Image courtest of the Daily Quail (click image for link)
I’ve decided to follow suit like many other bloggers in reporting on what is probably the most disgusting article I’ve ever read on the Daily Mail website. After the kerfuffle with Iain Dale and Ephraim Hardcastle’s column, you’d think the Daily Mail would be a little more cautious when it publishes homophobic articles. You are wrong. They’ve gone one better today, two better you might say when this time, unlike the short statement about Dale, Jan Moir has written at length about how gay people can never die naturally. Here’s the article in full. (I’d just post a link to it normally, but I’m sure you don’t want the Daily Mail in your internet history). I’ve also added my thoughts in red.
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. Since when was being gay a ‘dark appetite’ or ‘private vice’?
There are dozens of household names out there with secret and not-so-secret troubles, or damaging habits both past and present. Being gay is a damaging habit or a trouble? I quite like it!
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. Well aren’t you a cheery madam?
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. Something we can agree on.
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. That’s why Andrew Lloyd Webber cast him in Joseph? Have you heard him sing?
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.
Gately was the Posh Spice of the group – a popular but decorous addition. Unlike you, an unpopulor and idiotic addition to the Daily Mail.
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. They are keen to register this as an accident? You have proof of this? What are you insinuating?
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. If he hadn’t been taking drugs, wasn’t drunk off his face or left a suicide note then surely they have every reason to be.
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. Go on…
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. My friend from High School keeled over and died. He had an unknown heart defect. It happens.
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. See above. They do.
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. Oh and you know that? You’re a specialist in post mortem examinations? You know more than the doctors then.
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. Depends what you’d call ’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. From what I gather, he was a friend of the couple. Just because someone comes home after a night out, it doesn’t imply that sex will take place. Even if it did, what does it matter if they did it in their own home and it was all consensual? Nothing wrong with sex, no matter how many people are involved!
Cowles and Dochev went to the bedroom together while Stephen remained alone in the living room. Good boys wait their turn. I also doubt the facts of this sentence.
What happened before they parted is known only to the two men still alive. What happened afterwards is anyone’s guess. Or it’s their own business and nothing to do with a homophobic, fat trollop.
A post-mortem revealed Stephen died from acute pulmonary oedema, a build-up of fluid on his lungs. Surprised you haven’t guess what ‘fluid’ that would be. I didn’t realise that it ‘couldn’t be a natural death’, yet you report this. Did someone deliberately put the fluid there? Was it caused by too much sex?
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. It was a rumour, I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve never taken cannabis but I’m sure well over half of the UK population has had at least one puff. (no pun intended).
Nevertheless, his mother is still insisting that her son died from a previously undetected heart condition that has plagued the family. Case closed.
Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. It does?
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. That’s very true. I didn’t realise Stephen Gately’s marriage was anything similar to George Michaels. Even if all gay people’s civil partnerships were full of sex and alcohol, how many straight people would be jealous? Loads is my bet.
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. I didn’t know Gately’s death was dubious? Also, Kevin McGee apparently felt very alone after his partnership broke down and killed himself. I’m sure a marriage breakdown in the heterosexual community has been the cause of suicide at some point in history.
It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death. The truth is out. He had a heart defect, fluid on the lungs, he died. It was not strange, nor was it lonely. He had an amazing partner and I’m sure had a great night. Just because he was asleep in the living room, it doesn’t make his death lonely.
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. To which he has done.
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. No it hasn’t, you stupid, homophobic, ignorant, fucking bitch. Angry now.
What a vile creature that woman is. I’m appalled that the Daily Mail allowed this to be published, I urge everyone to write to the Press Complaints Commission about this factually incorrect, homophobic and slanderous article. She should be made to make a full apology and resign from her column. I’m disgusted and every time I read it I get angry. Just like most articles in the Daily Mail.
Popularity: 73% [?]
Jan Moir writes outrageously homophobic article in Daily Mail
How is the article ‘homophobic’? Where is the ‘homophobia’?
Stop using this stupid buzz-word, it doesn’t even make sense; An irrational fear of the same.
Where does the author demonstrate fear, or even hatred? That’s a rhetorical question, she doesn’t. You, like many others, are using it as a pejorative because you know that it instantly taints the article and author.
I’m with Jan Moir on this.
She isn’t referring to his sexual preferences, you div! She’s on about his drinking and drug taking and (possibly) to a too casual attitude to sex.
Modern ‘conservatives’… what a lousy bunch of effete liberals. Roll on the revolution!
You both need to look deeper into the context of the article , for one example, she hasn’t elaborated far enough into her discussion as to why Quote: civil partnership dispels the “happy ever after” myth.
I am in total agreement with freedom of speech, but she should make her article clearer before submitting herself into territories she has not supported herself in! I suppose what I’m saying is, no-one ever suggested that there was a happy ever after to being involved in a civil partner ship – and if so this is no more true than ‘the myths’ surrounding a heterosexual engagement.
I feel that she is unqualified to pass such judgements, and should learn that everyone has their own opinions. She is happy to speak so openly on a topic she clearly doesn’t fully understand herself, and she should understand that publishing such articles are going to spark such reader fury!
I can’t believe I’ve just read that, that’s a terrible article, no wonder #dailymailisgay is a trending topic on twitter, Why they let her publish this is silly. she acts as if homosexuals are another species, how we die differently and how she can compare a suicide (matt lucas’s ex) and a natural death as the same i do not know. But i suppose i shall just get on with my dangerous life shadowed by “dark apetites” and hope i don’t die a natural “gay” death. This woman is absolutely thick.
What a bitch.
She’s a very conflicted woman. But what do you expect from the daily fail. Journalistic standards are not their strong suit.
[...] Have I Got News For you is about start I’ll point you in the direction of Cardiff Blogger who has dissected her appalling article [...]
This morning Brighton’s Nikki Bayley (@nikkib on Twitter) made one of the first complaints in the country about the Daily Mail’s vile columnist Jan Moir and here cowardly homophobic attack on Stephen Gately. Here’s the Press Complaints Commission’s response http://tiny.cc/aPipa
Hey Ben, had a busy day at work, then a quick turn around to tux up to head out. The Daily Fail page seems to be down and I would have missed this whole sorry article without your blog.
It is a pity that we still have to write such stuff fisking someone with such opinions and rumour mongering. “Oh a young gay guys dies of a heart condition, surely it must be retribtion for thier liffestyle” I mean how backward thinking is that. Are the other Gately family members who also died prematurely of heart disease also gay? Err no!
You complete and utter idiot. It’s got nothing to do with him being gay. It looks like a gay person can’t be criticised for anything without being called that stupid word ‘homophobic’. Don’t be such a twit.
I don’t know how many of you saw Jan Moir’s recent Daily Mail article about the death of Stephen Gately; whilst homophobic in the extreme, it was not uniquely hateful. This week, the Ugandan MP David Bahati recently launched an Anti-Homosexuality Bill – yes, it’s actually called that – even though homosexuality is already illegal in the state. The bill:
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.
Cardiff Blogger, yet again I applaud you for a well thought-out and balanced piece. You’ve done a wonderful bit of fisking there.
“Did someone deliberately put the fluid there? Was it caused by too much sex?” Yup, it’s a well known fact that sex can bring on a fluid which fills the lungs to capacity, essentially drowning the sex-ee. Fortunately, the sex lives of most Mail readers aren’t quite up to the standard required to bring on this effect. That’s why the affair with sexy secretary is so well-catalogued as a release for over-stressed, high-flying business and government officials: they have dry throats.
[...] Jan Moir writes outrageously homophobic article in Daily Mail [...]
Typical. This is like the treatment of Blacks in the US in particular. If anything stands to indict them of improper behaviour (i.e. crime figures), rather than discussing the behaviour itself, accusers are defamed by whatever stock accusations are popular at the time.
