A new baby who is wanted, provided for and loved is always something to celebrate, and the congratulations from Elton’s celebrity and media pals have been flooding in. But those congratulations are nothing more than a piss in the ocean of criticism and revulsion that is being fired in the direction of the new fathers.

Well, I suppose there always ethical questions… is it right to create a new child through surrogacy, when so many already existing children are without a home or a family to love and provide for them? But plenty of heterosexual couples make babies via surrogacy or IVF, so there’s not much of a problem here. ..

And Elton John is a little old, at 63… but his partner is only 48. Men can naturally make babies well beyond either of these ages, and much older women in heterosexual relationships have babies with the help of science frequently, so no problems with that…

But… THEY’RE GAY. omg.

Daily Mail columnist Bel Mooney came out with the typical no-offense-but-I’m-about-to-say-something-really-offensive response…

I wince to think of baby ­Zachary Jackson Levon ­Furnish-John coming home from school in four years’ time and asking David or Elton: ‘But who is my mummy?’

Um. Ok. Why is the automatic assumption that gay-parenting is made up of secrets and lies? The “who is my mummy” question is pretty similar to the “where do babies come from” question. And if a child’s questions are answered factually and with love, then no problems will occur.

The problems experienced by children of gay parents are not experienced because their parents are gay – but because of the reactions of the people around them to the fact that they have two mothers or fathers.

Zachary Furnish-John is 5 days old, and the process of fucking him up has already begun. Not by his parents. But by homophobes and people overwhelmed by hate and fear.

People like the wonderful citizens of the internet who said things like this:

Sick, sick, sick,  this is ridiculous, soon the world will be taken over by gay’s

obsene

SICK

Absolute sickening the morals of the gutter from a person of proven depravity

I shudder to think how the child will be brought up! A child needs a father and motherly upbringing not by two men who are both homosexual (the word gay has been butchered from it’s original pleasant meaning).
How can a homosexual man be a woman? How is the child going to feel when he starts to grown and see other children with a mother and a father? