Lies, damned lies, and statistics

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies and statistics.” This quote was attributed to Benjamin Disraeli by Mark Twain, and Disraeli is as good an originator as any, even though no evidence exist that Disraeli ever said it.

The quote does however ring in my ears when I read the reporting on the British Office for National Statistic’s recent survey of about 250000 Britons concerning their households.

The survey has come to the astonishing conclusion that there are a combined number of gay and bisexuals of 1.5%. An earlier 2004 survey conducted by the Treasury spoke of between 5-7 percent.

Liberal Democrats for gay marriage; LGBT charity AGAINST gay marriage

The British party The Liberal Democrats, one half of the ruling coalition, today adopted same-sex marriage at its party conference in Liverpool, so hopefully gay people will be able to tie the knot in a few years, unless the Tory right refuses.

In a strange twist, the biggest LGBT-charity in the UK, Stonewall, seems to have come out against same-sex marriage. A report at PinkNews say that the chairman of the Equality-division views same-sex marriage as too expensive, and puts the tab at £5bn.

People are naturally outraged by this, and everyone I’ve spoken to about it directs quite a bit of ire against the organisation. I have yet to find one that shares Stonewall’s strange view on equality under the laws.

Gaga gags on gay ban; US military nurse wants job back; the world will end; homosexuality will be legal; and B&Bs won’t let you

Lady Gaga not only offers the opportunity to be creative with headlines, but she is also out there to fight for our equal rights. Earlier she announced she would become a priest in order to marry gays on stage. Now she has rallied against the US ban on gays in the military.

If she does gag, then former Major Margaret Witt might be able to help. She’s a lesbian who lost her job in the US military when they found out that she was indeed gay. Now she wants her job back, and she’s gone to court to get it.

But if she does, get it back I mean, the world will descend into anarchy and chaos, and little children will possibly cry. That’s what the religious right in the US is asserting. As if that was new.

Thought if the world is ending because of teh gays, they might want to have a little chat with republican state senator John Brueggeman in Montana who wants to bring Montana into the 21st century by removing language from the Montana laws that forbids homosexuality.

And if jobs in the US military, or the romp in Montana, is too much of an effort and you want to get away to, say, a B&B in the UK you should know that 13 percent of Bed & Breakfasts in the country won’t let you sleep in the same bed as your partner.

Who wants to live forever?

I got into an argument with a friend on MSN about the question of HIV in the gay community, and the fetischization of bare-backing among many gay men. Ironically enough, and this is true, Queen’s ‘Who wants to live forever’ was playing on spotify at the time.

As has been reported on this blog earlier London’s club scene is a dangerous place if you’re unwary. One in seven men you meet is going to be HIV positive.

So, if you go out and try to find a man for the night, I might feel like Harry Callahan in the Dirty Harry movies, pointing a gun at you with one round in the chamber. I can make a little speech there:

– I know what you’re thinking. "Did he wear a condom last time or not? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is HIV, the most devastating disease to have ever hit the gay community, the bubonic plague of queers, and would blow your life clean off, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?

After fighting the disease for thirty years it is easy to understand why people are battle weary, and why many people have given in, but it is very hard to understand why the Russian roulette of bare-backing have come to be fetischized by elements in the gay community.

It is also hard to understand why serious participants in the community are not railing against this fetischization, but keep quiet about it and even ignore it. It is hard to understand why clubs and venues cash in on it.

It is a lie that the disease is manageable. It is not. It is a virus, and there is no cure, and even though the medication for now keeps it in check viral particles in the body survive. The modern medicines bring down HIV particles to less than half a million particles in a full grown man, of to less than 75 copies per milliliter of blood.

If those viral particles spread resistance to the medication will spread. If the resistance spread we will get back to how it was in the early nineties and late eighties, where every gay man will bury two or three of their friend per month. Have you seen movies of the bubonic plague of the middle ages? That’s how it was back then.

Do we want those days back? If not, it is time for pressure to be put on the fetischization of bare-backing. It is a too dangerous a practice to be ignored, and turned a blind eye to.

