV star dusts as ‘hubby’ goes to the pub”?

And how does The People square its story (June 24th): “The gay ex-lover of dead MP Allan Roberts has been struck down with Aids” with Calcutt’s recommendation “Newspapers should apply the same principles of accuracy, respect for privacy and non-discrimination to stories about the recently-dead as to stories about the living”?

The tabloids are incapable of self-regulation, and no amount of final warnings is going to change them. So why doesn’t the Government just go ahead and implement Ca1cutt? Richard Toye answered that one in The Guardian (June 24th) when he said: “because it would take away one of the most important weapons in the Tory armoury: a slavish and compliant press willing, and able, to perform dirty tricks and disinform the public.”

* * *

The Plymouth Evening Herald is no friend of gays and has joined with local police to persecute men who have been convicted of “indecency” offences in public places (almost every issue seems to have reports of cottaging convictions, complete with names and addresses).

On July 2nd it reported that a “police spy mission” was on the cards for Clicker Tor toilets on the A38 near Liskeard. This “spy mission” turns out to be another of the police’s sordid operations peeping at people using the toilets through holes in the ceiling. After a crackdown on the same toilets in January, fines totalling £6.050 were imposed on 20 men. The Evening Herald ruined the lives of many of the victims by choosing to print their names and addresses and personal circumstances. A few days later the paper listed the locations of all the toilets that are alleged to be “worst” for indecency. Local queer-bashers now no doubt know exactly where to look for their victims.

But you don’t have to have been cottaging to find the all-seeing eye of the Evening Herald making your life a misery. On July 7th it reported a shoplifting case, in which the judge ordered that the charges be dropped. The man accused of the crime was said to be “an Aids victim”, and, even though he was not convicted, his full name and address were included in the item. I am told by someone who knows him that the man involved in this case lives on a particularly rough housing estate and it is unlikely that the news of his HIV status will be received sympathetically by his neighbours. Why did the paper feel it necessary to identify him? Was it spite or simple thoughtlessness?

The police activities do not find universal approval, though. In The Independent (June 20th), Janet Daley was commenting on the dreadful waste of police resources these cottage trawls involve. Where are the police when women are being raped or harassed, she wanted to know? The answer, she found, was that they were in the toilets at Baker Street tube station, peering under the cubicle doors, trying to apprehend men engaged in “acts of gross indecency”.

“The women of London may rest easier for knowing that while they may risk their lives travelling on the Tube even in broad daylight, the sad men who seek their sexual satisfaction in the Baker Street toilets will not go undetected,” she wrote, and went on: “It is an unchecked epidemic of petty house-breaking and assault that demoralises private individuals, making urban life a miserable and fearful business for the most defenceless sections of the community. Which is why one uniformed constable on a train platform is worth three in plain clothes lying on a lavatory floor.”

***

The social work magazine Community Care carried a couple of articles about rent boys in Glasgow, and their relationship to the spread of Aids in the city (June 28th/July 5th). One of the most fascinating findings of the first report by Terry Philpot concerned the ambiguous nature of the male prostitutes’ customers. “Gay men don’t seek out female prostitutes, but the clients of rent boys aren’t necessarily gay. Jim Black cites the case of a man known to him who is happily and securely married with children, who has no desire for an emotional relationship with another man, but every desire for gay sex. Netta McIver said: ‘If a man wants sex with a woman, he comes to the city centre. If a man wants sex with another man what is that about? Is he bisexual? Married? Is he gay, but not part of the gay scene, so it’s much more covert, undercover and ambivalent?’”

The second report showed that hardly any of the rent boys used condoms for anal sex. And changing their attitudes seems like a mammoth task. As Jim Black, senior social worker at Ruchill Hospital, the west of Scotland’s main Aids centre, puts it, “the whole subject of rent boys is a real ‘hot tattie’ in terms of legal complications, police attitudes and even the boys’ own sexuality.”

Best of luck to the social workers, but when they’re working with a group of people who are often on the run from the law and from deprived, poverty-stricken backgrounds you’d think the police would be able to at least compromise a little bit, taking a back seat for as long as educating these lads takes. But no, it seems, the police have now assumed the mantle of Thatcher’s moral enforcers, so it’s unlikely that they’d let up on their “vigilance” long enough to allow any education project to succeed.

***

The excellent and effective demo by Brighton Action Against Section 28 at Brighton’s very own Nuremburg Rally (otherwise known as the International Congress for the Family) was covered by most of the papers; but was presented as “a security lapse” rather than an attack on the deadbeats who organised this dangerous right-wing rant.

The Observer (July 15th) reported that “Many of the speeches were dire” and that must have included the one by American psychiatrist Professor Melvin Anchell who said (according to The Sunday. Express, July 15th) that school sex education had led to “a national sexual calamity … He said homosexuality was glorified. Pupils were led to believe it was normal practice and teachers frequently brought homosexuals into the classroom to give first-hand experience of gay life …’ Such horrendous teachings not only create perverts out of some students but an over-tolerance of perverts is instilled in their minds. It teaches children the characteristics of pimps and prostitutes.’”

The sheer craziness of these people would be pitiful if they didn’t wield such influence — indeed, many of them occupy positions of high office. We need to watch them very carefully. Our very safety is at risk from these perverters of compassion and humanity.

* * *

Even as hundreds of gays marched through the streets of Ealing, west London, to protest at the murder of gay men in that recently-gone-Conservative borough, local MP and champion parliamentary attention-seeker, Harry Greenway was working assiduously to make life ever more difficult for gays. As well as voting for a ban on artificial insemination for lesbians, he wrote in The Ealing Gazette (June 29th): “Could I remind members of the (recently-dismissed Labour) council that one of their first actions was to demand that all schools —including schools for children as young as five years of age — should teach that homosexuality is as valid a lifestyle as marriage.”

Shocking. Except, of course, they didn’t say that at all. A school governor in the borough, Neal Underwood, took the trouble to look up the policy referred to by Mr Greenway and found that what it actually said was: “In the case of high schools and colleges, developing respect for individuals and their caring relationships (including homosexual relationships) and increasing understanding of sexuality in the context of love, personal relationships and home life with a view of encouraging individual self-respect. This will not apply to first and middle schools.”

So, Mr Greenway’s poor, at-risk five-year olds were, in fact, exempt from the council’s policy. Which leaves us wondering whether the MP is deliberately distorting the facts or whether he is simply ignorant on the issue.

Harry was also there to provide The Star (July 14th) with a quote about Waltham Forest Council’s decision to allow gay men and lesbians to become foster parents. “It’s outrageous,” he blasted, “Children are entitled to be brought up by sexually normal parents. Putting them into homes where they are lesbian or homosexual can lead to undue influence on the child’s sexuality.”

Yet again, Harry the ignoramus flies in the face of the facts —there have been properly controlled studies showing that children brought up in gay households are no more prone to become homosexuals than anyone else.

Councillor Christine Smith, Waltham Forest’s Conservative social services spokesman (sic), was quoted in the London Evening Standard (July 13th) saying: “The committee’s decision is horrifying and disgusting … (it) means that homosexuals will be welcomed when foster parents are selected. Yet the Local Government Act lays down that local authorities must not promote homosexuality.”

A Government circular regarding Section 28 of the Local Government Act actually says: “Local authorities will not be prevented by this section from offering the full range of their services to homosexuals on the same basis as to all their inhabitants.”

Does Mrs Smith know what she’s talking about or is she simply, like Greenway, pig-ignorant?

***

Most of the Sunday papers carried the picture of Martina embracing Judy after the champ’s record-breaking Wimbledon victory.

Naturally the creeps and weirdos who produce The Sun couldn’t abide it and it only took them a few days to uncover the “knocking copy” they were looking for. It seems Margaret Court, an ex-Wimbledon champion and now a bizarre, Bible-bashing born-again “mum-of-four”, made some off-the-cuff comments on a tiny radio station in Perth, Australia. These became a gigantic front-page headline for The Sun (July 12th): “Martina ‘Turns Girls into Gays’” it screamed. Mrs Court is reported as saying: “Martina’s a great player, but I’d like somebody at the top who the younger players could look up to. It’s very sad for children to be exposed to homosexuality.”

