IDAHo

IDAHo
International Day Against Homophobia

Celebrating the day, on 17th May 1990, when the World Health Organisation finally took homosexuality off their list of mental illnesses.
Yes, it was only 18 years ago

I am a 35 year old gay male who has been out on the scene for about 16 years, been out to work colleagues for about 14 years and to family for about 7 years. In all that time I have experienced 5 instances of homophobia, of various levels of severity, that I can recall, though obviously all are unacceptable.

My first experience of abuse of this nature was when I was about 20. I was living in Grays, in Essex at the time and on a day off, a Sunday if I recall correctly, I was walking across a main road on my way to a cash point before heading into London for some drinks.
Just as I'd crossed the road a car sped past and someone yelled out of the window, "Fuckin' Poof!”
It may well have been obvious that I was gay, I was wearing jeans that accentuated my arse and a tight, ribbed white t-shirt, but even so, that sort of abuse isn't acceptable.

Probably the same year, while I was working at Ravel, in the Lakeside shopping centre, the shop was “invaded” by a group of travellers trying to get money back on a pair of stolen shoes. When they realised that they wouldn't get their way they began to leave and insulted every member of staff, and some customers.
I was singled out a bit when one of the women said to me, “And you! You're a poof!” To which I replied, “Yeah! And?”
She was taken aback that I had agreed with her and said, “I'm gonna get my dad in to sort you out!” To which I replied, “Only if he's good looking!”
It was while regaling this story to the weekend staff on the following Saturday that everyone who worked there came to know I was gay. So they did me a favour really.

A few months later we had a particularly grumpy and disagreeable young woman working with us. She walked out one evening saying that she quit. She came back the next day demanding her job back, but the manageress refused, which resulted in her getting some abuse from the woman's boyfriend who was doing all the talking. He then turned on me with a few special words, "As for you! You're just a fucking pervert!”
Ravel took the easy option for this woman and gave her a job at a fairly local branch, though it was at a lower hourly rate, shorter hours and the manageress, who knew and liked me, made sure that she quit within the week!

The next incident I experienced was, by a long way, the most serious that I have personally experienced.
I'd moved to Torquay by this point and had been enjoying a night out with friends at Munroe's night club.
Originally, Munroe's had opened as a gay club, but over time more and more straight people were going as the music and atmosphere were so great, oh and the fact that drugs were easy to come by probably had something to do with it!
This particular night, as I began to leave with my boyfriend and my mate, who I was renting a room off at the time, we saw a can of beer fly across outside the front door! We thought nothing much of it, but then got verbal abuse, the details of which I cannot recall, as we walked out. We just ignored it being uninterested and a bit merry.
As we had got a couple of minutes along the road, just out of sight of the club, I heard a noise and looked around to see three guys running at us. I managed to warn my companions just in time for my friend to get punched right in the face by the leader of the trio. He was a big bodybuilder type guy and was standing over my friend just pummelling him with punches. The other two acolytes didn't do anything, just egged him on.
At the time, I was a skinny 10 stone weakling who had never been in a fight outside of the school yard, and so I couldn't take on this guy. I did manage to place myself in between him and my friend until he got bored of punching us and ran off with his mates.
All the while this was going on, there was a young couple leaning out of the bedroom window of the nearest house watching. I had yelled for them to phone the police, but they didn't seem bothered. “We haven't got a phone!” was the excuse, and this was in the days before everyone had mobiles, but his tone said it all.
My friend suffered a fractured jaw and tons of bruises and was off work for about two weeks. I was off just the next day with shock, though I only had a few bruises and bumps to show for the ordeal.
We did hear a few months later that the leader of this group had been attacked himself, over drugs we think, and was in a vegetative state in hospital. Strangely we had little sympathy for him.

