If it is acceptable to criticise a politician for acting contrary to their expressed views (eg – as her picture stares at me, Diane Abbott, who sent her son to private school whilst advocating state education), I personally do not see why someone who judged students so negatively should not also be exposed as acting in a hypocritical fashion (being married whilst also viewing gay porn).

Do we expect our politicians to be perfect human beings? Certainly not, they are as flawed as anyone else (some might say more so!), but that does not mean they are beyond criticism for those flaws – it’s part of the job and those politicians that accept it tend to be more understanding of everyone else, it’s the ones who forever sit in judgement on the rest of us poor flawed humans who also hate their own lives and actions being scrutinised.

I am not convinced that the original piece was homophobic as it didn’t criticise anyone for being gay, but rather criticised them (rightly, in my view) for being different to what they purported – and that is fair comment on this site.

In a week where freedom of speech has taken a battering (and accepting that this is different), I still think that bowing to the pressure of celebrity leftwing bloggers into removing a legitimate criticism of a judgemental Tory is not the best of moves for a liberal left blog…

Err… why not call it gay porn if it is gay porn? Suggesting that correctly describing the kind of porn involved in an article promotes bigotry assumes that there is something wrong with ‘gay’ in the first place – which there isn’t. It’s an established form of porn, that’s all. Just accurate reporting, surely?

Suggestion: whenever ‘standard’ porn is mentioned in the media from hereon in, let’s correctly label it ‘female’ porn. That would constitute a far greater exposé of bigotry, not only in the delightful world of porn itself, but right across the board in society.

Well done LibCon and Sunny for accepting responsibility and apologizing, the best of us can get it wrong at times and it is good see people fess up when they realize they have done so.

I’m going to get lynched for this, but I feel for Unity, it was a muck up but I’m sure he did not intend for it to cause this.

Glad to see this apology on here, and especially glad to see an acknowledgement that it wasn’t just the wording but the whole subject matter that was inappropriate.

The story was *not* about an allegation that Renwick was wasting time at work (the implication being that he was in no position to call students ‘workshy’); it was about an allegation that Renwick had been using a work laptop, in his own time, to access a gay social networking site with nudie pictures on it.

Over at Harry’s Place, Unity has made this suggestion:

“As for being homophobic, the original post gave nothing more a factual account of the inquiry. Anything else you choose to read into it is no more than the product of your own underlying assumptions.”

- implying, presumably, that it’s those of us who objected to the post who are the real latent homophobes.

In response to that slur, I’d just like to repeat here the response I gave at Harry’s Place:

“If you’d put put up a post called “Tory councillor in ‘black girlfriends’ inquiry”, then offered a factual account of an inquiry into a councillor’s viewing black women’s profiles on a dating website, exactly how much would I have to “read into it” to detect a racist undertone? Such a post would be entirely pointless if one didn’t mean to imply that there was something wrong with dating black women. In the same way, your post was entirely pointless if you didn’t mean to imply that there was something wrong with using a gay social networking site with naughty pictures on it.”

Homophobia is only one of the issues here anyway. A post revealing that a copy of a heterosexual porn mag had been found in a politician’s recycling bin would still be an objectionable, muck-raking attempt to embarrass someone over their private sexual behaviour.

So I’m not convinced Unity ‘gets it’. Still, as I say, Sunny’s apology is very welcome.

good on you Sunny. Like G.O., I think the story would have been objectionable enough if it was straight porn.

Sorry – I ought really to add that one doesn’t have to believe Unity is himself homophobic to believe that his post was playing to or making use of homophobic attitudes (in trying to embarrass someone by reporting an allegation of homosexual behaviour).

An apology – what you will not see on a variety of right leaning blogs.

Well called, Sunny – I don’t believe that Unity meant to be homophobic. 99% of what he posts is sound, and that’s a good hit rate. It’s in the category of stuff that happens and of hindsight being a wonderful thing.

Good call.

At least you have the guts to pull an article when it is clearly appropriate to do so – unlike most other sites, I have to say.

Well done Sunny – it’s always good to see people own up to their mistakes. It’s something the blogosphere does much too little of.

I’m a big fan of Unity’s in general, and don’t believe for a second that this was anything other than a regrettable cock up.

Thanks for this Sunny.

10 et al

I concur.

Incidentally, my favourite BTL comment was someone suggesting the OP may not have been posted by Unity but an impostor. An impostor!

‘Thank God you came to taste the jam, Mrs Marple. There’s been an incident…’

Excellent to see a mea culpa, I wasn’t happy with Unity’s post, even the edited version didn’t sit right.

I am happy to give Unity the benefit of the doubt, he fucked up.

Good to see a glimmer of humility there, Hundal. It’s a good look for you, hold that thought.

I see you couldn’t resist a pointless dig at the massively successful Guido Fawkes blog though. Jealous much?

@8

My sentiments exactly.

There were two issues:
(1) that the feature was, intentionally or not, homophobic in tone, for which your OP is a perfectly adequate apology on your part (and I don’t doubt your sincerity here) and
(2) homophobic or not, it was still an ad hom attack entirely irrelevant to the original issue. It really doesn’t matter if Renwick bathes in virgin’s blood: unless the virgins were students it’s nothing to do with Renwick’s comments on the riot.

And that is a regular problem with the site: that it tackles people – often by association – rather than the issue.

What 8 said – well done Sunny.

@14, Did you not read the numerous comments in the OP comparing this to Guidos writing style? I think thats Sunny was getting at, the clue was when he said

“On reflection I think many were right to say the subject itself was more the style of Guido Fawkes than Libcon.”

I don’t get it. You (Sunny) have apologised, but where is the apology from Unity. He needs to give the apology and explain himself.

He deliberately changed “fitlads.net” to “Fitkids.net” to smear and imply peadophillia. That’s appalling.

I couldn’t be more opposed to the right-wing anything, including the Tories, but this is very poor journalism / blogging. By talking about gay porn, then changing the name from “fitlads” to “Fitkids”, he’s also implied a link between gay porn, and peadophillia. He should apologise. Unity and myself share the same political party leanings. Otherwise, I value this blog.