So how does Martina perform this alchemy of turning “girls into gays”? Who exactly did she seduce? You have to turn inside the paper to find that “Mrs Court did not suggest that Martina had ever acted improperly towards young tennis girls.” So, what about this headline, then? “Mrs Court … admitted that she ADMIRED Martina for being so open about her sexual preferences. She said she believed the player had no alternative because ‘it would have been impossible for her to cover it up.’”

It seems that the promised “huge scandal” was nothing more than the meanderings of a has-been who has now retired into the deluded world of fundaMENTAList religion. When will The Sun carry the headline: “Evangelism turns ordinary people into morons”? Or “The Sun turns fact into fiction”? Not in the super, soaraway future, one suspects.

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The police interviewed a man in prison who had been convicted of sexually abusing children. He told them that the bodies of several murdered boys had been buried in a car park. The police immediately dug the car park up, but found only a few animal bones. The same man then told the police that there were in circulation “snuff’ videos, showing children being sexually molested and then murdered on camera. The police issued this story to the press, who gobbled it up and spewed it out as the great paedophile scandal (“Snuff Video Fear for 20 Kids” — Star, 28 Jul).

It allowed the nation’s collective guilt about its generally appalling record of child abuse to be focused on a small number of pathetic inadequates who cannot make relationships with adults and so turn to children for gratification.

Hysteria mounted as “satanic sacrifices” and “black magic rituals” were paraded for the edification of a prurient public (“Sara’s Rape Hell in Satan’s Coven” — News of the World, 5 Aug). The outrage was genuine, but there was also a disturbing emphasis on the details of the supposed crimes. The paedophiles’ fantasies were being elaborated and almost drooled over by the tabloids.

Who were these stories supposed to be for? And what was their purpose? After all, there was not one iota of evidence that any of it was true. Nobody who could be trusted had ever seen any of these supposed “snuff’ videos, no bodies of children had been found, no corroborated evidence of “black magic” or “satanistic” rituals could be produced. And yet day after day the frenzy continued. A correspondent to The Independent (10 Aug) said: “Well publicised allegations… can easily lead to copycat fantasies by severely disturbed people. In the US there was a spate of similar allegations after the publication of the book Michelle Remembers where there had been none before.”

This was supported by an investigation in The Independent on Sunday (12 Aug) which concluded “There have been police investigations across the United States, in Canada, the Netherlands and now in Britain. They have produced no evidence. No bodies, no bones, no covens, no underground tunnels, no animal carcasses, no blood stains. Nothing.”

It seems that mass hysteria was at work and the papers were happy to fuel it. But how many “carbon copy” crimes will follow? Must newspapers themselves shoulder some of the blame if crazy people try to copy the obscene fantasies in real life?

If you are fond of conspiracy theories, there were plenty about. Simon Harris in The Pink Paper (11 Aug) thought the increasingly wild “paedophile” stories might be a plot by the police to distract attention from and discredit successful campaigns being waged against them by OutRage and other gay groups. If that doesn’t grab your fancy, what about this from Frederic Lamond in The Independent (10 Aug): “There is considerable evidence of an orchestrated and well-funded campaign to use these allegations of Satanic child abuse to create a climate of prejudice against anyone interested in any branch of the occult or alternative religion.”

Then, inevitably, comes the blurring of the lines between paedophilia and homosexuality. (“Gay sex pervert gets school job” — Sunday Mirror, 5 Aug). There has always been a suspicion in the popular mind that gay men can’t be trusted with youngsters. It could not have been more clearly stated than in this letter to the editor of The Ealing Gazette (21 July): “A recent radio chat-show brought in an expert who succinctly defined paedophilia as ‘an inborn sexual orientation’. This seems to class homosexuals and paedophiles together.”

Whenever there is a sexual motive for the murder of a boy by a man, reference is almost always made to his sexuality (remember The Sun’s disgusting editorial trying to blame the whole gay community for the murder of 14-year-old Stuart Gough?) But if a man murders a young girl (a very much more frequent occurrence) the sexuality of the offender is never mentioned.

Why is the reaction so much more hysterical when the victim is a boy? Indeed, The Star included pictures of eight murdered or missing children in its 28 July issue — all of them boys. What about the hundreds of missing girls? Is it because — as feminists would say —girls are seen as dispensable in our society? Or is it because straight men know that they have it within them to abuse — a fact that they are unwilling to face? Let’s not forget that the sexy schoolgirl is still a popular image in straight soft porn.

The Star’s insistence that boys were murdered in “homosexual orgies” is, I suppose, technically correct. But what about the case of lorry driver Reginald Harris (Guardian, 9 Aug) who seduced two young sisters aged 14 and 15? Did anybody refer to him as a “straight child abuser”?

The News of the World went too far in suggesting that Gay Times is “the paedophiles Bible” (5 Aug), because an innocently worded advertisement in the classifieds had led them to a man dealing in pornographic videos. Gay Times makes it clear in each edition that it does not carry advertising for unclassified videos, and nor did it on that occasion.

On page 39 of the same issue of The News of the World appeared an advertisement reading: “28 Adult Sex Video Films only 42p Each — these titles are for uninhibited broad-minded adults only — guaranteed to wet (sic) the strongest palate.”

We must be careful that the great paedophile outrage does not land on our doorstep. There are far more straight molesters than gay, yet the mud is sticking to you and me.

And even lesbians are child abusers. Or so you’d imagine if you read a headline in The Sun (11 Aug): “Boys Lose Home As Mum Runs Away with Lesbian”. These innocent, helpless little kiddies are aged — wait for it — 18 and 16 (a fact you don’t discover until halfway through the article). “Poor little Gary” is old enough to marry, vote, go to war, get a mortgage, stand for Parliament. How old do you have to be before you’re regarded as an adult? That seems to be at the discretion — and convenience — of those masters of twisted fact, Sun sub-editors.

***

I didn’t think the editor of The Star, Brian Hitchen, could still shock me. After all, he has, in his time, been responsible for printing some of the most disgusting copy ever to appear in Britain’s national press. But he really scraped the bottom of the barrel on 31 July, when writing about Princess Diana’s concern for those people living with Aids. “Whoever plans her schedules should cut out the endless handshaking with unstable dope addicts and the time spent listening to tales of woe from homosexuals whose promiscuity has made them HIV positive. There is nothing exotic about sticking hypodermic needles in yourself, and there’s no romance in buggery.”

He then re-stated the abhorrent two-tier system of sympathy: “I feel, desperately, achingly, angrily sorry for haemophiliacs — many of them children who have contracted Aids through transfusions of infected blood. Of course Princess Diana should continue to visit and comfort them. But as to the rest of them — forget it!”

He tells us that homosexuals need not complain that he is heartless. He assures us he isn’t.

Like so many others floating about in the cesspit of journalism, Brian Hitchen is not only heartless, he is a true misanthrope —incapable of sympathy or compassion for anyone or anything outside his own narrow experience. His opinions are an affront to civilised thought.

If you are a Star reader, just remember what your daily 22p goes to support.

***

Roger Screwball (sorry, that should be Roger Scruton) is another homophobic nuisance who recently got as good as he gives. In a review of Professor Scrotum’s latest book of essays “The Philosopher on Dover Beach” (Independent, 4 Aug), Tom Honderich called the bluff of Mrs Thatcher’s favourite philosopher. “It would be agreeable to be light-hearted about this wretched stuff,” writes Mr Honderich, “… The dark fact of the matter, however, is that the new doctrine of Dover Beach is akin to the old ideology of the authoritarian right, which thing in turn is neither to be confused with Fascism nor disconnected from it.”

Scruton’s well-known detestation of homosexuals gets an airing in the book, and a drubbing from the reviewer: “Consider a smaller matter, homosexuality, which is said to be an issue of the first importance at the present time. It is one thing to oppose proselytising homosexuals in the schools. It is another thing to speak of love-making between members of the same sex as an animal performance which somehow degrades the sacrament of heterosexual sex, and is such that we must instil in our children a revulsion for homosexuals.”

I wonder if the publishers of Scruton’s rantings are going to include quotes from this review on the cover of any paperback edition they are silly enough to contemplate. I hope so, for it might read: “The general level of argument is dragged low by passion and the desire for attention”; “a shuffle of tedious literary metaphors”; “inane”; “this brazen piece of self-advertising nonsense”. Well, Carcanet Publishers, what do you think?