My latest experience of homophobia was one I covered recently on the blog. A new work colleague, still in training, had interrupted a conversation I was having with another work mate about Heath Ledger, just after he had died. His comment was along the lines of:
“He topped himself because he was fed up with comments about that batty boy film!” meaning Brokeback Mountain.
He then told us that he had tried to watch the film with his girlfriend but couldn't as it made him "feel sick!” He then added that "Gays are wrong! Just wrong!”
He apologised afterwards when I had informed him that I was gay and didn't appreciate being told I was “wrong.” But he left early that day and, when my supervisor and the building manager found out what had happened, they banned him from the site.
My employers still kept him on though, sending him to another site, their justification for this being that he hadn't actually insulted me directly and he had been given a final warning! Which is hardly going to get them on Stonewall's list of good gay employers is it?

I have said that these are the only incidents of homophobia that I recall, but what do you class as homophobia? Should I have included the time when a long-time friend refused to discuss my sexuality when I tried to come out to her?
What about the fact that my sister has still not told her kids that I am gay, even though I've told her that it is alright to do so?

I look back at these events and think to myself in 16 years I haven't experienced that many incidents of homophobia and consider myself lucky.

Lucky?

I feel lucky that I have had to endure only a few of these incidents? That says quite a lot about my expectations of today's society doesn't it. I should expect to be treated as an equal and not to be judge on who I am attracted to, or what happens, or doesn't, in my bedroom!
Attitudes need to change throughout society. Acceptance and tolerance are bad words for the gay community to use. Do we accept redheads? Do we tolerate people with blue eyes? No, because it isn't an issue.

Being gay needs to become a non-issue, just a description. We should be able to say:

"I fancy girls with long legs!”
“I like big boobs!”
“I like my men tall dark and handsome”

Whether we are male, female or transsexual and it shouldn't matter.

As the latest slogan says:

Stephen Gately

The first section here, in the sickly green colour, is an original article written by Jan Moir in the Daily Mail newspaper. Following it is my response to her hateful comments:

“The news of Stephen Gately’s death was deeply shocking. It was not just that another young star had died pointlessly.

Through the recent travails and sad ends of Michael Jackson, Heath Ledger and many others, fans know to expect the unexpected of their heroes – particularly if those idols live a life that is shadowed by dark appetites or fractured by private vice.

There are dozens of household names out there with secret and not-so-secret troubles, or damaging habits both past and present.

Robbie, Amy, Kate, Whitney, Britney; we all know who they are. And we are not being ghoulish to anticipate, or to be mentally braced for, their bad end: a long night, a mysterious stranger, an odd set of circumstances that herald a sudden death.

In the morning, a body has already turned cold before the first concerned hand reaches out to touch an icy celebrity shoulder. It is not exactly a new storyline, is it?

In fact, it is rather depressingly familiar. But somehow we never expected it of him. Never him. Not Stephen Gately.

In the cheerful environs of Boyzone, Gately was always charming, cute, polite and funny.

A founder member of Ireland’s first boy band, he was the group’s co-lead singer, even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk.

He was the Posh Spice of Boyzone, a popular but largely decorous addition.

Gately came out as gay in 1999 after discovering that someone was planning to sell a story revealing his sexuality to a newspaper.

Although he was effectively smoked out of the closet, he has been hailed as a champion of gay rights, albeit a reluctant one.

At the time, Gately worried that the revelations might end his ultra-mainstream career as a pin-up, but he received an overwhelmingly positive response from fans. In fact, it only made them love him more.

In 2006, Gately entered into a civil union with internet businessman Andrew Cowles, who had been introduced to him by mutual friends Elton John and David Furnish.

Last week, the couple were enjoying a holiday together in their apartment in Mallorca before their world was capsized.

All the official reports point to a natural death, with no suspicious circumstances. The Gately family are – perhaps understandably – keen to register their boy’s demise on the national consciousness as nothing more than a tragic accident.

Even before the post-mortem and toxicology reports were released by the Spanish authorities, the Gatelys’ lawyer reiterated that they believed his sudden death was due to natural causes.

But, hang on a minute. Something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun into nothing more than an unfortunate mishap on a holiday weekend, like a broken teacup in the rented cottage.