Great – a website called ‘liberal conspiracy’ reacts to faux anger from a bunch of fascists and censors its own exclusive story because of it.

Reminds me of the Easy Rider quote:

“They’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.”

Phew! I thought this was a story about me

You don’t see apologies on political blogs very often. In fact you hardly ever see any when it comes to politics.

Credit to Sunny for this. It takes cojones.

Sunny,

Well done – it was the right thing to do.

PS: Now you’ve built up moral credit could you please blow it all by featuring articles about Tommy Sheridan? That certainly would satisfy our appetite for sleezy political gossip.

Well said.

Sunny,

Thanks for doing the right thing. For all we may disagree on just about everything, I still respect you, and I’m glad I don’t have reason to question this.

Ellie Mae @12.

Incidentally, my favourite BTL comment was someone suggesting the OP may not have been posted by Unity but an impostor. An impostor!

That was me I believe – I meant it sarcastically, since I know Unity’s posts well enough (they are normally a wonderful debating challenge) to doubt he meant anything malicious with the post beyond embarassing the guy who made the comments, but that it came across wrong. It just felt odd seeing a post by Unity that could so clearly be taken the wrong way…

I’m still not sure if viewing porn is to be considered shameful or not.
Does it make a difference if it’s gay porn? As many regard hetro porn as having misogynistic tendencies – and there is no doubt that thousands of women are exploited in the making of it. Even if they were paid and gave their consent.

I remember US Justice of the Supreme Court Clarence Thomas being embarrassed during his nomination process and the Anita Hill scandal, when they found a guy who worked at a local porn video store, and the guy said judge Thomas regularly rented out porno videos.
Of course its embarrassing.

He deliberately changed “fitlads.net” to “Fitkids.net” to smear and imply peadophillia. That’s appalling.

No, it was not deliberate, and it’s a shame that people read into things and think there’s intent without knowing the person. As I said, unity has a long, strong history of opposing homophobia, even within the Labour party which he passionately supports, so the idea that he did it deliberately simply does not stand up.

Thanks for your comments all.

Credit to Sunny Hundal here for this apology.

Now where is the one from Unity himself?

We’re told he accepts his wording was wrong, and that it was unintentional, and we’re assured he is no homophobe. Fine. So say ‘sorry’, Unity, and this can be put aside.

Thanks Sunny, takes balls to admit this & you’ve done the right thing! Out of probably 700 or so articles I’ve read on this site it was the only one that didn’t really sit right – Unity is 99.99999% of the time bang on the money but we all have bad days.
Good call.

“faux anger from a bunch of fascists…”

Wrong. Real anger from a number of gay posters who object to the paedophilia insinuation and the insinuation that being gay (mentioned SIX times in the orginal article) is ‘filthy’ and/or something to be mocked.

@ 20

“Great – a website called ‘liberal conspiracy’ reacts to faux anger from a bunch of fascists and censors its own exclusive story because of it.

Reminds me of the Easy Rider quote:

“They’re gonna talk to you, and talk to you, and talk to you about individual freedom. But they see a free individual, it’s gonna scare ‘em.””

If you think the cause of liberalism is well served by trawling people’s laptops for evidence of their sexual preferences and then publishing the details online, you have a rather strange idea of what it means for people to enjoy basic freedoms. You may as well defend someone’s ‘individual freedom’ to put a spy camera in the ladies’ loos at work, spraypaint ‘HIV positive’ on a someone’s front door, or peek over a neighbour’s shoulder in the polling station to see how he votes.

Sunny -

“unity has a long, strong history of opposing homophobia, even within the Labour party which he passionately supports, so the idea that he did it deliberately simply does not stand up.”

As I’ve already suggested, you don’t have to believe Unity is a homophobe by conviction to believe that his ‘naming and shaming’ of someone accused of viewing a gay website was a homophobic thing to do. Probably it was just an ill-judged bit of opportunism.

But if the point of the post wasn’t to imply that Renwick had done something shameful by looking at that website, what on earth was it? (And no, it *wasn’t* to suggest that he was a hypocrite for calling students ‘workshy’ – there was no suggestion in the post that he had been doing private browsing in work time, or anything like that.)

@ if you think the cause of liberalism is well served by trawling people’s laptops for evidence of their sexual preferences and then publishing the details online, you have a rather strange idea of what it means for people to enjoy basic freedoms. You may as well defend someone’s ‘individual freedom’ to put a spy camera in the ladies’ loos at work, spraypaint ‘HIV positive’ on a someone’s front door, or peek over a neighbour’s shoulder in the polling station to see how he votes.

Do you think the person who wrote the article was the same person who did the spying?

Or are people not allowed to mention abuses of civil liberties?

And can you not see the irony / hypocrisy in someone calling one taxpayer funded group ‘workshy filth’ when they themselves are funded by the taxpayer and are not working at work?

‘Or are people not allowed to mention abuses of civil liberties?’

Who’s ‘civil liberties’ are we talking about here – Unity’s liberty to publish the contents of somebody’s laptop? Maybe we should have a look at your browser history, eh?

‘And can you not see the irony / hypocrisy in someone calling one taxpayer funded group ‘workshy filth’ when they themselves are funded by the taxpayer and are not working at work?’

Being funded by the tax payer doesn’t mean he doesn’t get to comment on other people funded by the tax payer, unless you want to ban teachers, civil service staff, the police, the NHS etc from criticising, say, the government, the army or each other.

And wheres the evidence he was wanking at work? It’s not like the rioters were actually *studying* during the riot either, unless they’re doing sociology or social psychology.

“Do you think the person who wrote the article was the same person who did the spying?”

No. Someone else trawled the laptop; Unity just published details of what they found. Not sure why the division of labour matters though. If one person sets up a spycam in the loos and another uploads the footage to the web, does that make what’s happening any more acceptable?

“Or are people not allowed to mention abuses of civil liberties?”

They’re very welcome to *mention* abuses of civil liberties as far as I’m concerned; it’s actually *abusing* people’s civil liberties I object to (e.g. publicising details of a political opponent’s private web browsing history). You’re the one who suggested we shouldn’t have mentioned that abuse of civil liberties – you called us all fascists for doing so, remember?

“And can you not see the irony / hypocrisy in someone calling one taxpayer funded group ‘workshy filth’ when they themselves are funded by the taxpayer and are not working at work?”

I could indeed see the irony, if that was what had happened. But there was no suggestion that Renwick was ‘not working at work’; the allegation was that he had used a work laptop to access a gay social networking site at home, on his own time.

@DC

“…exposed as acting in a hypocritical fashion (being married whilst also viewing gay porn).”

Sorry? Where exactly is the hypocrisy? I didn’t know that married people were forbidden by some sacred law of the left to have any interest in sex apart from their spouses. I didn’t realise that left / liberal politics now dictated bedroom morals. Oh dear, I shall have to go and inform my (bisexual) wife about this new turn of events.

Liberal minded free-thinkers of the past are spinning in their graves!

@tamsinchan

“Suggestion: whenever ‘standard’ porn is mentioned in the media from hereon in, let’s correctly label it ‘female’ porn”

Now I’m nit trying to be flip here, but I know lesbians who look at porn. There is even a subgenre of porn made by and for lesbians which contains, guess what, images of women.

The term you are groping for would be “hetero porn”, porn geared toward a heterosexual and predominantly – though not exclusively – male audience.

@36

“The term you are groping for would be “hetero porn”, porn geared toward a heterosexual and predominantly – though not exclusively – male audience.”

Thank you. ‘Female porn’ is such a weird way to describe something that depicts both men and women. I assume the person who coined this phrase was thinking of the viewer, not the actor – because obviously only straight males watch pornography, and as we all know they only do so to oppress women in some rather oblique way.

So masturbating at the taxpayers expense is only bad if it’s done heterosexually.

Fair enough. Naive to think that the sexual mores of this age would be any less confused and contradictory than those of any other.

But, as a broad minded recipient of a council laptop and a tax payer funded internet connection, would you mind offering a little bit of clarification?

What if I confine myself to labyboys, for example? I’ll admit that they are generally better looking than the sort of Millie Tants who cluster around places like this, but on the other hand they do have penises (or should that be Penii?)

Any guidance you could give would be most appreciated.

“So masturbating at the taxpayers expense is only bad if it’s done heterosexually.”

WTF? Where on earth did you read that?

If you think the cause of liberalism is well served by trawling people’s laptops for evidence

It wasn’t his laptop, it was the council’s laptop. There’s a reason why the acronym NSFW exists, it’s because some web-content should only be accessed on your own personally purchased machine, otherwise privacy is not guaranteed.

“privacy is not guaranteed”

A wonderful phrase that should go down in history next to “the innocent have nothing to fear”.

Obviously I’m in the minority but I find it impossible to join the self congratulatory mood that has accompanied this sad little episode of censorship.

Of course in the prevailing climate one is almost forced to announce, “I’m definitely not homophobic, no siree, not me”, or better still have a minor authority figure issue portentious statements along the lines of, “I have known my esteemed colleague for many years and he definitely does not have a problem with, er, homosexuals, or should that be gays – it’s not always easy to know the correct words in the current climate”, etc, etc.

For what it’s worth I think the original piece had absolutely nothing to do with, gasp, “homophobia” but simply highlighted a pattern of (alleged) behaviour as a PROXY for the gap that exists between the rules we, Joe Public, are expected to abide by, yet are frequently ignored by politicians, despite the fact quite a few of them still feel compelled to make crass announcements concerning morality.

When did we become a community of people jumping up and down and screeching racist, homophobe, or religious oppressor every 5 minutes?
Such a posture will only alienate, rather than persuade, those we routinely accuse of having impure thoughts, while the ubiquitous nature of such accusations is in danger of rendering the terms virtually meaningless.

I fear the time may have come for Unity to be exiled to a re-education camp, but who will provide us with such forensic and informative writing once he, rather like Bart Simpson, is forced to write a hundred times on the blackboard, “I am not, nor have ever been a member of the BNF”.

Hells, bells BNF (British National Formulary) – SHOULD have read BNP – I do wish that edit function could be reinstated!!

“For what it’s worth I think the original piece had absolutely nothing to do with, gasp, “homophobia” but simply highlighted a pattern of (alleged) behaviour as a PROXY for the gap that exists between the rules we, Joe Public, are expected to abide by, yet are frequently ignored by politicians, despite the fact quite a few of them still feel compelled to make crass announcements concerning morality.”

And if this particular politician had been caught doing something he’d condemned other people for doing, pointing to his hypocrisy would have been fair enough. But surely no-one deserves to be publicly embarrassed over their private behaviour *just because they’re a politician*?

“When did we become a community of people jumping up and down and screeching racist, homophobe, or religious oppressor every 5 minutes?
Such a posture will only alienate, rather than persuade, those we routinely accuse of having impure thoughts, while the ubiquitous nature of such accusations is in danger of rendering the terms virtually meaningless.”

If there was some sort of pattern here such that every time someone typed the word ‘Muslim’, or ‘gay’, or ‘woman’, people started piling in to accuse them of racism, homophobia or misogyny, you’d have a point. But this wasn’t any kind of kneejerk reaction; a lot of people genuinely felt there was something homophobic about associating this individual’s comments about ‘filthy’ students with his own alleged use of gay porn (and indeed about reporting those allegations in general, implying that the individual in question had done something he ought to be ashamed of.) The last time I remember any comparable reaction was when we had a completely different group of people accusing certain posts of being ‘anti-Catholic’. I don’t see a pattern.

[44] My issue is not with the finer points of the original article which might have been construed in different ways (informed, perhaps by your beliefs about the intentions of the author) but rather the leap to accusations of homophobia and the decision to censor in order to appease the mob.

I also have a bigger problem with impossibly diverse groups (gay men in this case) being lumped together on the basis of a single characteristic such as sexual preference, race, or skin colour, etc.

