2006

Gays, Lesbians, the Media, the Heroes, the Hatemongers ... and 2006

A look back at 2006 through our eyes

December 31, 2006.  It was way back in 1992 – on May 8 to be exact – the Detroit News claimed its niche in LGBT history when the first column of commentary with a gay perspective appeared in a major US daily newspaper.

Deb Price, with the encouragement of the editors at the Detroit News, weathered the initial storm of protest that the early columns brought and she has continued ever since that day with a weekly contribution that is now syndicated to more than 100 newspapers across America.

Ms. Price was once with the Washington Post where she met her partner Joyce Murdoch – the couple were among the first same-sex couples to marry in Canada.

The couple wrote an intriguing book And Say Hi To Joyce: America’s First Gay Column Comes Out which was first published back in 1995.  They then co-wrote Courting Justice: Gay Men and Lesbians v. the Supreme Court (2001) which meticulously documented and compellingly narrated chronicle of the gay-related cases before the nation's highest court over the past fifty-odd years

Yet again, Deb Price is the UK “writer of the year”.

Another American columnist worth mentioning is Leonard Pitts Jr of the Miami Herald.  He is also syndicated.

This Pulitzer Prize winning columnist (2004 for “commentary”) is best described as “gay friendly” – he actually will step up to the plate and wallop a home run for the LGBT community.

A few weeks ago, he wrote “I just find myself intrigued by the idea that if you’re not gay, you shouldn’t care about gay rights” in response to an email he received suggesting that he was secretly gay.

The happily-married father of five – like Deb Price, he lives in suburban Washington – is certainly an ally.

Keep writing, Mr. Pitts – and thank you!

Blogs are becoming more and more accepted as being part of the “new media”.  Three gay blogs stood out during 2006.

In London, the short-lived James Collard blog was with us for about six months.  But the assistant editor of the Time Magazine disappeared without trace from the blogosphere.  And that means that Mark “the skinhead Oscar Wilde” Simpson continues to reign supreme on the eastern shores of The Pond.

The inventor of the word “metrosexual” seems to have a few more inventions up his sleeve.  His reportage on the 2007 Dieux du Stade calendar is filed in the “Sporno” section, as are his cutting-edge comments on the 2007 calendar of Roman Catholic priestly pin-ups (“ … we now have priests being presented as boy-band members, and apparently loving it.”).

You can read Mark Simpson’s blog HERE, if you dare!

Across the Atlantic, blogACTIVE continues to “rock the boat” as it keeps a watchful eye on the shenanigan is Washington so as to tell us the truth about hypocrisy, especially within the “anti-gay” lobby.

blogACTIVE famously “outed” Republican Senator Larry Craig in October after a lot of painstaking research, including his voting record on “ant-gay” matters.

The article, Senator Larry Craig.... What’s with the gay bashing?, explained:

“I have done extensive research into this case, including trips to the Pacific Northwest to meet with men who have say they have physical relations with the Senator. I have also met with a man here in Washington, D.C., who says the same -- and that these incidents occurred in the bathrooms of Union Station. None of these men know each other, or knew that I was talking to others. They all reported similar personal characteristics about the Senator, which lead me to believe, beyond any doubt, that their stories are valid.”

In Europe, is best blog with a distinctly “gay” flavour is served up by Mike Tidmus whose sense of humour, often using photo montages, is straight (pardon the expression) “from the top draw”.

Who can forget his play on the Jerry Herman “I Am What I Am” musical:

Illustration by Mike Tidmus from his blog

Last year (2005), the Tidmus blog announced the new musical by Floyd Webber and Condi Rice, “Bushita”!

And it was the Mike Tidmus blog that coined the name “Papa Ratzi” for the Pope!

Ex-pat American Mr. Tidmus is based in the Netherlands, as is our Politician of the Year – Sophie in ‘t Veld, a Member of the European Parliament and a vice-president of the Parliament’s ‘intergroup’ on gay and lesbian rights.

Ms. in ‘t Veld braved the troubled Prides in Moscow and Riga, learning first hand that homophobia is alive and well in Russia and EU-member State Latvia. 

She also experienced the surprisingly joyous Warsaw Pride and, like many, came returned home with the knowledge that ordinary Poles had ‘no problem’ with a Gay Pride in their capital. 

Also, she would have seen the elderly Polish Army veteran of the Second World War in full uniform, complete with campaign standing in the street smartly saluting the participants in the parade – the UK Gay News “moment of the year”.

Other heroes/heroines of ’06 include Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain for ‘daring’ to break ranks with Ruth ‘Opus Dei’ Kelly (and presumably “Papa Ratzi”) and daring to introduce anti-discrimination regulations in Northern Ireland, while Ms. Kelly has put on the brakes of similar regulation in Great Britain.  Also from the UK is Peter Tatchell who continues to bring to light the many injustices suffered by gay and lesbian people across the world, and who now gets his message across in his columns on the Guardian website.

In America, our heroine is the late Laurel Hester, who took on her local “freeholders” in New Jersey and one the right to leave her pension rights to her same-sex partner.  Despite being terminally ill with cancer, she fought the freeholders – and won, shortly before she died in January.  Also a hero was a ‘straight’ man Dane Wells, Ms. Hester’s former colleague in the Police, who played an important part in the campaign.

Russians Nikolai Alexeyev and Yevgenia Debryanskaya for standing up to the Moscow Mayor and organising the first-ever Moscow Pride, sans Parade which would have been a parade too far.

■ Sophie in ‘t Veld does a radio interview outside the Kremlin during the Moscow Pride demonstration in May photo: UK Gay News

Now to the Hall of Shame ... and there are more entries in this category than any other!

So perhaps it is best to just create a short list as each is worthy of the honour for “outstanding services to homophobia”.

From Russia, Mayor Yuri Mikhailovich Luzhkov, the enthusiastic promoter of his city to everyone but gays.  He banned the Moscow Gay Pride Parade, but sent-in a couple of thousand cops to disrupt a demonstration by a small group of gays outside the Kremlin, while allowing a counter demo of an unlikely mixture of religious groups and ‘neo-Nazis’.

From Latvia, Janis Smits, the virulently homophobic MP from the ruling Latvian First Party who managed to get himself elected as the head of the Parliament’s human rights committee.

A whole bunch of Leviticus-quoting “preachers” in a host of countries who conveniently forget Leviticus while tucking into a delicious crab and lobster salad – or even a pork chop, before trotting off to the barber shop for a haircut.

Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party and his cronies who consider the world will end tomorrow (January 1) when it becomes illegal to discriminate against gay men and women in the provision of good and services.  Why should a small bed and breakfast establishment be forced  to take in a same sex couple who would want to share a bed, the DUP fumes?  And what makes you think that a gay couple would want to book into such a place when there are plenty of other places that welcome the ‘pink pound’, we reply?

The ‘not so Reverend’ Fred Phelps and his small band of relatives who form the congregation of his Westboro Baptist Church, which even the Southern Baptists disown.  The Phelps clan continues to picket the funerals of US servicemen killed in action, but now plan to picket the funeral of President Gerald Ford in Washington this week.

The government of Iraq for allowing religious militia to persecute gays – often executing them.

The British Home Office which, as the Home Secretary pointed out in the summer was “not fit for purpose”, for deporting gay men and women back to their countries of origin where they are likely to be imprisoned – or worse – because of their sexuality.

And finally, the Conservative Voice website.  Not only did this group breathe fire and brimstone against gays, but they also took “the Devil’s Dollar”

Seems like they will take advertising from anyone – and an award to Google for managing to place these two ads on the website!
 

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