Out-take upstart March 2000

Gay Times 250

One of the positive things about this exercise in masturbatory self-reference were the articles by / about other 25 year olds.  The most vigorous and up-beat being that on Mervyn Boyd from mid-Antrim.  It was interestingly off-centre to have something from rural Ulster (Paisley’s heartland into the bargain).  It speaks volumes for Mervyn’s spirit that the other subjects came from large, settled urban Gay communities.

The victory in the Dudgeon case at the European Court of Human Rights is noted under the 1981 heading in the chronology, as is the change of law in 1982.  Then — nada, so far as NornIrl is concerned.  No mention of battles with the RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary), of the Carpenter Club, of our 1984 ‘InterInsular’ Conference.  There is no reference to the law being changed in 1994 – six weeks after the change in GB.

This oversight is probably due to GT‘s positively unhygienic relationship with Stonewall and New Labour.  The distinct lack of urgency on the part of the latter, in doing anything substantial about our legal lot, clearly upsets some of the editorial team.  Old Labour, and the Unions, were it is crudely hinted, anti-Gay.  NIPSA (the NI Public Service Alliance) sent a very senior officer to the 1984 Conference.  ‘Blue-collar’ unions have put into effect policies protecting Gay workers.  In the nature of things their votes were needed to put such policies through the various Congresses.  Local governments’ with good Gay policies, Manchester, for example, are distinctly Old Labour.

Old News

There is an element of mealy-mouthing about Gay Times‘s own origins and its absorption of Gay News.  The latter title had been sold by its editor (who did not own it) to a man, it transpired, who did not have the readies to buy it!  The title was sold to a third party and it struggled on for a while.  So did Gay Reporter.  It was set up by members of the GN staff who claimed that it, (Gay News), was ‘political’.  (And therefore, it seemed, ‘left-wing’).  And it was ‘dominated by lesbians’ – two, out of two dozen employees of GN were women!

As it turned out, the readership wanted ‘politics’ (the term, by Reporter standards, seemed to cover any attempt at analysis of books, films, telly, or anything else.  They were Thatcherites, we should all behave like atomised, mindless consumers.  GR was such a roaring success that the title was given to Millivres.  (It disappeared off the masthead of Gay Times many, many moons ago.  ”…incorporating Gay News” reads better than “incorporating Gay Rubble“, even sixteen years after the demise of the former.  And even for people who have never seen a copy of the “legendary” News.

GT in this jubilee edition emphasises its Blairite loyalties by joining in the vilification of Serbia.  It (Serbia) is, needless to say, under the current régime, anti-Gay.  They managed to contact some Gay people in Belgrade who have a suitably servile attitude to “the Allies” who were bombing their country to obliteration.  We can only hope such people form a peculiar minority, otherwise legal rights for Gay citizens of Serbia are generations away.

Gay Times and upstart (formerly Update) are the same age — our career-paths, admittedly, have been somewhat different.

O Gay! (and others)

O Gay is a fairly regular publication from Derry / Londonderry, and has been on the go for several years now.  It used to be called In Yer Face – though it wasn’t particularly, carrying a glutinous article on the death of Princess Di[ana].  Your editor, in IPR (the Irish Political Review), wrote an article about it One parasite down…, and a follow-up Diuretic.  The motivation was not dislike of Di, as a reaction against the tidal wave of hysteria.  O Gay is cheerful and very colourful, but it is oddly anonymous.  There is very little sign of the Second City’s (not entirely kindly) humour.  But, if you sent a fiver to Foyle Friend’s address they may cheer up and send you a year’s worth of editions.

Outcast is reasonably new — the first edition was September or October 1999 — and it is produced by everyone who is irritated by the Stonewall / Gay Times / New Labour nexus.  As this means nearly everybody in the UK who is not an actual member of the three named bodies it may well have a great future ahead of it.  At present it is rather worthy, in the manner of magazines for sectional interests, trade union journals, say, rather than a self-proclaimed (I’ve always wanted to use that phrase) Queer Current Affairs mag.

Gay News, despite the fairly bland title, was always vigorously opposed to calling agricultural implements anything other than spades.  Gay Noise, a magazine launched partly because of a feeling that (the other) GN was becoming bland (and party out of its collapse), headlined the shooting of John Lennon thus; Manhattan landlord murdered! Possibly you do not need to be quite so brutal to make a point, but high-mindedness and caution look quite similar.  [There followed the address and subscription rates for Outcast - upstart 2010].

Nobody would accuse Scots Gay of being high-minded.  It did carry, (last November), a furious editorial telling Stonewall where to get off.  This arose out of that organisation’s trip to Scotland, in the course of which it told the natives how to go about agitating in their own Parliament.

Byzantine Ulster

(We too, had a visitation from a person who told us how to organise a campaign against Section 28.  Stonewall did not realise that our local governments do not run education.  They never have.  When that turned out to be a bummer, they turned to homophobic bullying in schools.  The chap they sent across (who was not a particularly bad and certainly not an arrogant person) did not know anything about the Byzantine complexities of the educational system in place in Northern Ireland.

He currently thinks it is run by the Ministry of Education and the ‘Council of Churches’ (?) and not:

the five Education and Library Boards,

the Council for Catholic Maintained Schools,

the NI Council for Integrated Education,

and,

An Comhairle Gaelscoileanna.

Overseeing all this (basically paying salaries) is the Department of Education.

There are some ‘Christian’ schools run by fundamentalists, but they do not ask the State for money.

He did not seem to be all that clued-up about education in Great Britain, not recognising the term ‘ILEA’ (the – admittedly now defunct – Inner London Education Authority).  It had very good policies on Gay pupils / students — and teachers — and teaching about variant sexualities.  Thatcher wound it up for being too useful).

Scots Gay (which has taken over from the now-defunct Gay Scotland Garry Otten’s razor sharp Scottish Media Monitor (it makes NornIrl’s media seem positively pro-Gay)) has a… robust attitude to life, Scotland, the world and everything.