To my mind such a lazy system of classification is one of the factors that hinders our ability to relate to each other as individuals rather than as cyphers from a sample population.

Comparing a fine writer like Unity to Guido Fawkes – that level of self flagellation is simply embarrassing?

“privacy is not guaranteed”

A wonderful phrase that should go down in history next to “the innocent have nothing to fear”.

I fail to see what is objectionable to organisations having IT usage policy guidelines, toward what can and can’t be done with their property. You don’t see people complaining that they will face censure, and an invasion of civil liberties from a car rental company, if they take their rented car to participate in a destruction derby now do you?

Lets be clear – If he had bought a laptop from PC World or similar, gone to the council IT department to get it set up so he could remotely access the network from home, and then proceeded to stuff the laptop full of porn – we simply would not be having this conversation.
Because it would have been his property, and even if he got the IT dept to regularly maintain his laptop and they stumbled upon this stash, nothing would have been said, because the other content on the machine would be outside of their jurisdiction, and none of their business. So no alarms raised, no gay porn story, would have happened.

But it wasn’t his property, it was the council’s property that he was loaned, and therefore still subject to their IT policy. So the contents of the laptop’s hard drive was their business, hence the actual story in the first place.

Moral of the story is don’t facebook at work.

I think there is something in what you say the a&e charge nurse.
Even though I’m not entirely satisfied with this answer, I think people might adopt this ‘zero tolerance policy’ because it seems to actually have worked.

How else can one explain the remarkable turnaround in attitudes to homosexuality in such short a time? By hammering away constantly, and ostracising anyone who had ”traditional” attitudes and mocking them Ben Elton style.

I have never much liked that method myself, but maybe the means did justify the ends, as we are in a much better position today than we were 30 years ago.

You can see that kind of approach also at work here, where a guy and a group with a certain view of race politics, slams black and minority ethnic people who take a different view and says:

It is sad that our own people should do this to us, but that is a reality of life, I’m afraid.

http://www.obv.org.uk/news-blogs/prospect-goodhart-and-race

He’s acting like a whip in the house of commons, laying down the line and castigating people for crossing it …… but those tactics have been successful over the years you have to admit. Racists have been put on the backfoot.

Going to be funny the next time you lot have a go at conservatives for being homophobic. I think you should let more regulars post without the usual editorial scrutiny.

@ 45

“the decision to censor in order to appease the mob.”

Yesterday we were ‘fascists’, today we’re ‘the mob’. It’s *just possible*, of course, that we’re mostly reasonable people who made some legitimate points, and that Sunny retracted the article on that basis (and not because he feared our torches and pitchforks).

“Comparing a fine writer like Unity to Guido Fawkes – that level of self flagellation is simply embarrassing?”

What’s embarrassing is that Unity used LC to post a politically irrelevant gossip piece about the alleged homosexual leanings of a Tory councillor, not that people then pointed out that this is the sort of thing Guido Fawkes gets up to. I for one would feel considerably more embarrassed if rather than objecting, people had piled in to point and laugh at the Tory with his trousers round his ankles.

Still, I certainly wouldn’t want to imply Unity is no better than Guido. I’m sure he’s a decent chap and a good writer; I just think he made a bad call *on this occasion* in opportunistically spreading allegations about a political opponent’s private life.

The point isn’t whether it was right or wrong for Renwick to be looking at NSFW pictures on his laptop, it’s that it was entirely irrelevant to the comments that he made about students. The reason why it caused such a stir is because we all know that Unity is an excellent writer and clearly not a homophobe by any definition – he just had a bad day or an error of judgement (IMO) with that article. That’s why the comparison with Guido was made – Staines is all-too well known for using strawmen and/or irrelevant pieces of gossip when attacking political opponents. We should focus on playing the ball, not the man.

[49] “It’s *just possible*, of course, that we’re mostly reasonable people who made some legitimate points” – yes, you are perfectly entitled to express YOUR points of view, legitimate or otherwise, but just because the group is in backslapping agreement it doesn’t necessarily make your conclusions any more valid? (even if such views are supplied by “regular readers”).

This simply amounts to a diluted form of nepotism – ideas/opinions should stand (or fall) irrespective of proximity, or “loyalty” to the leader.

What bother me is that I get the overwhelming sense that most of the outrage or indignation in this instance is largely manufactured, while comments like “I have been reading Unity’s stuff for over five years and know he would be the last person to be intentionally homophobic” reflect all too clearly how insecure and anxious we are nowadays.

Does anyone know if Sunny has a barometer which can tell him on a scale of 1-10 how “homophobic” somebody is – perhaps most of these ajudications arise after reading blog comments, or maybe he can tell just by staring into somebody’s eyes?

@ a&e

At the end of the day it’s Sunny’s blog and he has responsibility for the content. There have been articles in the past that people have criticised and it’s up to his judgement whether he stands by it being on the blog or not. We – readers and commentators – do not have a god-given right to say this should be or not, but we do have the right to let the authors of articles know what we think. That’s part of the point of a blog, surely, to ignite debate etc. The problem with the original piece was that it was little more than a character assassination using gossip and the councillor’s private life against him. Now I’m no fan of the Tories by any means but I think we can do better than get at someone for having a few naughty pics on their computer. It’s not censorship to recognise that the original piece was way out of step with what LC normally aims for (and hits the target 99 times out of 100, as I’ve said before and as I said on the original article). And it’s to the site’s credit that the piece has been removed and an apology offered – how many times do you see that happen in the MSM let alone the blogworld?

[52] “At the end of the day it’s Sunny’s blog and he has responsibility for the content” – I’m not disputing that, but I just think he was wrong to censor the original piece just as I think it was wrong to conduct a show trial on latent ‘homophobia’.

As I mentioned before my point was not so much the pros and cons of the first piece (which is hard to comment on now because it has hurriedly been deleted) but the prurient atmosphere that was generated in the wake of it.

By all means spank Unity’s arse if you object to his point of view but please, please, please refrain from grandiose labels like “homophobic” unless you really believe somebody is guilty of this serious charge.