***

The right-wing propaganda sheets which pose as newspapers were quick to claim the Rt Rev George Carey, next Archbishop of Cant, as one of their own. Attempting to set the agenda for him, The Sunday Express (29 Jul) wrote: “he promises to act against vicars who practise homosexuality. He condemns sex outside marriage. And he spells out precisely where he stands on abortion.”

The Sun (30 Jul) said: “For a start, he has ranged himself against the ordination of practising homosexuals. This is entirely in line with the needs and wishes of the people. If gay men and women want to take orders, they should start their own church.”

Meanwhile George Gale (Daily Mail, 27 Jul), conveniently forgetting his own self-confessed atheism, wrote: “It is going to take a bit of getting used to having an archbishop who actually believes in traditional Christianity, its faith and its morals.” This is more than can be said for Mr Gale himself!

As if to confirm all this apparent hostility The Independent (28 Jul) headlined: “Carey sets out tough line on homosexuality”.

However, The Guardian (30 Jul) told us that Dr Carey denied that he “intended to ban practising homosexuals” and quoted him as saying: “You can’t give blanket judgements. The proper way for an archbishop or bishop is not to pontificate from on high, but to get close to people and talk about it.”

In The Church Times (3 Aug), Rev Philip Crowe, Principal of Salisbury and Wells Theological College and “a friend of long-standing” was quoted as saying: “There is no question of witch hunts. I know for a fact that he isn’t against homosexuals, and much of the information being circulated is inaccurate.”

In a letter to The Independent (30 Jul), Richard Kirker of the Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement said: “Dr Carey has a lot of damage to undo already. I wish he had started off on a more conciliatory note. He could start by apologising and looking at the facts.”

Don’t be too hard on the Archbishop-to-be. I’m sure he’s learned a salutary lesson from his first brush with the press — if he doesn’t watch it, they’ll be running the whole shebang for him. Nice and gently — something on the lines of Saddam’s Iraq.

***

According to The Plymouth Evening Herald (27 Jul) a “West Country clergyman” by the name of Father Bryan Storey, said that the gay community was a “Mafia-style bullying fraternity” and that “There will be blood on the streets of the South West eventually as people are fed up with the pernicious and nauseating nonsense that the gay community shove down our throats daily.”

Fr Storey is Catholic leader of the Tintagel-based “International Crusade for Moral Reform” (Jesus-in-Jackboots Division, presumably).

Like so many of these ultra-right groups that pervert the true meaning of religion for political ends, their organisation loves to rant and rave hysterically. Far from trying to silence them, however, we should encourage them to continue with their public utterances. Any reasonable person listening to the crazy comments of the likes of Storey would soon realise that it isn’t gays who will cause the blood to flow in the streets, but the Church of Our Father the Loony of Tintagel.

***

Last February, Sir John Junor unwisely gave an interview to The Independent on Sunday, which was headlined “There are no gays in Auchtermuchty.” He must rue the day he ever agreed to it, because it has haunted him ever since. Latest appearance of the spectre is in Punch (10 Aug). Writer Mike Conway (“a wee man from Kirkcudbrightshire”) made the pilgrimage to Auchtermuchty to find out — among other things — whether Junor’s contention that there are no gays there is true.

“‘Of course there are’, said the librarian (Caroline John), ‘I wrote to The Independent on Sunday complaining about that headline’ said the incomer (Caroline Fladmark), ‘I’ve just been speaking to a gay man. He lives down the road with his boyfriend,’ said the 67-year-old housewife. ‘Oh, he’s popular. He sometimes jokingly shouts Hello gorgeous on the street’, said the policeman. I was forced down the road to meet him. And very charming he was too.”

So, we know Sir John’s opinion of Auchtermuchty as some idealised, racially pure, homo-free Thatcherite paradise, but what do the residents think of Sir John? “Well, he can be funny and he gives the town some publicity,” said the librarian, “but… well… he’s a ghastly old bigot and I think he’s getting worse.”

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=

Given the hysteria that Aids continues to engender in our society, I’m surprised that it has taken so long for the papers to get around to the Terrence Higgins Trust. There have been hostile noises in the past, of course, but these have come mainly from predictable sources such as The Sun, and could be dismissed on that basis. However, when The Independent decides to do a job on the THT, we have to take it a little more seriously.

The paper gave a whole page over to Oliver Gillie (31 Aug) to write about the “Aids trust undermined by internal strife”. The gist of the piece was that THT is basically a gay organisation which does not give adequate attention to non-gays affected by HIV. It suggested that inefficient financial control and poor management led to a “haemorrhage of staff’. Allegations were also made that fundraising has been cocked up to the extent that some of the events actually left the organising bodies insolvent.

I don’t want to suggest that just because the Terrence Higgins Trust is possibly the most effective Aids organisation in the country that it is beyond criticism; it has certainly had a turbulent history. But The Independent report did seem to depend almost entirely on the testimony of disaffected ex-staff members. And again, no-one doubts that mistakes have been made: how could they be avoided in an organisation challenging a disease that has been stigmatised in a way that no other has since leprosy blighted the Middle Ages?

There is no model for the THT, it is the first in its field and nobody really knows how it is supposed to develop. Unlike other charities, it elicits hostility rather than goodwill from Joe Public. With the crisis still developing, we can only guess about what lies ahead. Nobody knows for sure whether society’s attitudes to Aids will improve or deteriorate. And how much death and prejudice can workers take before they burn out?

The one-sided nature of the article can be illustrated by the case of the fund-raising effort for “Romanian Aids babies”. Apparently, the appeal was wound up while it was still pulling in money, the accusation being that it was “distracting attention from gay men with Aids” — which critics say is the Trust’s only real concern.

But as a subsequent correspondent, who had worked on the THT switchboard, pointed out (3 Sep): “In my view the (babies) appeal was too hastily launched: bearing ln mind the trust’s existing workload, the Romanian crisis should have been handled by a separate agency specifically devoted to the task. One abiding memory is that of the offensive way in which many telephone callers demanded assurance that their donations would not, in any circumstances, go to benefit ‘homosexuals and drug users’, who, as I was told, were wholly undeserving of sympathy, having brought their misfortune upon themselves.”

The Independent has gained a reputation for taking gay issues seriously and of covering Aids responsibly. But there seems to be a contradiction — the intention may be worthy but the result is often ill-informed and shallow. The half-baked attack on The Terrence Higgins Trust (which will provide ammunition for those who want to make life even more difficult for those working in the Aids arena) was only one example.

When OutRage organised its “kiss-in”, The Independent sent a reporter and a photographer to cover it. Nothing wrong with the news story or photo but on the same day the paper carried an editorial which began “Attempts by homosexuals to raise public awareness of the various forms of discrimination from which they believe they suffer tend to be counter-productive. Activism in any field is often one step from militancy and militant homosexuals are not generally a good advertisement for their Cause. Last night’s gay ‘kiss-in’ … is unlikely to increase public support.”

The editorial then said that “homosexuals have a good cause” and that the law, the police and other gay-bashers are behaving in a manner more befitting “Nazi Germany and Stalinist Eastern Europe”.

So, given that we’re being persecuted, isn’t protest justified? Don’t we, in such circumstances, have a right — or even a duty — to draw society’s attention to these flagrant breaches of human rights? “Unless homosexuals wish to alienate the public”, says The Independent, “they should conduct themselves with restraint.”

For all its sympathetic tone, this editorial isn’t a million miles away from John Junor’s accusation that ‘out’ gay people are “flaunting” their sexuality. The old we’ve-got-nothing-against-you-but-we-wish-you’d-keep-quiet argument sits uneasily with The Independent’s liberal pretensions.

On the subject of the “kiss-in”, The Guardian’s photo of the event was used in connection with an article about Aids and insurance. Under the photograph of the two men kissing was the crassly insensitive and offensive caption “The Kiss of Death?” Somebody at The Guardian wants their arse kicking for that one.

Deliberate offence was attempted by George Gale who wrote (Daily Mail 7 Sep): “Men kissed the men, women kissed women. Had it been the other way round the scene would have been gruesome.”

Unfortunately, the intended insult got lost as no-one seems to know what the silly old fart is banging on about. He’s advertised as “The man who cuts right through the nonsense”, but on this showing he should be renamed “The man who writes gibberish”.

***

There is a ‘minority group’ whose opinions are little heard in Britain’s media. I refer to the yobbos (aka hooligans, thugs, lager louts, and skinheads).

But now, at last, these pathetic amateur fascists have a voice in the press. The one among them who can write in joined up letters has got a job on the boot boys’ favourite paper — yes, The Sun. His name, as you know, is Garry Bushell.

I once swore that this sad little man would never sully this column again, but Our Gazza (as he prefers to be known to his ‘mates’ down the Dog and Bigot) is having his shortcomings paraded even more frequently by The Sun, who have now given him a weekly “soapbox” column.

Whereas in his “TV column” he repeatedly propounds the notion that foreigners are disgusting, homos are disgusting, sex is disgusting and the whole bleeding world beyond Wapping is disgusting (except for Sky television which, apparently, is wonderful). In his Saturday column he says exactly the same things. As Gazza himself might say: he repeats himself more often than a BBC programme planner eating chicken biryani.

To be blunt, Gazza has gone off. He’s told his one joke (see previous sentence) so many times that it is now stale beyond belief. He doesn’t infuriate or amuse any more, he just induces yawns. On 8 September, though, gobshite Garry betrayed his mates by suggesting — amongst the usual racism and homophobia — that Britain should tell the United Nations (a bunch of loony lefties, of course) where to get off and bomb Iraq off the face of the earth. He hoped, as he sat behind his comfortable desk at Fortress Wapping, that not many of “our boys” would be killed.

I suggest “our boys” invite their hero out to the front and let him see how it feels to have nerve gas dropped on him. Then instead of Bushell On The Box we’d have Bushell In The Box — truly a cause for flag-waving.

***

The Independent (4 Sep) brought us news of the kind of equal opportunities we can well live without. Just when you thought McCarthyism was a thing of the past, the Commander of the United States Atlantic fleet, Vice-Admiral Joseph Donnell, announces that he wants to “counteract the impression that officers were more scrupulous in enforcing the exclusion of gay men than gay women.” And so he has ordered that his enforcers root out lesbians from the service. He admits that lesbian sailors are “hard working, career-oriented, willing to put in long hours on the job, and among the command’s top performers”. But they still have to go.

Is this man sane? Or is he a fifth columnist whose so to rob the US Navy of its best personnel? Maybe the wrong people are being rooted out in this instance.

***

In The Sunday Times of 2 September, Digby Anderson was propounding the idea that people who “inflict ill-health on themselves” should receive “lower priority” for health care. They should “go to the back of the queue or perhaps pay extra contributions”.

As well as people who give themselves heart attacks through ‘overindulgence’, and those who pursue risky sporting activities, the main burden falls — you’ve guessed it — on those who have Aids, because they “elected to be promiscuous”.

Anderson says that “the moral dimension added by patients with behaviour-related conditions who are to take up beds needed by the more conventionally sick can only make the frustration (of those awaiting treatment) more acrimonious”.

Digby Anderson likes to present himself as a moralist. However, his ethical code would be more suited to a snake pit than a country that claims to be compassionate. (With apologies to snakes of all persuasions).

***

The Daily Telegraph (4 Sep) told us of the quandary facing members of the Manx Parliament who have been ordered to fall in line with a ruling of the European Court of Human Rights, which outlaws the outlawing of consensual homosexual acts. The Isle of Man is now one of the few places in Europe where homosexuality is completely illegal.

The dilemma arises from the fact that members of the House of Keys (as the Manx parliament is called) don’t want to repeal the cruel law. But if they don’t, Westminster will do it for them, thereby causing the forfeiture of “the right of the island’s 1,000-year-old parliament to govern its internal affairs.”

A five-man select committee investigating the matter has been gathering evidence. They went, for some reason, to Exeter and then to Jersey and Guernsey where the law was recently changed. They also went to Soho and interviewed Metropolitan police vice squad officers.

Is consultation with bigots and ignoramuses really the way to get a balanced picture of what gay life is like in our semi-civilised country? Why didn’t they consult the people the law actually affects? I suppose they thought gay opinions would be ‘unbalanced’ whilst, of course, the vice squad would be totally unbiased.

I have to ask: what is it that attracts nincompoops to politics? It takes a special kind of insensitivity to overlook the victims of a crime (and gay people in the IoM are, according to the European Court, the victims of an illegal act). Nevertheless, in its smugness, the House of Keys wants to keep its wretched, persecutory law. It may turn out to be its undoing. And not a minute too soon.

***

The front page of the Torquay Herald Express (14 Aug) had two major stories. The top one concerned 7-year-old Gemma Lawrence, who was kidnapped from a caravan park in Dorset. Underneath that, in even larger headlines, was “Child sex pest purge”, over a story concerning the police targeting of cottages in Torbay. “Police today launched a major crackdown on perverts preying on children in South Devon’s public toilets”, the story began. “For the first time warning signs have been erected outside toilets after a flood of complaints from parents and other members of the public.” No positive instances of child abuse around the cottages were cited as proof of this alleged “preying on children”.

That didn’t matter, the connection had been made in the reader’s mind between homosexuals and child molesters. According, to this nasty little rag homosexuals are invariably paedophiles. Whatever you might think of trolling in toilets, these are pretty slanderous conclusions to jump to. The supposed connection between men cruising cottages and child abuse is made repeatedly in the article, but without supporting evidence: “South Devon police commander Chief Supt Colin Moore admitted the increasing number of sex assaults on children is worrying him. And the crackdown comes as South Devon holiday camps review security after Gemma Lawrence was snatched from a caravan.”

Mr Moore is quoted as saying he cannot understand why homosexuals used public places for their “sickening habits” when private clubs and bars were available. He emphasised: “Expect no sympathy! You have been warned.”

Oh, don’t worry Chief Inspector, we know we can expect no sympathy from you or any of your hypocritical, flatfooted colleagues.

***

The Pope continues on his murderous way, this time on a tour of four African countries which are being inexorably destroyed by Aids. While in the Tanzanian capital of Dar-es-Salaam he said (Daily Telegraph 4 Sep) that the best way to defeat the disease was “marital fidelity and a resurgence of family values”. Condoms, he claimed, would “only encourage the very patterns of behaviour which have greatly contributed to the expansion of the disease.”

Western Tanzania, says Catherine Bond, the Telegraph’s East Africa Correspondent, “has an Aids epidemic to the extent that some rural areas have become depopulated and doctors in the tiny ex-Belgian colonies of Rwanda and Burundi say the adult HIV infection rate is about 30 per cent”

But still the Pope sticks to the unforgivable line, and some are suggesting that his inflexibility indicates that he is trying to elevate his teachings to the realms of the infallible.

This is all despite the fact the “love faithfully” idea is “totally impractical for the vast numbers of unmarried men and women in societies where polygamy is traditionally acceptable and men take mistresses after marriage as a matter of course.”

As the young people of Africa drop like flies, the Pope will fly back to his palace in Rome and remain unmoved. He should burn in the hell he is creating for so many others.

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=

“Gays and deviants ‘undermine the family’” was a somewhat predictable headline in The Guardian’s reports from the Tory Party conference (10 Oct). It was relating to the ‘debate’ on The Family (The Family, by the way, is a registered trade mark of Tory Central Office, and is occasionally leased to Christian Fundamentalist Loonies plc). Dr Adrian Rogers from Exeter (where, coincidentally, the last British witch was burned) said that “the enemies of the Conservative party are the enemies of the family — socialists who have brought together and politicised every deviant minority opposed to family life.”

Dr Rogers, who is depressingly well-known to readers of Gay Times, has the capacity to believe the incredible. Not only is he a fundaMENTAList Christian, he is also a subscriber to the Disney version of family life, where all children are happy, and all parents are kind, where there is no poverty or disadvantage. In Rogersland daddies and uncles and boyfriends just don’t do that kind of thing to children, and mummy stays at home to cook the tea.

It’s a dangerous fantasy because it flies in the face of real, measurable social trends. Instead of adjusting society to accommodate people’s real needs and desires, the Tories continue to try and force us all into the fantasy mould. Women will give up careers, men will stop being bastards and everyone who refuses to fit in will be PUNISHED.

In order to give this foolish nonsense some kind of credibility a scapegoat had to be found. Someone had to be made an example of. Enter, unwillingly, a lesbian couple in Newcastle, together with a two-year-old handicapped boy who had been placed with them for adoption.