Is sudden death at 33 unheard of? No. But is it a valid argument to rubbish Moir’s questionning of Gately’s death, because sudden death of youths happens, but at an incredibly rare rate? No. Is it a valid argument to say he had a heart defect because is albeit tragically distraught mother said so? No. Again and again, these events are buried (i.e. “we’re all morticians now” – pardon the pun) as soon as socio-political necessity takes precedence. Yes, again and again, truth is trumpted by lobbyists.
It takes the most malevolent, willful blindness to suggest that Moir is completely baseless in her assertion that a “friend” came up to the apartment for sex. Example: studies of 1980s San Francisco found that gay men had an average of 1,000 sexual partners per annum. To ignore this is irresponsible and a disgraceful blight on the truth. Still, if it’s all consentual and safe, fine. But I have my doubts.
While I completely respect the privacy of the Gatelys, I also defend Moir’s right to question a very rushed job investigation. Frankly, were I to have a gay child who died suddenly, the shouter-downers would be impinging on my right to find out the truth. Scribblers on this site are opponents to this cause.
In addition, let’s just say that every morsel of journalism I have ever read on the gay lifestyle* is homophobic nonsense. I have heard from friends working in the pubs trade of what goes on; I know gays who have told me of what they have seen. And these are people who are otherwise pretty meek, decent characters who would scorn even a mild joke at any minority. (If I had a son who was gay, it’s not the sexuality that would bother me, it’s the chance that he would run with this specific sort of crowd.)
To say what I have heard sounds like self-abuse, and tantemount-to-rape, is pretty accurate. So, why is the sex-drug culture in the gay community left alone, but if a girl is drugged by a staight man, he is (RIGHTLY) prosecuted and vilified? Sadly, I think Moir’s attackers are filthy hypocrites who do a massive disservice to truth-seeking, as they make this area too dangerous for objective journalists to investigate, lest they be personally attacked. Shame on you.
*I emphasise that “gay lifestyle” means the cohort of gays who engage in massive numbers of different sexual encounters (i.e. medically researched figures of 1,000+ per annum), NOT gays per se.
jan moir has started a penance blog. ccould you put a link in?
http://jan-moir-daily-mail.tumblr.com/
Thanks
Fellist and British Nationalist are right on the money.
This article is one of the dumbest things I’ve read. The red passages are ridiculous. The only argument they present is “Jan Moir is a bitch… just ‘coz”, without any justification.
This is just an attack on Jan Moir and I’m absolutely appalled that so many people are upset over what this lady said because they’re too stupid not to put words in her mouth.
@dublin john: “the cohort of gays “. I’m sorry, what? Is there some kind of organised homosexual hierarchy, with a master gay at the top? If you’re trying to express a ‘balanced’ opinion (or, failing that at least a reasonable one) then maybe you’d realise that ‘gays’ isn’t exactly the accepted descriptor of homosexual males.
“If I had a son who was gay, it’s not the sexuality that would bother me, it’s the chance that he would run with this specific sort of crowd.” Sadly, this is exactly the crowd that he ‘run with’ (although I’m not suggesting, as you seem to be, that he’s a Greaser). ‘This crowd’ are homosexual males, and potential partners, in just the same way that of the hetero- persuasion are always on the look out for somebody of the opposite sex. And do you know what the part that you seem to be ignoring is? Regardless of who you’re fictitious gay son is hanging out with, he’d still have the stigma which you so happily pass out attached to him, as he’s part of a ‘community’ who fuck each other up the arse.
Jon Barnes, if you don’t understand what I am saying, just ask. A cohort is a group in a scientific study. For example, the first cohort studied in the AIDS outbreak in 1982-83 San Fran; those who were effected by this new disease. Answer, by the way, was, yes, over 1,000 partners per annum each. (Look it up: this is medical research, so you will have to take a while to come up with a conspiracy theory to “prove” to me that this research was bogus. I am waiting, Jon!)
As for “accepted decipher,” did I just stumble into the enclave of thought control? Control language, you control the thoughts. But that’s modern intelligentia for you, isn’t it?