@ a & e

fair enough and I see your point (oh and I think the original can be found at Harry’s Place – naturally the right-whingers were over the moon to be able to attack LC..) but personally I my objections were more on the grounds that it was gossipy and irrelevent rather than any (unintended) homophobic sentiment. I know others thought that though which is why I think it’s important to note that Unity and LC have always championed gay rights (the marriage question throughout the Lab leadership for example) – if a first time reader came along and that was the first article they read I very much doubt they’d err on the side of caution when forming a judgement.

@ 46

Of course employers can and should have IT policies. But would you mind explaining why a suitable punishment for breaking said policy, rather than a dressing down or official warning, should be having your private sexuality exposed to the nation?

@55
I don’t have Fylde borough council’s IT policy in hand, but I am quite sure that “having your private sexuality exposed to the nation” is not one of the consequences of violating it. Indeed if you asked Fylde borough council if they were happy that one of their staff, of their own accord, breached data protection to leak information to the press I imagine the answer would be “No!”.

http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/blackpoolnews/Councillor-livid-after-laptop-porn.5324078.jp

The council was pursuing the allegation in-house and with discretion, probably with the end result of a dressing down or official warning (in this case, “keep a bloody eye on it, for crying out loud”), until someone not exactly trustworthy decided to leak it to the press.

Given the shit-storm conveyed from the gazette article you might want to add the words “in theory”, or “ostensibly” to the start of my second paragraph.

Thanks. I hadn’t gotten around to commenting on it but was in complete agreement with the comments I saw from Ellie Mae. It did seem like an ‘imposter’ Unity had written the piece.

a & e

“This simply amounts to a diluted form of nepotism – ideas/opinions should stand (or fall) irrespective of proximity, or “loyalty” to the leader.”

I really don’t see what you’re driving at here. The person closest to the “leader” (Sunny?) in this scenario is Unity. If Sunny had stuck to his guns in defending Unity’s post, I could see where you were coming from. But he didn’t; he implicitly endorsed just the principle you’re advocating – that “ideas/opinions should stand (or fall) irrespective of proximity, or “loyalty” to the leader” – by retracting and apologising for an ‘insider’s’ post on the basis that ordinary readers had persuaded him it was inappropriate.

And I still don’t think it was unreasonable of anyone to suggest that – whatever Unity’s considered opinions – there was a whiff of homophobia about a post that began by revealing that:

“the Fylde Tory Councillor who described student protestors as “Self indulgent work shy filthy people” on Twitter is facing an inquiry by the Standards Board of England after more than 1,000 gay porn images were found on his council laptop.”

and ended with the reflection:

” …people in glass houses, eh?”

If the implication of that is *not* that people who look at gay porn are “self indulgent work shy filthy people”, I am genuinely stumped as to what it is.

(And please do read the rest of the post over at Harry’s Place; I don’t think I’m misrespresenting the thrust of it by quoting just those lines, though.)

@ a & e

“As I mentioned before my point was not so much the pros and cons of the first piece (which is hard to comment on now because it has hurriedly been deleted)”

It can still be read over at Harry’s place, where you see how the writer managed to cram in the word ‘gay’ as many times as he could (six) in that short piece. Then you can tell us why that was necessary.

@ Mr S. Pill

“naturally the right-whingers were over the moon to be able to attack LC..”

The bulk of the condemnation came from five or six gay posters. Objecting to Guido Fawkes-level smears of homosexuality being filthy or something to be mocked, as well as to what appeared to be an association of paedophilia, does not make one ‘right wing’.

Homophobia exists as something that has an impact on actual people’s lives, it’s not just a weapon or charge to be used against this or that group or person. It doesn’t say much for your ‘liberal’ character that you choose to assume the latter variety is what is being discussed and that gay people are simply ‘right wing’ when they object to shitty article like Unity’s. The article went on and on about the sexual orientation of the subject when that had no bearing whatsoever on the putative seriousness of the offence/hypocrisy. Gay people are used to seeing that sort of sneering and sniggering from people who are probably not consciously meaning to be homophobic but who are nevertheless using the same low tactics that homophobes do use.

I suggest those who haven’t seen the original or who have chosen to remember it forgivingly vaguely go and take a look on HP. It’s a shitty and unworthy piece, and those who made a big deal of it all had good personal reasons for doing so.

[58] well against my better judgement I looked at the post over at ‘Arry’s place.
The post smacked of internecine blog rivalry rather than any meaningful concern for either Renwick, an opinionated councillor who does not appear to the understand the concept of passwords for work computers, or gays in general.

OOh, look what’s happened at LC simpers the host – they’re committing terrible crimes against homosexuals – sensitive soul, our ‘Arry?

Yet ‘Arry still invites us to feel concern for a Tory councillor who struggles with passwords yet has no problem labeling student protestors as “self indulgent work shy filthy people”.

For some reason the gang at LC (Cath Elliott, Dawn Foster, Ellie Mae, Sugar The Pill et al) also come over all indignant due to alleged homophobia, so the nervous Sunny immediately caves in at the thought that some people might take offense if commentators are not all singing along to the same hymn sheet (thus requiring opprobrium and censorship).

I started to look into homophobia and found this item;
http://www.narth.com/docs/coll-breiner.html
I must admit I found great difficulty in matching the true meaning of the concept with a few throw away comments about an apparently dim Tory councillor with a penchant for rubbishing students confronted by some rather stark financial questions.

Perhaps I should have added, the author of the article I mention opines, “terminology and definitions, which are intended to elucidate, are often used to obfuscate when there are political or personal (conscious or unconscious) problems”.

To my mind this invariably a key stumbling block to any proper discussion be it a discussion concerning homophobia, or any other of the phobias or ‘isms for that matter.

Oh dear, for information on homophobia the a&e charge nurse goes to an anti-gay site which describes itself this way:

NARTH upholds the rights of individuals with unwanted homosexual attraction to receive effective psychological care and the right of professionals to offer that care.