“Labour-controlled Newcastle Council … has taken him from his loving foster mother. And allowed him to be adopted by two LESBIANS,” screeched an almost certainly libellous Daily Star editorial (9 Oct). “Since six weeks old, the boy has been looked after by foster Mum Helen Grant … But for some incredible reason the council has now handed the poor little mite into the care of two sexually maladjusted deviants.”

Obediently The Sun (13 Oct) took up the story and called upon Lynette Burrows, the supposed “child expert” who said (under the heading “Lesbian parents will ruin tragic tot’s life”): “Well-adjusted people tend to come from families which have both a loving mum AND dad.” This totally-ignored the fact that the foster mother who is kicking up all the fuss can, herself, only offer a one-parent family — having been divorced for 12 years. Mrs Grant admits that she was “not in a position to adopt” the child when he was offered to the lesbian couple (Daily Mail 9 Oct) but then changed her mind after the arrangements had been made. There is a suggestion that her ex-husband was also exerting influence on her not to adopt. Undoubtedly there are many other issues which —quite rightly — are not for public scrutiny, but which are extremely relevant to the brave decision taken by Newcastle Social Services Committee. These complications have been totally disregarded by the press who have presented this case as one of preferential treatment for homosexuals over the wishes of a “normal” woman (“Foster mother loses her baby to lesbians” — Star, 9 Oct). It is a distortion and a disgrace. It has nothing to do with journalism, and everything to do with propaganda.

The disinformation continued in The Daily Mail (12 Oct), when Woman’s Editor, Diana Hutchinson wrote: “On one side is a lesbian couple whose need to give a child a home to normalise their relationship is greater than the child’s need of them. On the other side is the social services committee congratulating itself on being forward-thinking and liberal-minded.” And falsifying the whole thing is the Tory party and those such as Ms Hutchinson who serve their interests by demonising innocent people who simply want to do their best.

I don’t generally go in for conspiracy theories, but a pattern seems to be emerging. Before the Tory conference began, The Sunday Express (30 Sep) carried an investigation into local authority policies on adoption by gay couples: “Stop this Outrage” was their front page on what posed as a balanced investigation. The paper had contacted 133 local authorities in the UK and found that 91 said they would not rule out placing children with homosexual couples. Only eight admitted that they had already done so.

Inside the paper, there was “The case for” and “the case against”. There was also a “case history” attacking The Albert Kennedy Trust and, as usual, giving only one side of an obviously very complicated story.

And naturally a fuming Tory MP was produced to confirm The Sunday Express’s alarm. Jerry Hayes says that he is “outraged as well as disturbed” (‘disturbed’ is definitely the right word), “that so many social services departments would not rule out an application from a gay couple for fostering and adopting children”.

The Sun also picked up this story — omitting the “case for” and any other positive statements that might have appeared in the original. However, it did try to balance the matter by later publishing an interview with a woman who had actually been brought up by lesbian parents and survived into happy adulthood (“I’m Proud of My Gay Mum” — 4 Oct). The problem was that the case FOR lesbian mothers was almost as insulting as the case against. “I didn’t grow up learning to be a lesbian. I grew up a proper woman,” Linsey Berwick is quoted as saying. And her husband Martin “finds having two mothers-in-law HILARIOUS”.

I have a sinking feeling that this is only the start. In order to perpetuate their fantasies, the family fanatics are increasingly going to point to lesbians and gays as the source of all evil. We are a ready-made “unpopular minority” ripe for exploitation by the savages of the Right. This will let off the hook the real villains: the rapists, child-abusers and wife-beaters who conceal themselves under the veil of that much-abused institution The Family.

***

Writing in The Guardian (4th October) about the nature of Sun journalists, Duncan Campbell said that most of us see them as “big, bad and powerful”. The Wappingites, on the other hand, consider themselves “forever set upon by do-gooders, militant gays and the Establishment in general. Public contempt,” said Campbell, “has left them convinced that they are pariahs and outcasts — an image they tolerate in their sure conviction that they are the voice of the common people.”

This might explain how one Sun hack — Caroline Graham — can live with herself after she lied, tricked and cheated a bunch of innocent women in order to deliver a distorted travesty of a story to The Sun on 3rd October.

“My Dodgy Day with the Dykes” was the result of Ms Graham’s “infiltration” of the Women’s Therapy Centre in Islington. Her purpose was to expose how “a loony left-wing council is giving poll tax payers’ money to an organisation that is running a bizarre range of women’s workshops including one to ‘excite lesbians’.”

The way Caroline told it, you’d have thought she’d penetrated Saddam’s bunker in Baghdad instead of a help centre for women with problems. Our courageous spy felt it necessary to assume a disguise in order to pass herself off as one of these aliens, these LESBIANS.

To add much-needed spice to the story, Caroline made everything seem sinister: “Everyone was wearing trousers, most had short, cropped hair and the woman opposite me had legs that were covered in black hairs.” (Let’s hope poor Caroline was paid danger money for this!)

Naturally the lesbians could do nothing right, everything was “bizarre”, “weird” or shocking to fearless — but thankfully normal — Caroline. (“Amanda touched my leg, I think it was accidental but I felt sick.”)

Two pages of this stupid, childish nonsense later, and The Sun wheels on Islington’s own rentagob, Liberal Democrat councillor Chris Pryce, to say: “Poll tax payers should not be forced to subsidise this sort of wicked nonsense. Money is being wantonly chucked away.”

You will be pleased to know that Caroline escaped her ordeal without a scratch, having narrowly avoided being “turned into a lesbian” herself.

However, there are one or two little facts that our lion-hearted hackette forgot to mention. This is unfortunate because other, less scrupulous, journalists gloatingly and repeatedly drew attention to them over the following days — somewhat taking the gilt off dear Caroline’s gingerbread.

First they noted that the Women’s Therapy centre also receives a grant from loony right News Corporation (prop. R Murdoch and publishers of The Sun). Then they discovered that the patron of the Centre’s accommodation is that other hairy-legged woman, the Queen Mother. The Centre’s main function is to help women who are suffering from post-natal depression, eating disorders and beatings from husbands. Its lesbian-interest output is minimal.

Oh Caroline! You weren’t by any chance telling less than the truth, were you? Or betraying “all bounds of basic human decency” as one of the women you shat on said in a letter to The Guardian (8 Oct)?

Still, I’m sure you’ll dine well with Mr Murdoch’s fat pay cheque, although I have to say that a lot of people out here will be hoping that you choke on it

***

The Press Council’s rejection of complaints about the use of the word `poof’ in The People has left most people confused about whether their original adjudication meant anything. Is it permissible once more to use abusive language against gays? The News of the World certainly thinks so (“Our Probe Shuts Posh Poof Club” — Oct). But what does Mr Louis Blom-Cooper, the chairman of the Press Council have to say on the matter? “I can assure you that there is no question of any resiling from the decision against The Sun which the council made earlier this year declaring the use of the words ‘poof’ and `poofter’ which were calculated to be insulting as breach of journalistic ethics,” says Mr Blom-Cooper in a letter, “For what it is worth, in view of the likely disbandment of the Press Council, that ruling established a clear precedent. I know not whether it will be so regarded by a successor body.”

But what is the use of such a precedent when breaches of it go unpunished?

***

Sunday Times reporter Michael Graham accompanied a group of gay “vigilantes” called the Pink Panthers through the night streets of New York (30 Sep) to see how they functioned. Not very well, was the answer. But then, the idea of gay “vigilantes” is half-baked, anyway, and maybe even dangerous for those concerned. Martial arts skills are no match for bullets, I’m afraid. Neither should we be relieving the cops of their duties; instead of patrolling the streets, the Pink Panthers would be better advised to use their energies insisting that the police give us protection on the same terms as everyone else.

However, it’s a legitimate topic for debate and raises the whole subject of police prejudice. Naturally The Sun felt the need to contribute its two-pennorth of twaddle (25 Sep) and informed its apparently cretinous readers that the Pink Panthers “use judo, not handbags”.

Oh God, is there no relief from this tiresome stereotyping? Not in The Sun, no siree. “Drag queens, transsexuals in leather, macho bikers and shaven headed lesbians see the Panthers as liberators.”