Consider the way it has been largely reported, as if Gately had gently keeled over at the age of 90 in the grounds of the Bide-a-Wee rest home while hoeing the sweet pea patch.

The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again.

Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one. Let us be absolutely clear about this. All that has been established so far is that Stephen Gately was not murdered.

And I think if we are going to be honest, we would have to admit that the circumstances surrounding his death are more than a little sleazy.

After a night of clubbing, Cowles and Gately took a young Bulgarian man back to their apartment. It is not disrespectful to assume that a game of canasta with 25-year-old Georgi Dochev was not what was on the cards.

Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room.

What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone’s guess.

A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs.

Gately’s family have always maintained that drugs were not involved in the singer’s death, but it has just been revealed that he at least smoked cannabis on the night he died.

Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family.

Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death.

As a gay rights champion, I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine.

For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see."

I am currently feeling a bit remiss as I have yet to comment on the disservice that has been done, by Daily Mail journalist Jan Moir, to Stephen Gately, his grieving friends and family, and the many thousands of fans and supporters of the recently deceased singer.

I was made aware of this hateful tirade in the Daily Mail a couple of days ago thanks to at least 3 friends on Facebook. Not being a regular reader of any newspaper let alone this one I may have missed this attack if not for the outcry of protests by many thousands of people on Facebook, Twitter and even Jan Moir’s “fellow” journalists. I have been trying to find the right words to describe how I feel about it and why her opinion, to which she is entitled, should not be published in a national newspaper thus leading the world to believe this is what this newspaper also believes and endorses.

There are several issues I have with Ms Moir, but mainly it is her blatant anti-gay stance that rankled me. Never mind the fact that she has alluded that Stephen Gately’s grieving mother is delusional in her beliefs over the cause of his death. Never mind that she doubts the competency of the Spanish coroner who stated that the death was from natural causes. And never mind that she seems to feel that any death is nothing more than an inconvenience, “like a broken teacup in the rented cottage.“

Kicking a man after he has died, Ms Moir criticizes the Irish star in various ways.

Stating that he wasn’t a competent singer – “even though he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk.”

Criticizing the way he came out – “Gately came out as gay in 1999 after discovering that someone was planning to sell a story revealing his sexuality to a newspaper. Although he was effectively smoked out of the closet, he has been hailed as a champion of gay rights.”

Criticizing his “abuse” of the newly granted right to allow gay people to celebrate their partnerships in a Civil Union – “Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.”

In response to these attacks I would answer that:

Despite being extremely distasteful to critique a man who has only just died, I will allow her opinion of Stephen’s singing ability. Everyone is entitled to have differing tastes, something which Ms Moir does not seem to entirely accept in others. Our differences are what make us unique. Her saying that he could barely carry a tune is, in my opinion, wrong, though even I noted sometimes he had his off days. Don’t most singers? Don’t most people? Was this article written on one of her off days? Who knows? I’ve never read any other articles by this award-winning journalist to compare it with.

Her condemnation over the adulation he received after being forced to come out is not acceptable though. A persons sexuality is not something that should be forcibly disclosed unless the said person is being blatantly hypocritical (i.e. a gay politician speaking out against gay rights issues while denying their own sexuality), even then I am still undecided as to the right anyone has to disclose a personal detail such as this.

Stephen could have denied this “accusation,” or he could have attempted to ignore it, though this would have been virtually impossible. Instead he confronted the issue head-on and was rewarded by the response that the public loved him even more for being honest about his personal life. I’m sure that this must have been a relief to him despite him possibly not being ready for such a confrontation at that time. He was in a new relationship, one that ended 3 years later, during which time he suffered depression and an addiction to prescription medication said to be caused by the break up of Boyzone the year after he came out. I’m sure the new and intense spotlight on his personal life could not have made things easier for him at this time though. Despite all of the issues he was dealing with, Stephen did become a champion of gay rights, however reluctantly. Just by turning up at an event organized to highlight the lack of equality LGBT people still face in this country (and on this planet), he helped generate the publicity necessary for these events to become successful. He was a young face, a star popular with young and old people alike, a person that young people could empathize with and feel helped to represent them and their feelings. He, for a time, was the face of young gay Britain, a necessary role to reassure the next generation that, whatever their sexuality, they could be accepted. Ms Moir’s article though enforces the attitude that acceptance is conditional on every other aspect of your life conforming to her (the public’s) ideals and opinions. That, however, is not acceptance, that is merely tolerance.