When I say “gay lifestyle,” and you respond by suggesting straights (oh, dear – I do hope I didn’t disregard thought control linguistic regimen there) out on the tear for sex is the same thing, it just shows me how against the truth you are. While many gays (whom I know, anyway) are in steady relationships (and more power to them), to suggest any more than a statistically negligable cohort (oh, that word againm Jon) of straight blokes have close to that number is more PC willful blindness – yes, even English chavs! (Incidentally, a gay friend of mine in Chicago told me the way Gay Pride parade folks dress “gives us all a bad name.” Or was he just being homophobic. Let me guess: it’s all White, Straight, Western Man’s fault…it always is, isn’t it?)
Jon I assume, once you decide to actually make a coherent point, you will step outside the pro forma deceptive platitudes about how “we are all the same underneath.”
Lol 1000 different partners? That’s bullshit. I don’t know anyone that has over 100 partners per annum and I know some real slags!
Look up the work of Randy Shilts of the San Fran Chronicle, and here’s a review his “And the Band Played On”: http://www.fumento.com/shilts.html. Gaetan Dugas – possibly Case #1 – would tell partners, “I’ve got gay cancer. I’m going to die, and so are you.” (Question, my right-on, sensitive friends: if there was a 20-something, white, thuggish male with VD from one of your vile welfare state tenements, acting in this way with hundreds of naive women, would you defend him? Right on, brother, right on.)
Also, David Horowitz’s investigations, reported in “Radical Son,” are pretty enlightening…
But you won’t, will you?
You see, Cardiff Blogger, I don’t understand how you can be so sure of your argument (let’s call it an argument, I suppose), in the time it took you to write your response. And I don’t think you have done any research into this original cohort – about 250 men in April 1982, by the way.
Will I divulge the goings-on in the bath-houses? Because it is in these places – so tenderly defended in Tom Hanks’ Philadelphia – where the behaviour at which you scoff occurred. An average of 3 partners a night (universally unprotected, mais oui!), with a 33% chance of taking home a VD. How about “glory holes”? Will I explain what they are? No, no – you just imagine…
I reiterate: it is this COHORT of about 250 men who reported THEMSELVES to medical researchers to having had an average of 1,000 sexual partners (a.k.a. “fast-lane homosexuals”), and the activity of these bath houses was specific to this area. Nothing I have said relates to gays in general.
It’s just a terrible endictment of political discussion that these things cannot be said. Now, how many people have died because this discussion has been shut down since the early-80s? Morons like Madonna walk into the propaganda war, to convince us that we’re all equally at risk (read “The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS” by Michael Fumento). Meanwhile, far more people die of cancer – but we all know whose lobbyists get the most research money…
You can keep quoting this ancient research again and again to backup your blatant homophobia that gay men are slags. ‘Gay saunas’ are frequented by very, very few people in the gay community – 1000 would imply 3 guys a night! What a ridiculous statement to say that the average gay guy sleeps with 3 different people a night.
The research you quote was done 30 years ago, this article states that in 2 surveys the conclusion is that gay men have as much unprotected sex as straight couples.
Gay men are not all slags. I’m gay and I have many, many gay friends. All they want are relationships and most of them are in them. And they don’t sleep around. 3 different guys a night? Get a grip.
How exactly do you manage to sleep with 1000 partners a night? Could you please link to the research?
Where would you find the time, especially considering you’d probably want to fit in a job there or at least have a few nights off.
Benjamin Gray: it’s 1000 per annum.
dublin john: I think you’ll find that the phrase cohort is a designation lumped on a group of HIV/AIDS positive homosexual men in the early 1980’s. “But I said that!” I hear you say. What you failed to draw from it is that this ‘cohort’ was group consisting of those who met the criteria for the study. Did they mention the HIV/AIDS positive homosexuals who had only slept with one person and got unlucky? What about the non-HIV/AIDS carriers who slept with a billion men an hour? Surely the inclusiveness of this cohort is offset by the exclusiveness to those who don;t fit the mould for research. And, just to continue, does gay promiscuity account for the spread of AIDS in Africa? You tell me, they’re your stats.
Very interesting post I love your site carry on the great articles