Tory gay squirming continues; Ed Milliband LGBT-gay’s choice; Ulster Unionist won’t go in Pride Parade; and Reading Pride biggest ever

It’s been a very strange week for the tories here in the UK when they’ve been wallowing in gayness, or suspected gayness. The fallout continues with the foreign secretary William Hague, and his supposed gayness. His extraordinary response to the rumours have come under attack from his own, and many people are shaking their heads at this storm in a tea-cup.

On the other side of the political spectrum it is a more sedate affair where people speculate who is the best candidate for gay labour members, and it seems that Ed Milliband is the current favourite there. The gay news site PinkNews polled its members and found that 42% of identified labour voters preferred Ed Milliband.

And the more sedate political debate continues in Northern Ireland, but from the opposite view of the Labour one. There the Ulster Unionists are choosing between the traditionalist Tom Elliot and the more liberal Basil McCrea. Mr Elliot will give those gays the least, and will certainly not attend either the Gaelic Games (GAA) or the gay pride parades.

And speaking of Pride, Reading Pride was reportedly the biggest ever with 12000 participants, according to the organisers.

William Hague, Chris Meyers steps into an episode of Soap

We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality, as Thomas B. Macaulay, the 1st Baron of Macaulay and Paymaster-General during Queen Victoria’s reign between 1846 and 1848, once wrote.

And this blog nods sagely back through the decades as we read on about the days dealings in gay politics in the United Kingdom.

Follow this, because this is going to read like the script of Soap, and I do mean that seminal 1970s comedy show lampooning the soaps.

As you may be aware, we had a little election this year in which the old regime under Gordon Brown got soundly tossed out in favour of bright new faces in the form of David Cameron and his side-kick Nick Clegg. Hilarity or tragedy ensued, and the characterisation is much dependent on who you ask.

One of the faces, bright and scrubbed, and not having that haggard ‘been-in-office-for-a-while’-look yet, was Mr William Hague, who got the nod to become the Foreign secretary.  And as any high rank profile politician he needed his own retinue of advisors.

One of these advisors hired was a Mr Chris Meyers, a 25 year old graduate from Durham County university, with no experience at all in the higher levels of the Conservative Party, or in any workplace at all for that matter. The British tabloid press, in the form of the Daily Mail, hint that there might be a reason for the hiring beyond mere competence.

In other words, “OMG Hague has hired his male lover!!!! xD”. Okay, maybe not expressed like that, in so many words, or in those words at all, but rather through some serious innuendo. Mr Meyers promptly quits, and Mr Hague delivers a tearful denial involving his family and attempts to form that family.

In other words, it has been a few eventful days, particularly in the light if Prison Minister Crispin Blunt’s coming out the other day, and it all leaves this blogger with the question: does it matter at all? Is it a storm in a tea-cup?

The outing mechanism should be used sparingly and with care, and be reserved for cases where you know for certain that a politician is working against gay equality while actually being gay. We don’t know if this is true with Mr. Hague. There are very thin evidence about it, as far as we know.

William Hague certainly fits the criteria for someone that should be outed if he was indeed gay: voting against the repeal of the notorious Section 28, voting against gay adoptions, and so on and so on. If he turns out to actually be gay, then he is certainly fair game. But we don’t know yet.

That hasn’t, of course, stopped the British public – and its medias – from being gripped with one of its fits of morality. And the words of Thomas B. Macaulay floats back to us from the past, as true today as it was when he uttered them. Or to echo the old saying, with its very queer connections: There’s nowt so queer as folk.

Conservative minister comes out; another Tory minister will sue for outing; David Yost driven off Power Rangers set by homophobia

Following the previous coming out of the American conservative Ken Mehlman, the Tory MP for Reigate constituency here in the UK, Crispin Blunt, has come out of the closet. Earlier he announced that he was going to separate from his wife of 20 years and “come to terms” with his homosexuality. Mr Blunt is the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Prisons. Like his American counterpart, Mr Blunt has a chequered history in gay equality issues, with votes against the equalisation of age of consent and votes against gay adoptions. Mr Blunt is also the uncle of actress Emily Blunt.