Where you will find lines such as this one:

Psychotherapists around the world who treat homosexuals report that significant numbers of their clients have experienced substantial healing.

Healing!

Apparently NARTH was set up by psychiatrists who objected to the American Psychiatric Association’s removal of homosexuality from its list of mental disorders.

Very “progressive”.

[62] sorry, Paul, that was very lazy linking to an article that was intended to get the ball rolling with regard to some of the political bias that can be reflected when certain phrases are used ubiquitously.

I would in no way endorse the DSM classification which was only removed as late as 1973, nor crackpots who persist with the disease concept of homosexuality.

Sincere apologies if this gave offense.

Lamia -

I think you may have misunderstood S. Pill’s point; he was saying the right-wingers at HP were naturally pleased to have an excuse to attack LC, not that those of us on LC who objected to the post were right-wingers. (He was one of them!)

a & e -

OK, so you suspect the criticism from HP was opportunistic rather than principled. You’re probably right. Doesn’t mean there was nothing objectionable about the post. (And I suspect Unity’s post was opportunistic rather than principled too – I don’t imagine he actually thinks gay people are filthy, he just saw a chance to embarrass a Tory councillor.)

“For some reason the gang at LC (Cath Elliott, Dawn Foster, Ellie Mae, Sugar The Pill et al) also come over all indignant”

I really think this is a bit off. Are our opinions really *so* absurd as to be wholly incomprehensible? You just can’t see any reason at all why we should have found that post objectionable?

“I must admit I found great difficulty in matching the true meaning of the concept with a few throw away comments about an apparently dim Tory councillor with a penchant for rubbishing students confronted by some rather stark financial questions.”

There are two separate points here. 1 – however much of a twat a political opponent is, I just don’t think publishing embarrassing details of his sex life is the right way to attack him. 2 – this isn’t just about Renwick, it’s about the view of homosexuality you’re implicitly endorsing when you suggest that someone accused of using a gay social networking site is “filthy”. And I don’t see that that suggestion is made any more palatable by being made in the form of a ‘throwaway’ remark.

[64] Are our opinions really *so* absurd as to be wholly incomprehensible? You just can’t see any reason at all why we should have found that post objectionable” – for me this is the nub of it, so let’s try and take each point in turn.

“Are our opinions really *so* absurd as to be wholly incomprehensible” – no, not incomprehensible, put chilling perhaps, in the sense that an obviously intelligent and compassionate blogger went from hero to zero on the basis of a single item that might not have adhered to the highest ethical standards (in it’s attempt to be mischevious).
Homophobia is a serious charge in my book and one that should not be made unless there is clear evidence that the perp is driven by a visceral dislike of homosexuality (rather like nob in the link I stupidly introduced earlier).

“You just can’t see any reason at all why we should have found that post objectionable” – people object to all sorts of stuff but as a general rule I think the best way to deal with such objections is to debate them (providing various protagonists are willing to engage) rather than label and censor, it was the labeling and censorship I found problematic.

@ 60

“For some reason the gang at LC (Cath Elliott, Dawn Foster, Ellie Mae, Sugar The Pill et al) also come over all indignant due to alleged homophobia, so the nervous Sunny immediately caves in at the thought that some people might take offense if commentators are not all singing along to the same hymn sheet (thus requiring opprobrium and censorship).”

Sunny’s motives are his own. The problem with the original article, as reported, was less any alleged homophobia and more the nasty little tactic of smearing people based on their private and legal activities that have nothing to do with their politics. It’s equivalent to blackmailing a political opponent, and it’s disgusting. I really don’t think the left should bully people to get their message across.

a & e -

“Homophobia is a serious charge in my book and one that should not be made unless there is clear evidence that the perp is driven by a visceral dislike of homosexuality”

I disagree with you here. You don’t have to be driven by a visceral dislike of homosexuality, or Islam, or whatever, in order to make opportunistic use of *other people’s* dislike or suspicion of gay people or Muslims.

Suppose the allegation had been that Renwick had been visiting websites about the process of converting to Islam. A political opponent wouldn’t *himself* have to be ‘driven by a visceral dislike of Islam’ in order to see an opportunity to damage Renwick by publicising that fact.

Look at the Phil Woolas case. Do you have to believe Woolas himself was ‘driven by a visceral dislike of Islam’ to believe his campaign material had a whiff of Islamophobia about it?

(NB – I am *not* trying to suggest that one off-the-cuff slip-up makes Unity the moral equivalent of Woolas, whose campaign was carefully calculated. The Woolas case just illustrates my point.)

“people object to all sorts of stuff but as a general rule I think the best way to deal with such objections is to debate them (providing various protagonists are willing to engage) rather than label and censor”

I have a great deal of sympathy with this, but there didn’t seem to be any prospect of ‘debating’ the issue because Unity seemed unwilling to engage with criticism and Sunny seemed to drop his initial defence of the post (that it was about Renwick’s hypocrisy in being ‘workshy’ himself rather than in being ‘filthy’ himself – a claim that didn’t stand up, because no allegations about Renwick wasting work time etc had been made.)

On ‘labelling’: sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. LC has a clear policy on “Misogynist, racist, homophobic and xenophobic comments”, and if you think a post is at odds with that policy, why not say so in straightforward terms (and give your reasons for thinking so)?

On ‘censorship’: obviously this word is guaranteed to make liberals uncomfortable, but why on earth *wouldn’t* a website censor posts that are at odds with its editorial policy? I imagine Sunny would also ‘censor’ posts singing the praises of Maggie Thatcher’s economic policies, or gossiping about the colour of MPs’ knickers. And there’s the civil liberties issue too; if a political opponent had posted an embarrassing spycam picture of you, wouldn’t you be right to demand that that infringement of your right to privacy should be ‘censored’?

[66] “The problem with the original article, as reported, was less any alleged homophobia and more the nasty little tactic of smearing people based on their private and legal activities that have nothing to do with their politics” – from the little I know of this story none of the points raised in the deleted article were not already common currency in the MSM for example this item in appeared in a local paper as far back as June 2009.
http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/blackpoolnews/Councillor-livid-after-laptop-porn.5324078.jp

You say that smearing trumped homophobia but surely smearing becomes a moot point once most of the allegations are ALREADY in the public domain – perhaps there is a matter of taste concerning what should or should not be debated in polite society once certain things are known?

