A Skinny Take: the Daily Mail vs. homosexuality

The Press complaints commission has now received over 22,000 complaints in response to the (now infamous) column written last week the Daily Mail’s Jan Moir about the untimely death of Boyzone’s Steven Gately.  The article – published just a day before Gateley’s funeral – gained almost instant notoriety not because it contains an articulate, poignant or somber tribute to the tragic and sudden death of a young man cut down in his prime; but rather, it spread like wildfire across the internet for all the wrong reasons – because of its homophobic and insensitive tone.

Reading the article, the repugnance of it stems from the innuendo – the veiled prejudice – a rusty old tactic that has been employed by right-wing reactionaries for decades.  Moir seems to want to imply that homosexual acts are deviant, but more so dangerous. She goes further than most homophobic commentators because rather than suggest that homosexuality presents a ‘moral threat’ to ‘straight’ society she insanely attempts to present homosexuality as a physical danger to all participants. She writes: “Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages… 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.”

Moir here seems baffled and unable to comprehend the fact that gay people also die… not only this, but their relationships can be destructive, lead to depression – even suicide (in the case of McGee). In the above quote, Moir’s starting point seems to be that in heterosexual marriages there is never any tragedy, any death, any form of danger, violence, risk; how ignorant can she truly be?

According to Women’s Aid for example, “in any one year, there are 13 million separate incidents of physical violence or threats of violence against women from partners or former partners.”  Not only this but “on average 2 women a week are killed by a male partner or former partner.”  Moir needs to wake up and smell the coffee… why doesn’t she use her acidic tongue to target real dangers, real problems?

The answer to that question probably resides in the fact that she writes for the Daily Mail. The Mail are hardly renowned for progressive journalism – the paper is described by Stephen Fry as one which “no-one with any decency would be seen dead with” – and they have a long, long history of resentment towards any social group not white, middle class or anglo-saxon: leading as far back as to their support of fascist nutters such as Mosley, Hitler and Mussolini prior to 1939.

Indeed, if any positives have come from Moir’s article, it is the fact that by targeting a pop culture icon for her bigoted rant she has mobilized thousands of otherwise apathetic individuals into complaining about the Mail’s journalistic practice.  The bigger picture is that the Gately article was not a one off – there are similar columns published by the mail almost weekly that most people don’t notice or, rather, simply ignore.

Only a week or so before Moir’s article was published for example, there was a much smaller scale stooshie caused when another Mail columnist felt obliged to describe prospective Tory MP Iain Dale as “overtly gay”; and when Dale invited members of the gay community to attend the open primary for selection of the new candidate the same columnist wrote, in a crudely patronizing tone, “isn't it charming how homosexuals rally like-minded chaps to their cause?”

For the Daily Mail though, it’s an issue of freedom of speech – i.e. their right to hate. Which is ironic, coming from the same newspaper that got Russell Brand sacked for making lewd-jokes on the radio. Indeed, freedom of speech: but only if that speech is first sanctioned by the Mail.

See more of Ryan's work at http://www.rjgallagher.co.uk/