Following Mr Blunts coming-out to a not so welcoming LGBT-community, another cabinet minister is considering legal action about gay-rumours about him. His position is, concerning threats to out him by bloggers, that he’s not buggering anyone and never has. Basically.

Buggering is dangerous, which the star of Power Rangers David Yost found out. The actor was basically driven off the show by the producers, actors and writers. In a video interview on the site linked, Yost explains how he was nearly driven to suicide by the others, before he walked off the set one day.

Glee for Scooch; Emma Thompson upset Isle of Wight; Gay man is upset too; Stephen Fry joins Norwich City; Will Young wins

My gay wiring got a bit of a short circuit when I read that Reading Pride – which takes place in September – will feature the group Scooch performing hits from the TV show Glee. A mix of Eurovision and musical theatre, in other words, and it may be too much for a gay man to bear. It seems like a planned joke.

And if it’s a joke, maybe it will fall as flat with the queers of Reading as Emma Thompson’s joke on The Late Show in the states did with the inhabitants of the Isle of Wight. She commented on the island with “Oh, so they stone homosexuals there? Nice. I think they are still allowed to flog them, which of course some of them enjoy.” This was not taken in a spirit of the Jest by the people of Isle of Wight, who got upset.

Spreading the misery around, the gay journalist Michaelangelo Signorile is upset too because national media in the US has described Judge Vaughn Walker as gay. Signorile said that the description of Walker was “a testament to how easily the media is manipulated by the right into doing things about which editors and reporters claim to be staunchly opposed.” What they are, supposedly, opposed to is outing.

A gay man that is not upset, hopefully, is the British writer and comedian Stephen Fry, who is joining the board of british football club Norwich City. “Truly this is one of the most exciting days of my life and I am as proud and pleased as I could be.”, Fry said in response to it all. So no, he doesn’t appear to be upset. Hopefully. Unless his joining the board will give him depression for not being picked as a member of the first team. Time will tell.

And as if that’s not enough, the gay singer Will Young has been voted Best Role Model for Gay Young People this year. If the title hasn’t left your tongue in knots, you will undoubtedly be pleased about that, and that he won by 58% in a poll arranged by the UK gay charity Stonewall. And that of course also makes me happy because I can include a shirtless Will Young in this post.

Vicar banned from fostering, sunny prides, and “gay marriage is child abuse”

A former Anglican priest in Blackburn wanted to become foster parents, but when they said “we don’t want any gay couples in our house” the council rejected their application and banned them from fostering.

The former vicar is appealing the decision, because he says that “it is vital that as Christians we are allowed to live out our faith in public and not be eliminated from this kind of vital community work due to oppressive equality legislation”. Right, equality is oppressive and is bad for morals, hear.

If that makes you want to go and grab a drink, or a bottle, you could have headed to Brighton this last week for the biggest Pride ever there. More than 160.000 people showed up for the fun times there. And the weather was nice too!

And if you think that’s too crowded, Liverpool had its Pride too, where 21 thousand people turned up. There they enjoyed a march and a party. Or, if you still are annoyed with the crowds, you could have gone and drunk grave ale over Worcester Pride which was cancelled due to lack of sponsoring.

If you still haven’t found that drink, the strong one, after the vicar things, you might want to consider just ditching the going out and drink after shave when you read Australian Senate candidate Wendy Francis views on gay marriage.  The Queensland politician said gay marriage was “child abuse” and that legalizing gay marriage was akin to “legalizing child abuse.”

Marriages, presidents and a spot of Pride

That old tease Robbie Williams has decided to tie the knot today with Ayda Field, 31, accord to a report in The Telegraph. The wild man of the pop scene is settling down in other words, and gay fans all over the country and the world is crying into their caffe lattes.

Another singer making the news is of course Wyclef Jean who is running for president of Haiti, who at this time is busy finishing his lates album “Haitian experience”. The country who is still reeling from the earthquake is otherwise known for its endemic homophobia, but perhaps a President Wyclef would help there.

And if presidential ambitions get too tiring, or wedding plans, then Brighton Pride has just opened. Tens of thousands of people are streaming into the south english town to don the glitter and the fabulosity of the festival.