The Panthers’ uniform’ was described as “high black lace up boots and lavender berets — a sort of cross between Rambo and Dame Edna Everage”.

The story keeps the laughs going with tales of gay men having I4-inch knife scars and being attacked with baseball bats. The attitude seems to be: They’re only fags so what does it matter?

Even our agony seems good for a giggle in The Sun.

***

Quote of the Month: “The whole country owes him a great debt of gratitude.” – John Junor on crumbling empire-builder Rupert Murdoch (Mail on Sunday, 14 Oct)

***

The Press Council’s code of practice says: “Publishing materials or making inquiries about the private lives of individuals without their consent is unacceptable unless these are in the public interest over-riding the right of privacy.”

The News of the World (14 Oct) told its readers: “Telly star Matthew Kelly has set up home by the seaside — with a drag queen. Matthew spends all his spare time with gay cabaret artist Dave Lynn.” Mr Kelly is quoted as saying: “It is not anybody else’s business. People can think what they like … It’s not important to anybody but me and Dave.”

One can’t help but agree. So what is the over-riding public interest, beside sheer salaciousness? The Press Council will, no doubt, remain as silent as the grave. Roll on Calcutt.

***

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 coming out of gay football ace Justin Fashanu has stirred up a hornets’ nest of resentment in Britain’s black community. The fact that he chose the sleaze-bag Sun in which to do it seems to have hurt them most of all. There was, of course, little dignity in making the declaration to Mr Murdoch’s money machine. The story was reduced to a catalogue of ‘gay romps’ and (most distasteful of all) sex with a Tory MP. As one columnist in The Voice (“Britain’s best Black Newspaper”) said (30 Oct): “Apart from the money, what drives a man to confess his bedroom antics to an anti-gay paper like The Sun?”

The sum involved is said to be £30,000, but Justin Fashanu didn’t just sell his coming out story for that — he sold his place as a black hero. As The Voice’s editorial put it: “His sexuality is his own business, but when such disclosures are portrayed in such a fashion it is an affront to the black community. Positive images of black people are still rare in the British media. But, through sport, black individuals have carved out positions of respectability … That’s why Justin Fashanu’s actions are so damaging … Telling the world you’re gay is one thing, but claiming that your conscience and faith in God led to the publication of such revelations is pathetic and unforgiveable.”

I agree that Justin could have done it better, but I doubt very much whether he would have got a different reception from the black community however carefully he’d handled it. In the same issue of The Voice is a report from the International Black Gay and Lesbian Conference which said that “anti-gay feeling is rising alarmingly within the black community”. And evidence of that was provided by The Voice’s columnist Tony Sewell: “We heteros,” he writes, “are sick and tired of tortured queens playing hide and seek around their closets … Homosexuals are the greatest ‘queer-bashers’ around. No other group of people are so preoccupied with making their own sexuality look dirty.”

Apparently the Fashanu family is powerful in its native country of Nigeria, and so the Nigerian High Commission in London explains until recently homosexuality was punishable by death there: “In Nigeria we treat homosexuals with utter contempt,” said a spokesman. “Homosexuality is still illegal in Nigeria. I can assure you that the Nigerian people as a whole do not like them.”

I don’t suppose the diplomat who said those words would want to shout too loudly about Nigeria’s other human rights abuses, including public executions, imprisonments without trial, and the persecution of trades unionists and political dissidents. However, like so many other military regimes throughout the world, they can openly brag about their brutality to homosexuals, and nobody says a word — least of all Amnesty International.

The week before the Fashanu story, The Voice had also been adding its weight to the strident calls for a ban on gay people adopting children. “Why gays and lesbians aren’t fit to be parents” said the headline over comments by a “senior black church leader”, Bishop White of the Bibleway Pentecostal Church, south east London. He said: “It’s immoral … Children should remain in care rather than go to a homosexual couple.” Meanwhile, Rajunder Daniel, race relations advisor to the Church of England said: “I always fight for the minorities, but in this case, it would be morally wrong to place an innocent child with a gay couple.”

And here we come to another problem — the religious mania which grips the minds of so many black people. The Voice’s religious correspondent Marcia Dixon also commented on the Fashanu saga: “For several years Justin Fashanu has been a high-profile Christian, extolling the virtues of Christianity. To read that during the course of his Christian Life he was conducting homosexual affairs seems totally absurd, because it would mean that his Christianity had no effect whatsoever on his conduct.”

There is little doubt that some of the black churches are so way out they’re almost in orbit and it never seems to occur to them that perhaps it isn’t homosexuality that’s at fault but their irrational reactions to it.

Some ground was made up in the November 6 issue of The Voice, when an obviously more thoughtful leader writer commented: “Black people know only too well what it’s like being treated as a second-class citizen. Unfortunately, the experience of racism has not given us a greater degree of tolerance or understanding when it comes to accepting those who are different from ourselves. The treatment of gays and lesbians within our own community is proof of this. The black community is generally hostile and damning of its gay brothers and sisters, displaying the sort of narrow-minded ignorance we normally associate with bigots and racists … Can we morally demand equality and respect, if we are denying the same to members of our own community?”

I hope readers of The Voice are listening and comprehending.

***

Eight years ago, Justin Fashanu sued The Sunday People when it reported “his strenuous denials of rumours that he was homosexual”. According to “Man of the People” John Smith (28 Oct), his paper paid the footballer several thousand pounds in damages for “the alleged slur on his manhood.”

Now, claims Smith, they’re out for a refund. “Before this two-faced tittle-tattler starts congratulating himself on a healthy bank balance, I should warn him that we plan to take steps to ensure he returns every penny of the cash he screwed out of The People.”

Well, you can’t have it all ways, Justin.

***

In a new book of parliamentary insults, someone said of Norman Tebbit: “If a wasp flew into his mouth, he’d sting it.” Yes, Mr Tebbit is proud of his hard and vicious reputation. Reviewing The Guardian’s annual anthology “Bedside Guardian” (I Nov) he wrote: “For me at least the book has a negative side in the selection of pieces portraying Aids sufferers as tragic heroes rather than (as most of them are) victims of their own lifestyle. I wondered if syphilitic heterosexual bankers would have attracted the same sympathy, let alone near hero worship, as HIV-positive homosexual actors.”

But, of course, Guardian readers can give as good as they get, and in the letters column (5 Nov), Michael McHugh wrote: “Like so many others he is using Aids as an excuse to moralise and to judge, and his suggestion that HIV-positive people are the subject of ‘hero worship’ is repugnant. The many men, women and children who are living with Aids deserve our help, our support and our love like anyone who is ill. Many of the people living with Aids that I know have gained my respect because they are living with dignity in the face of hate and ignorance like that portrayed by Mr Tebbit.”

I wonder if Tebbit saw The Sunday Mirror on 4 November. It contained the heart-rending story of seven-year-old Colin Smith, who died recently from Aids. His parents told how the family became the target of a ferocious hate campaign because of their son’s condition. They received abusive phone calls and letters, they had “Aids graffiti” painted on their house, scratched on their car and even chiselled into their front door. All this directed at a small child. Colin’s mother says: “I just couldn’t understand the mentality of those people.”

Perhaps she should apply to Norman Tebbit for an explanation.

***

A Gay Times reader wrote to The Daily Star to protest at its calling a lesbian couple “maladjusted deviants”. He received a reply from Peter Hill, Associate Editor: “I think it is perfectly justified by any standards of decency. The idea of lesbians bringing up children is a cruel mockery of family values. And, by the way, it is ILLEGAL for lesbians to adopt children. They have to lie that they are single parents.”

This is a wonderful illustration of how ignorant tabloid journalists are. There is no law that says lesbians cannot adopt children — although I am sure some Tory backbencher is working to put that right — and given that there is no such thing as homosexual marriage how could a lesbian be anything other than a single parent — or two single parents living together?

Peter Hill is a crazy mixed up man. Emphasis on crazy.

***

The death of George Gale, the ghastly bigot who constantly harped on about his hatred of homosexuals, has illustrated how newspaper opinion rests in the hands of a small, but powerful, journalistic mafia. Tributes to Gale were paid by John Junor, Peregrine Worsthorne, Richard Ingrams and Paul Johnson as well as other Fleet Street notables —all of them sharing the same right-wing credentials.

