….I’d suggest your opinions about what’s “mainstream within the everyday gay culture” are totally worthless.

Well yes maybe, though I do on occasion frequent gay pubs.

This guy who is the editor of this gay website in Australia:
http://outrate.net/

…. said this about the Stephen Gately issue:

”Stop presenting gays as whiter than white”
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7588/

He says ”that beneath her prejudice and inaccuracy, Jan Moir kind of had a point.”.

Now I know that views like this are being called contrarian, but he goes on to say this:

The problem is not with Gately’s and his partner’s behaviour per se but with the deliberate crafting of the gay public image which runs so directly against the relatively normal and fairly harmless but nowadays desperately concealed sex and party lives of many typical gay men.

It reminded me of the Simon Fanshawe documentary ”The trouble with gay men” (which seems to have disappeared off youtube), but this was his argument:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2006/apr/21/gayrights.comment

….. which itself was seriously crticised by some other gay people:

http://www.marksimpson.com/blog/2006/05/04/the-trouble-with-men-mark-simpson-on-simon-fanshawes-the-trouble-with-gay-men/

My point is only, that there are different views out there, and not just one view.

1. Pointless attempting to defend the column – it was indefensible, and Jan Moir’s attempts only raise further questions about her judgment.

2. If there was an orchestrated internet campaign (which I doubt) I and others with whom I have discussed this, were not involved. We were quite simply, and separately, appalled by the sheer gratuitous hatefulness of what we had read.

3. Suggestions of homophobia and bigotry are not mischievous: There is simply no other way to interpret Ms Moir’s article, than as a vicious, ignorant, nudge-nudge-this-is-what-happens-if-you’re-gay-and you-have-sex attack on Stephen Gately in particular and on homosexuals in general, with never a thought to the pain she was bound to cause his grieving friends and family.

Why do you want to know exactly what other people were doing? It’s the sick fascination about the lives of other people that is disturbing. Moir was just doing a job to say to weak people that their deep loathing of homosexuals was correct. Whereas your speculation is prurient obsessive nastiness of the worst order.

From your inability to spell phlegm and choke I could assume a lot and be insulting. I won’t be as I do not know either of you. Save to say your comments are irrelevant to this discussion and judged on the link one of you supplied spam.

If you didn’t like her nasty little article in the Daily Moll, feel free to contact her directly at:

jan.moir@dailymail.co.uk

Send as many emails as you like, I’m sure Jan would *love* to hear from you all!

1. Mandates the death penalty for HIV-positive people who engage in sex with people of the same gender;
2. Calls for Uganda to withdraw from all international treaties and conventions which support the rights of lesbians, gays and bisexuals;
3. Introduces extradition arrangements for Ugandan citizens who perform ‘homosexual acts’ abroad
4. Includes legal penalties for people who fail to report alleged homosexual acts or individuals and institutions that promote homosexuality or same-sex marriage to the authorities.

The tabling of the bill has been accompanied by threats against any Ugandan media organisation that allows LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) Ugandans to air their views or publish press statements.

Full details can be seen here: http://bit.ly/9FFF4. The article also speculates about the motives for the bill, and is an excellent read. Please do have a look, when you have a moment.

I’m just not trying to airbrush homosexuality in all it’s glory.
Mainstream gay culture (or one aspect of it at least) is rampantly sexual.
I’ve been in gay clubs in Key West Florida where there were TVs above the bar showing gay porn. And seen in Montreal the cinemas where you get a condom given to you when you pay to go in. Don’t try to play down the cruising sexual culture. It’s integral.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7Ampu8jxP8

But I understand it’s much more than that too. Gay venues are usully just nice places to be in. Some of the pubs in Soho in London are really laid back spaces. I like to go in to them, even if it’s only to use the loo.
I’ve been to the gay pride marches a few times, but I think I agree with the author of this book:
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/queer-london-by-matt-houlbrook-506170.html

I do feel that the rush to normalise homosexuality is an attempt to take the fun out of it.
Whats wrong with it being a bit queer?

Well that’s fine. But if they could just avoid moving from “I don’t get it”, to taking a huge crap on a freshly laid grave, then they might not get slammed as homophobes quite so often.

Anyway, since you seem to believe that the average gay man wakes up in the morning, consults the Spartacus Gay Guide, and thinks “how many men can I fuck a toilet today”, I’d suggest your opinions about what’s “mainstream within the everyday gay culture” are totally worthless.

What people think of this aspect of gay culture I’d find more interesting.
It’s all very well slamming people as homophobes, but a lot of people will never get this kind of thing … which I think is pretty mainstream within the everyday gay culture.

Go into a gay bar or pub and I think that a lot of the men there will have at one time been in this gay sauna or sex cinema environment. The kind of places where sex takes place on the premises.

Looking at the Sparticus Gay Guide, there does seem to be a whole culture going on there that a lot of people might not really understand.
http://www.spartacusworld.com/gayguide/

I do find it disappointing that the left think that everyone should get every aspect of everyone elses culture.

On the tube today there wers a couple of muslim teenagers wearing full muslim dress.
Chatting just like anybody else, but I’m sure they’d never get the Sparticus lifestyle.
Maybe because they were teenagers it would be inappropriate to even tell them that there was a gay way of living. But no one thought not to indoctrinate them into a religion.

Its’ good to be amongst fellow liberals, but I think it can also be a bit of a cul-de-sac.
Because anyone who isn’t quite liberal comes across a a monster, even though they are infact pretty mainstream in the wider society.

According to Charlie Brooker, Moir’s turd-burger breaches sections 1, 5 and 12 of the Press Complaints Commission’s code of practice.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/oct/16/stephen-gately-jan-moir

I add this link with a warning. It’s from a football fans website, and this thread was about the death of Stephen Gately. It’s dreadfuly homophobic and I only include it because you may never actually come across people like this in day-to-day life, but it’s how many people still are.
http://www.millwall.vitalfootball.co.uk/forum/forums/thread-view.asp?tid=37171&start=1

On another thread on that website some time ago, one guy complained that he liked to watch Eastenders and Coronation Street, but that the gay characters were putting him off his dinner. (Made him feel ill or something).
Could their loathing of homosexuality be put down to a cultural disconnect?

I think it’s understandable that some people find the gay bathouse scene to be crass.
If you are generally conservative about sexuality, you will find that, and what George Michael gets up to on Hampstead Heath difficult to fathom.

But let’s not forget that nothing is written in the Mail that Paul Dacre doesn’t want written. This was either written at his express ask or he read it and approved it. By all means attack Jan Moir but make sure he shares the credit.

She’s right there was no undertones just straight bigotry.

You know even if he had died of heart failure having snorted 10 lines of coke off 3 14 year old rent boys her comments would still be extremely bigoted trying to extrapolate a line of “reasoning” about one person’s death to label gay people and civil partnership. As it turns out she was factually inaccurate.

I cannot wait for her attack on heterosexual marriage if Amy Winehouse were to die an early death. Actually I lie I could avoid anything this person writes.

I’d write about how larger westerners are disproportionately contributing to global warming but I probably give Ms Moir 100 pounds.

Sadly I think the Mail will be happy or maybe was happy a million tweets ago. Most of their stories are designed to reassure bigots and make those bigots the victims of Liberals and PC machinations. Hence their child like attempt to call the outcry co-ordinated – that really is sad!

Regular readers of my blog (www.p0pvulture.blogspot.com) will know that there is little love lost between me and the Daily Mail, a paper so filled with bile and vitriol it takes half a pack of Settlers Tums to get past page four. However, this week, it’s bloated harridan Jan Moir’s turn in the spotlight, giving Amanda Platell a well-earned week off.

Since Sunday’s shocking news about Stephen Gately’s death at the age of 33, celebrities of every shape and size have come forward to pay their respects to the mild-mannered boy-bander. Tantrum-throwing hairpiece model Elton John called Stephen “the kindest, gentlest soul”, whilst silver ocelot (well, ‘fox’ seems a bit of a stretch) Philip Schofield said “Poor Stephen. He was a really lovely guy.”

A-to-Z list tributes aside, it’s clear that Stephen’s bandmates have taken the news hardest, pledging to stage an overnight vigil with his body, and displaying new tattoos in honour of their fallen comrade.

With no foul play, no evidence of hard drug use, and no suicide note, the Spanish authorities quickly determined that Gately died of natural causes, affording his family sufficient closure to concentrate on their grief. But it seems that there’s no smoke without ire, at least not if you’re veteran columnist and homophobic hack Jan Moir.

Proving that beauty may be skin deep, but ugly runs all the way through, Moir wrote a spectacularly offensive article, originally entitled “Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately’s death”. Bizarrely, the article managed to inflame even the cast-iron sensibilities of the Mail’s regular readers, and was promptly renamed “A strange, lonely and troubling death . . .” (which is a little like declaring a gun amnesty, only to swap the firearms for knives).

In a hateful piece littered with speculation, hearsay and plain ignorance, Moir posits that to label Stephen’s death as ‘natural’ is to overlook the ‘unnnatural’ aspects of his life. And it doesn’t take a genius to work out that, when talking about unnatural behaviour, she doesn’t mean covering old Cat Stevens songs.

She’s far more concerned with the fact that Gately and his husband Andrew Cowles had picked up a young Bulgarian at a nightclub and invited him back to their apartment in Mallorca. Describing these circumstances as “more than a little sleazy” this real-world Dolores Umbridge uses the situation to condemn “the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships”. In her beady eyes, the activists who call for ‘tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships’ are wrong to suggest that they are just the same as straight marriages. And in this sense she’s right, but not in the way that she thinks.

Denied full equality, many gay people have instead taken the opportunity to define the parameters of their own relationships. Rather than looking for mainstream approval, they simply do what works for them, and as long as it remains honest and consensual, what right does anyone else have to criticise them for it?

If she was looking for notoriety, Moir certainly got her wish, with hundreds of people taking to Twitter and Facebook to voice their disgust. Even more visited the Press Complaints Commission website, which crashed under the sheer weight of traffic. Advertisers Marks & Spencer and Nestle were also quick to distance themselves from the controversy, insisting that their ads be removed from the online version of the article.

Although calls have been made for Moir to be sacked, it’s unlikely that any of the invertebrates at the Daily Mail will develop enough of a spine to do the right thing, so we need to find an appropriate method of counterattack.

In the truly repellent final paragraph of her article, Moir writes that an “ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see” without ever specifiying what other slimy fluid she’s referring to. But I think we all have a good idea.

In 2003, gay American humorist Dan Savage decided to name the ‘seeping ooze’ after bigoted right wing senator Rick Santorum. The sexual neologism he created spread quickly and soon passed into common parlance, but only within the continental United States where the name had any kind of relevance.

Perhaps what’s needed here is a similar kind of ‘tribute’. Who agrees that Jan deserves to have that same ooze named in honour of her? After all, Americans have elevators and candy, we have lifts and sweets. We’re two nations divided by a common language. Let’s bring that tradition into the 21st century.