[67] CG seems less certain that homophobia was a key motive in the deleted article, and I agree – if we are advocating the ‘spade’ standard then surely you have to be CERTAIN that it is indeed a digging implement that you are labeling, and not something that might be similar in appearance?

With regard to censorship I have already acknowledged Sunny’s right to delete as many items as he likes [53] but I am against censorship in general and certainly in cases were there is engagement by protagonists who are simply expressing different points of view.

@60

“I must admit I found great difficulty in matching the true meaning of the concept with a few throw away comments about an apparently dim Tory councillor with a penchant for rubbishing students confronted by some rather stark financial questions.”

Throwaway comments are generally comments that should be thrown away. The attempt to smear here is quite clear in just the same way that the comments we used to see in “news”papers such as the Daily Mail used t refer to black burglars or black muggers.

If you wish to attack this man for his views on students or financial questions, then do so. His sexual preferences have nothing to do with this.

As for the idea that this is not motivated by homophobia, then why raise the issue at all if not to smear? I notice that the original piece does not refer to his taste in food, art or music and can only conclude that this is because any such revelations would not be seen a controversial by any section of the electorate.

Having said that, I would hesitate to vote for any politician who expressed a dislike for Marmite.

Chaise Guevara @66

The problem with the original article, as reported, was less any alleged homophobia and more the nasty little tactic of smearing people based on their private and legal activities that have nothing to do with their politics.

It might be legal, but a lot of porn is also pretty disgusting and filthy.
Just google ”Indian Porn” or ”Tamil Porn” and you will see hundreds of images where it looks like some of the poorest women on earth are being offered a handful of rupees to be sexually abused on the internet. When communism collapsed in eastern Europe, porn companies rushed in waving hard currency at young women with the offer to come with them to a hotel room and preform sexual acts on camera.

Yes I have looked at that stuff, and I don’t approve. Even if I can not say that it has never corrupted me at times. I asked the question before – is gay porn to be seen as more wholesome? It’s certainly more accepted as an aspect of mainstream gay culture in a way that hetro porn is still something a lot of men would be ashamed of being found out as being a regular user of.
But paying teenage (but old enough) ”lads” from the slums of Rio de Janeiro, to engage in homosexual sex acts, for pornography users mainly in the richer countries, also smacks me as being somewhat immoral and tawdry.

[68]

“CG seems less certain that homophobia was a key motive in the deleted article, and I agree – if we are advocating the ‘spade’ standard then surely you have to be CERTAIN that it is indeed a digging implement that you are labeling, and not something that might be similar in appearance?”

Fair point. Some people were certain that the article was homophobic and said so, and some were a bit more nuanced and suggested the article was worded in a way that meant it came across as homophobic, had a whiff of homophobia about it etc. Neither of those approaches really violates that principle. (Pretty much all of us have stopped short of accusing Unity of being motivated by homophobia for just that reason, I think; we’re just not in a position to be certain that’s true. In fact we can be pretty certain, given Unity’s track record, that is *isn’t* true.)

“With regard to censorship I have already acknowledged Sunny’s right to delete as many items as he likes [53] but I am against censorship in general and certainly in cases were there is engagement by protagonists who are simply expressing different points of view.”

The point here, for me, is that Unity *didn’t* clearly express a point of view that anyone could have taken issue with. He just factually reported that the councillor had called other people self-indulgent, workshy and filthy and that he had himself been accused of looking at gay porn, and then remarked that ‘people in glass houses…’. It was left to the reader to figure out what that was supposed to mean.

[69] “The attempt to smear here is quite clear in just the same way that the comments we used to see in “news”papers such as the Daily Mail used t refer to black burglars or black muggers” – no, there an important distinction as I see it.

The use of such language in the Fail had an entirely different intentionality, i.e. reinforcing a prejudice that the action of an individual (from a certain group) somehow reflected a propensity for criminal behaviour amongst the wider community he/she belonged to.
These views were maintained by several authors and were sustained over a number of years and dished up in such a way so as to pander to the worse instincts of the readership.

In THIS case we had an isolated, and mischevious reference to gay porn.
Now I can accept that in some ways it might be redundant to comment specifically on which orifice is being filled, or which juices are flowing in which direction, but the fact of having done so does not of itself constitute an attack on the nature of a person’s sexuality.
If we extend this sort of logic to all media reporting then probably half of it might be deemed superfluous because why do we need to know if it is a man or woman or if something happened in Liverpool or Manchester, etc, etc (although there might be good reasons for these distinctions sometimes).

Put another way I think there is much greater sensitivity in the air because rank homophobia was much more commonplace, so nowadays there is a tendency to put the worse possible gloss on certain comments that are seized on, then found wanting in the court of perfection?

Isn’t there a long tradition of tories getting caught with their pants down, from Prufomo to Cecil Parker’s love child – if we apply the standards being asked here then the sex life of our politicians become a closed book, a point of view I have a great deal of sympathy with in many respects, although it does beg the question if we are to comment, then what specific details are OK to talk about?

@72

Fair point on people overreacting because homophobia used to be such a problem. I think there’s a equivalent here when it comes to gender issues in advertising. Adverts are far more likely to portray men as idiots, especially in the setting of a couple or a family, than women (female stereotypes are of course used in advertising, but they’re generally not insulting, normally of the “she takes ages to choose what to wear” variety). The Dad character tends to be the comic fall guy.

This annoys me in a low-grade way, but I can see why it happens: it’s ok to make “men are stupid” jokes because that attitude was never built into the fabric of society. I guess there could be something similar here: when it comes to insulting women and gays, we as a society have had our n-word privileges revoked.

As for what is “ok” to talk about: depends what you mean by that word. A certain amount of privacy should be protected by law, but generally I think we should legally discuss anything we want. That’s not the same thing as it being acceptable to do so. When it comes to the private lives of public figures, I personally fail to see how it’s in the public interest to publish details unless some politician has been caught out being hypocriticial (family values campaigner having an affair, that kind of thing). The fact that Bush took cocaine as a youth was only of interest to me because of his hard line on drugs abuse.

@72

“Isn’t there a long tradition of tories getting caught with their pants down, from Prufomo to Cecil Parker’s love child – if we apply the standards being asked here then the sex life of our politicians become a closed book, a point of view I have a great deal of sympathy with in many respects, although it does beg the question if we are to comment, then what specific details are OK to talk about?”

Yes it’s true there have been stories about Tory politicians being caught with their pants down, though the Profumo affair was more about his position as Secretary of State for War, and the involvement of Yvgeny Ivanov rather than anything else.

Let’s not forget that plenty of Labour and Liberal politicians have been caught with their pants down too. I don’t need to start listing them, I’m sure you remember many of them.

I for one would welcome it if the sex lives of politicians became a closed book – except in the case of explicit hypocrisy such as a politician condemning homosexuality whilst practicing it themselves. Do we want to hear about semen stains on a dress, or do we want to hear about policies? I know my preference.

As to your last question about what specific details are OK to talk about, I think the answer’s pretty simple – that would be the RELEVANT ones.

a & e

“if we apply the standards being asked here then the sex life of our politicians become a closed book, a point of view I have a great deal of sympathy with in many respects, although it does beg the question if we are to comment, then what specific details are OK to talk about?”

The relevant ones. If a politician has been sexually harrassing a colleague, handing out cushy jobs in return for sexual favours, or calling for restrictions on other people’s rights to do something he does himself, it might well be fair enough to report the fact. If he’s been wearing frilly knickers while he masturbates, or Googling sex toys, or reading leaflets about STDs, it probably isn’t.

A little off topic Sunny, but I feel this needs to be pointed out.

@70

There is indeed a great deal of exploitation in the production of pornography, but much of what you are describing has more to do with the problems caused by globalisation than with pornography itself.

People in The South are exploited in the pornography industry… they are also exploited by the clothing industry – but I do not hear many voices calling for the banning of clothes – take a look at the virtual slave labour used to make the cheap clothing on our high streets. The same criticisms can be levelled at the food industry, the agricultural sector, the electronics industry, and pretty much any other global industry.

One of the major reasons for the explosion in the manufacture of porn in eastern Europe was that people there had been exposed to considerably less religious indoctrination, and had fewer inhibitions as a result.

If history shows us anything, it is that banning things simply doesn’t work. Look at prohibition in America, the war on drugs, etc. What the porn industry needs – along with many other industries – is regulation and unionisation, coupled with a union led campaign whereby the public are urged not to buy porn where the participants have been subjected to poor wages and working conditions. Nothing else will work.

As the porn star and activist Annie Sprinkle said many years ago, “the answer to bad porn is not no porn, but good porn”.

@76.
Well a lot of what you say there is just not going to happen. The porn industry thrives on exploitation of new people. It has an insatiable appetite for finding new people to abuse.
Forget about unions and all that. They want ”barely legals” and always new.
Of course there could be some kind of industry brand that was able to prove itself as ”ethical porn” perhaps, and that woman who ran for the Lib Dems – Anna Arrowsmith (Anna Span) says that she makes that kind of thing – but it makes little difference to the hugely predatory industry as a whole.

But that is a little bit beside the point. What I’m curious about is where homophobia comes in. It’s OK to find porn in general distasteful I take it. Straight or gay.
Watching people who have been paid for having sex is akin to using prostitution I would say. Straight stuff or gay. And that is generally seen as exploitative and behavior to be ashamed of. Certainly never accepted as mainstream.
Remember the ”poor old” DPP who got done for kerb crawling in 1991?
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/death-of-exdpps-wife-not-suspicious-police-say-1470217.html

Total shame. Had to resign and suffer the humiliation of major media interest.

I thought what was interesting was the way this story developed though, when people said that there was nothing to be ashamed of for having been found out looking at porn, gay or straight.

Perhaps because it’s just there at the click of a few computor keys, it really is not such a crime as such, but the industry is only there because it makes money.
Maybe just browsing at free stuff is OK – I don’t really know (I have browsed only free stuff) – but the thing about how ”homophobia” is decried these days, that to even to say that gay porno and the kinds of gay cinemas where guys have sex inside the premisis, ”is a lot for some people to accept as being totally normal” …….just saying that, is enough to get some people’s ”homophobia alert” antenna twitching.

Maybe looking at porn cannot be seen as shameful these days because it’s so common.
If that’s the case, I wish people would just say so.
I guess I just have a bit of a problem with the way that the left and progressives brought about the change in peoples thinking (about homosexuality) by being sometimes unbearably holier-than-thou.
I agree with the outcome, (of a more open tolerant society) I’m just not sure I agree with the medhods used sometimes.

@ 77.

I suspect that we are going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Frankly, you say that regulation and unionisation isn’t going to happen… well there’s more chance of that happening than there is of porn – hetero or gay – disappearing. As I said before, there is exploitation in every globalised industry, why single out porn as particularly exploitative?

I do think though, that despite our apparent differences, we do actually share many of the same concerns. What separates us is much more to do with our views on how problems are to be tackled.

It is clear that attitudes to sexuality have changed radically since 1991. In many ways this has been for the better, in others though it has clearly been for the worse.

We are where we are, and nothing can be done about the present – but we can do a great deal to change the future. Let us think carefully about how we act, and make sure that we attack the correct targets, rather than (as happens so often with the left) attacking the wrong problem, and ending up with added restrictions on individual and group freedom without solving the core issue. This takes courage to do, which I find aplenty among campaigners and activists, but is often sadly lacking among politicians who are scared of affecting their majorities at election time.

As an aside, if watching people have sex in porn films is akin to prostitution, how about watching people having sex in films that are not classed as porn – films such as Antichrist? Ther actors in those films were also paid to have sex with each other… doesn’t seem to be too much difference to me