To a man, they went    on about how George was “unique”, and didn’t follow the party line, (oh please, do me a favour!) Under his irascible exterior, George was a real sweety, they insisted. If you could get beyond the filthy intolerance, there was a heart of gold (“behind a mask which some found intimidating, even awesome, there beat a warm, generous and truly affectionate heart” – was how Paul Johnson put it in The Spectator). Translated into English it probably means: What a miserable bleeder he was, but we’d better say something nice because he’s only just hit the floor.

But even as one Gale blows itself out, another arsehole steps forward to fill his shoes. Or more precisely a Butt — Alan Butt who writes a Gale-esque column in The Exeter Leader: “So Exeter University Students are to hold a Lesbian and Gay Rights Week. In the name of sanity why? … If the students believe such promotion is necessary, then I’m raving bonkers. Most people know the positive image of this sad section of our community. Most are sick to death of being lectured on how we must accommodate (if not encourage) homosexuality.” (25 Oct).

No doubt Butt is taking lessons from that other clapped-out fogey, Richard Ingrams, who made a name for himself as a satirist. Now he’s about as funny as Romania. In a two-page interview with The Observer (28 Oct), Ingrams repeated the opinions he’s been peddling for years in his column in the same paper. Here’s one that won’t surprise you: “My antipathy to homosexuality is directed against homosexual campaigners rather than individual homosexuals. If I’m sitting side by side with a homosexual at lunch, I’m not going to get up and spit in his face since I don’t feel that individual repugnance. I don’t feel repelled by homosexuals if I meet them.”

Well, that’s very nice of Mr Ingrams, although I doubt whether any self-respecting homosexual would consent to have lunch with him in the first place. He quotes in support of his opinions that maladapted individual, Rabbi Blue: “I was impressed to hear him say on the radio that, although he is homosexual, he never uses the word ‘gay’ since there is nothing gay about being homosexual: it is all very difficult and complicated and not very nice. I think that is true of the homosexuals one knows, whose lives are on the whole neither happy nor gay.”

Naturally Mr Ingrams knows only unhappy homosexuals because he conveniently dismisses all others as mere ‘gay campaigners’. He doesn’t want to know the other side of the story. His mind is closed.

Yes, I think we can assume that there is nothing gay about Richard Ingrams. But he has a genius for creating gloom wherever he goes.

***

A few years ago, the then-Premier of Queensland, Australia, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, made it illegal to serve gay people in the pubs and bars of that state. He was given to calling homosexuals “revolting, evil animals”.

Now, according to The Daily Telegraph (3 Nov), Sir Joh is charged with corruption and perjury. He is alleged to have lined his pockets at the state’s expense. Hopefully his fall from grace will now be followed by painful humiliation and a long jail sentence. [Note: In fact, the jury in Bjelke-Petersen’s trial for perjury were unable to reach a verdict and he was considered too old to face a second trial. He died in 2005]

Of course, trying to ride to power by exploiting anti-gay prejudice is seen as a proven and easy option by many politicians with questionable motives. The Tories are dab hands at it, and so is Senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina. In the recent Congressional elections, Senator Helms tried to make homosexuality the “hot button” of his campaign (Sunday Telegraph, 4 Nov). “‘I don’t shake hands with no faggots,’ declares the dungareed North Carolina farmer … where Senator Jesse Helms, at an election rally for the faithful, has been inveighing against the ‘lesbian-gay lobby undermining our nation’s values.’”

Helms retains power by a whisker, but he did it only by appealing to the lowest, basest and most disgusting instincts in his constituents, and by playing every dirty trick in the book. Sooner or later the idiots who follow Helms will realise that they’ve been taken for a ride. Meanwhile we fight on, and you can help by boycotting Marlboro cigarettes.

Nearer to home we can read of the “slurs” that were directed at Mary Robinson, the newly-elected President of Ireland. Ms Robinson is well-known for her liberal views on a variety of “controversial” topics and her opponents exploited this mercilessly. “Ms Robinson is a supporter of homosexuals and lesbians they shouted, as though it were an accusation of something on a par with murder.” (Independent).

Ms Robinson did not deny her liberal credentials and she won through. Could it be that the people of Ireland are tired of the politics of hate? Are they at last willing to listen to the other side’s opinions on abortion, contraception and gay rights? I hope so.

***

On the subject of the latest Aids statistics, Julie Burchill wrote (Mail on Sunday, 21 Oct): “The fact that simply because a large number of rich, white homosexuals went on holidays to Aids-riddled Haiti in the Seventies and Eighties and indulged themselves with dirt-poor native boys for the price of a Pina Colada, we are now in the second Dark Age of sexual misery. It ill-behoves them now to wag their fingers at us, as we attempt to clean up the mess they’ve made.”

Who exactly is the “we” Ms Burchill refers to? And following her logic, might I ask how Aids reached Haiti in the first place in order for it to be carried out into her world? Presumably she wouldn’t have minded if it had stayed there. Which raises another hornets’ nest of racism.

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=

World Aids Day was well served on television and in the broadsheets, but the tabloids continue to promote the idea that HIV is not a problem for heterosexuals and that those who say otherwise are “homosexual propagandists”.

The welter of research findings, predictions and anecdotes had no effect whatsoever on those, such as Garry Bushell in The Sun and Brian Hitchen of The Star, who continue to insist that Aids remains a ‘gay plague’. “The Mawkish Minority had a field day, relentlessly pushing their claim that the awful disease threatens us all, despite the bitter controversy over this point in the medical world,” said a Star editorial (3 Dec). “Aids is a horrible killer illness. But so are cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis and a host of others. And they strike a lot more people in this country than Aids. Sufferers from these menaces … must be wondering why Aids is singled out for such lavish attention. Is it because Aids has ravaged the high-profile world of show business, killing many male entertainers? … It’s a queer old world, isn’t it?”

Garry Bushell, of course, managed to put it even more offensively. “It’s almost impossible to switch on TV without seeing some sanctimonious twerp rattling off a load of scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo proving the end of humanity is nigh … That may be true in the entertainment industry — riddled as it is with a mafia of promiscuous shirtlifters who are dropping like ninepins.”

Maybe heterosexual Aids is not happening here in a dramatic way — yet. But I would refer Mr Bushell to an article in The British Medical Journal, reported in the London Standard (30 Nov) under the headline “Aids will destroy nations”. It referred to African nations, of course, and we won’t wait to hear what Mr Bushell’s disgusting reaction to that would be. And no doubt he considered the World Health Organisation to be a “front for poofter propaganda” when it announced (Standard 27 Nov) that it now estimates that between eight and ten million people are HIV positive worldwide.

Glenda Jackson has a message which Bushell et al will find incomprehensible: “The battle against HIV and Aids will only be won if we acknowledge it is our fight and not someone else’s. If we don’t meet this challenge, we will have lost our humanity.”

However, there is no “scientific-sounding mumbo jumbo” involved in the stark fact that more and more women are becoming HIV positive. The heterosexual spread of HIV might be slow — one prediction said it could be thirty years before it reached the same level among heterosexuals as homosexuals — but it is inexorable. To encourage complacency at this stage, when millions of lives could be saved, has little to do with protecting gay rights, and everything to do with saving innocent people who are being deliberately misled by neurotic homophobes.

Bushell, Hitchen and the others who encourage heterosexuals to believe they are immune to HIV, are a public health hazard, and their rantings should carry a Government health warning.

***

The religiously-inspired are also a menace to their fellow citizens. The alarmingly crazed Graham Webster-Gardiner of the Conservative Family Campaign spoke to The London Standard (27 Nov) about the Terrence Higgins Trust: “They are simply a homosexual propaganda group. If they stopped their particular practices, Aids wouldn’t be a problem.”

Mr Webster-Gardiner is against the dissemination of practical information about safer sex, as is Councillor Joe Brennan of Galway, who described an Aids leaflet aimed at young Irish people emigrating to or already living in Britain as “immoral, obscene and pornographic” (Irish in Britain News, 30 Nov). “Let’s have the courage to tell everyone that by adhering to Christian principles we will avoid Aids,” he says.

There is nothing particularly “Christian” or “principled” about encouraging people to put their lives on the line in order not to offend some ridiculous dogma invented for use in an age long gone.

***

The “loony left” seems to be coming back into fashion as newspapers sniff out every grant — however inconsequential — made to gay people by local authorities. Bristol City Council has been put through the tabloid wringer for daring to give £500 “to pay for 15 lesbians to take acting classes” (Daily Star, 29 Nov). The Star wheeled out “angry Tory councillor” Marmaduke Alderson to say: “The decision is a classic example of how far away Labour is from the mainstream of politics.”

Commenting on the same measly grant (I mean, five hundred quid, I ask you!), our old friend John Smith (Man of the People) said: “Homosexuals are constantly reminding us that they are really quite normal human beings and no different from anybody else. Fair enough. But if that’s the case, why the hell do loony authorities keep treating them as something special?”

Well, John dear, it isn’t so much local authorities who treat us as ‘special’, it’s people like you. I notice you are silent on grants made to other minority groups. Why not put the boot into authorities that give money to rugby clubs, opera companies and scout troops? Could it be that you have something of an unhealthy obsession with homosexuals?

Meanwhile The London Evening Standard reported an “outcry” over Essex University’s plan to hold “the first United Kingdom conference on gay and lesbian studies, partly financed by the European Commission”.

As we know, as far as the right-wing press is concerned, the EC are a bunch of loony lefties (“Euro Laws will turn UK into Gay Paradise” — Daily Star), but where exactly is the “outcry” we have been promised? Well it seems to consist of some obscure local councillor, Doug Pallet, saying “This conference is an abomination”. Well, he’s entitled to his opinion, I suppose, and now he can go and stick his head in a bucket.

***

On the subject of the latest Aids statistics, Julie Burchill wrote (Mail on Sunday, 21 Oct): “The fact that simply because a large number of rich, white homosexuals went on holidays to Aids-riddled Haiti in the Seventies and Eighties and indulged themselves with dirt-poor native boys for the price of a Pina Colada, we are now in the second Dark Age of sexual misery. It ill-behoves them now to wag their fingers at us, as we attempt to clean up the mess they’ve made.”

Who exactly is the “we” Ms Burchill refers to? And following her logic, might I ask how Aids reached Haiti the first place in order for it to be carried out into her world? Presumably she wouldn’t have minded if it had stayed there. Which raises another hornets’ nest of racism.

***

The Press Council will be disbanded on January 1st, and its place will be taken by the Press Complaints Commission. This will be operated almost entirely by newspaper editors themselves. So much for independence. The new commission will be just another front the newspapers have invented to stave off the introduction of legislation to curb the more disgusting antics of the tabloids.

It isn’t clear yet what the terms of reference will be, but at present the editors of national papers are considering a 16-clause draft code of conduct.

The good news is that this is thought to include Calcutt’s recommendation that no unnecessary references to sexual orientation should be made, but the bad news is that the Commission will not (unless there is a reconsideration) consider complaints from “third parties”. Therefore, only those who are deemed to have been directly affected by a story will have the right of access to the Press Complaints Commission. It is unlikely that there will be another opportunity to challenge press homophobia in the same way as last year’s “poof and poofter” adjudication did.

I will be interested to know how the Press Complaints Commission would deal with a story such as that carried in The People (9 Dec) concerning a gay man employed as a butler in Downing Street. The paper splashed the story on the front page and on several pages inside. All it amounted to was a statement that the man is gay and that after loyally serving Mrs Thatcher, he was doing the same job for Mr Major. The inference, though, was clear — a gay man should not have a job in Downing Street, not even as a butler. How can the new commission control such spite? And does it even want to? We’ll have to wait and see.

***

A lot has been made in the popular press about Holland’s derision to reduce their age of consent, for homosexuals as well as heterosexuals, to 12. It was a story tailor-made for the sleaze papers who approached it in their usual hysterical manner, insisting that children cannot possibly be interested in sex, and are only capable of being exploited.

A more considered view was offered by The Independent on Sunday (18 Nov) which had actually done some research on the matter and found out the background to Dutch thinking. “The outcry abroad was a misunderstanding,” it quotes Gert Schutte of the Reformed Political Association as saying: “The new law was ‘not a liberal law’, it merely clarified things.”

The Independent on Sunday says that “relaxed attitudes to under-aged sex, coupled with good counselling and health services, have not led to the kind of hell imagined abroad.”

Mrs Willie Swildens, the woman who sponsored the new law said: “There must be some difference in the British way of living … I thought you were a free-thinking society, but perhaps you aren’t.”

I can assure you, Mrs Swildens, there’s no perhaps about it.

***

While watching the drama of Mrs Thatcher’s departure unfold, I was sipping a glass of recently opened champagne and thinking about Oscar Wilde’s comment about the demise of that other heroine of Victorian values, Little Nell. “You’d need a heart of stone not to laugh.”

Commenting on the despatch of Thatch in The Observer (25 Nov), John Sweeney wrote a most cheering article entitled “Iron Lady drags her tin men to the scrap heap” in which he predicted the fall of some of Mrs T’s most ardent followers. Among those he named were Kelvin MacKenzie — editor of The Sun — whose dismissal was “long overdue” and Bernard Ingham, the Machiavellian press officer. The latter is gone, the former still clings on. The “pall of failure”, according to The Observer, also hangs over Norman Tebbit, although the Chingford thug is still stirring trouble for gay people.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph (7 Dec) Tebbit wrote: “Many people have the strongest reservations about the practice of some local authorities in fostering young children into the care of adults who engage in unnatural sexual practices. Those who defend such authorities frequently do so by claiming there should be no discrimination by public authorities between those of normal sexual orientation and homosexuals. In the care of young children, at least, I would certainly not agree with them …”

Nothing new here, but the point of the letter is to draw Telegraph readers’ attention to a circular advertising a National Foster Care Association workshop entitled ‘Towards an Equal Service for Lesbians and Gay People’.

Mr Tebbit says: “I am told that the National Foster Care Association is funded by the Department of Health and the Scottish Office. I find it hard to believe that it is appropriate for taxpayers’ money to be used by the homosexual lobby to ‘develop anti-heterosexist attitudes’ among vulnerable young children in the care of local authorities. Surely such children have problems enough without having homosexuality rammed down their throats.”

The following day, The Daily Express reported that Health Minister Virginia Bottomley had “launched an enquiry” at Mr Tebbit’s behest. She is quoted as saying: “Under no circumstances should there be any question of subordinating the interests of any children to the promotion of equal or gay rights.”

And so you have another gay fostering scare story conjured up by an ace propagandist who recognises the mileage he can get out of twisting and distorting an important issue. Norman Tebbit is a shrewd operator, and if The Observer’s prediction does not come true, and he escapes the sinking of the Thatcher flagship, we can be sure that he will not leave this subject alone.

The reptile has given due warning that the Tories have found an issue that is ripe for exploitation, and the gay community should start preparing for the fray immediately. I suggest that Stonewall or CHE commission an independent study into gay and lesbian fostering so that when the time comes — as it surely will — for the big attack on gay fostering (and in the process, gay rights in general), we can refute the carefully-orchestrated scaremongering with authoritative evidence.

***

A tabloid newspaper’s agony aunt is very important for she provides an excellent source of semi-justifiable titillation for readers. It is clear from agony columns that the great British tabloid-reading public is the most sexually hung-up in the world. Naturally, among the cries about “My husband’s kinky demands” or “He’s having it off with my sister’s daughter’s friend”, there is plenty of homosexuality. Sometimes the advice proffered is reasonable. Deidre Sanders in The Sun has been offering an 0898 phone-in on gay relationships to her readers which, although expensive, couldn’t be faulted.

Often, though, the advice is abysmal. What doesn’t vary is the relentlessly negative way in which the problems are presented. The People’s ‘Dear Barbara’ column (2 Dec) featured “Secret shame of the Desert Rat buddies”, and you can imagine what that was, she also offered “Dismay of Being Gay” (18 Nov). Then our old pal Deidre in The Sun (6 Dec) was featuring “Gay gang rape has ruined my life.” The Daily Star’s Patricia Mansfield was providing advice to a woman under the heading “Lesbian lover is bored with me.” The News of the World has brought us “Gay obsession with pal’s son”.

Notice the key words in these headings: “dismay”, “bored”, “shame”, “ruined”, “obsession”. No tabloid paper could allow a gay person to be seen as successful, happy or well-adjusted. If they did, it might give the lie to the rest of the dross they print about us.