Coming out can have many unnecessary consequences even in the post-Ellen era that we now live in. The fact that Stephen acknowledged his sexuality in public should be praised, as it widely was, because he could have faced rejection by his fans and thus by his employers, losing his ability to work in his chosen profession. He could have faced rejection from family, friends and his peers in the industry if those who did not already know his “secret” were not willing to accept him for who he was. And, as unappetizing as it may be, just being out can leave you as a target for certain section of society, for either physical or verbal attacks. All these factors need to be taken into consideration, especially by a celebrity, when deciding on the right time to reveal their sexuality. I find it slightly reassuring that, with each celebrity that comes out, the media storm is becoming less and less intense. These are, in truth, non-stories which the press make into tabloid headliners by sensationalizing the details and reinforcing certain beliefs about sexuality that some people find distasteful.

Most surprising to me, considering her subsequent claim to be a supporter of Civil Union rights for gay couples, is her statement that, “Gately’s death is [sic] another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.” Citing the coincidental recent death of Kevin McGee, former husband of Matt Lucas, who committed suicide in the week preceding Mr Gately’s death. Her linking of the two was tenuous, being just that both were gay and had at some point been in a civil partnership and both were now dead in some sort of deathly and inaccurate algebraic equation: Gay & Civil Union = Death.

Firstly, the fact that Stephen Gately was in a Civil Union has nothing at all to do with how he died. Neither does the fact that he may or may not have been involved in sex with their visitor that night. What may do though is the fact that he had smoked cannabis as may a possible genetic heart condition. The fact is that Ms Moir seems to be claiming a higher knowledge of medical pathology, and of this death in particular, than the coroner who actually examined Stephen’s body.

The overall impression that this article gives to the reader is that Stephen Gately heralded his own death by the choices that he made. Jan Moir alludes that he led a life “shadowed by dark appetites or [that was] fractured by private vice.” What, other than his sexuality and choices within that sexuality, can she be referring to? From everything else that is said in this piece, the only conclusion that I can come to, and that thousands of other complainants have come to along with me, is that she is referring to his sexuality and her distaste for it. I have come to the conclusion from her piece that Jan Moir believes that Stephen Gately chose to be, and act, as a homosexual, chose to take cannabis and chose to have a threesome (something which heterosexual people wouldn’t do within a marriage) and so it was inevitable that he would (should?) die.

This is a totally intolerable piece of writing that never should have seen print in a national newspaper as an article. The Daily Mail felt shame enough to change her original title of the piece from “Why there was nothing “natural” about Stephen Gately’s death ” to “A strange, lonely and troubling death,” though neglected to edit, retract or apologize for the article’s content. Several advertisers with the Daily Mail, in print and on-line, have expressed their wish to be disassociated with the article, though I am unaware if any have gone the whole hog and pulled their advertising from the paper. I applaud any that have done, or will do this, as simply moving the advert to another section does nothing to affect the finances of the Daily Mail, which is probably the only thing that will make this type of hate-filled article a thing of the past with them.

As for Jan Moir, I hope that after she is forced to issue a satisfactory apology and retraction, is disciplined by and dismissed from the paper, and then subsequently forced to exit from the world of media, that we do not see her in 5 years time as a contestant on some droll reality show, as seems to be the career choice of almost all disgraced “celebrities.”

As another recently departed celebrity once quoted, while playing a gay character no less, Jan Moir “your approval is not needed!”

[Patrick Swayze as Vida Boheme in To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar"]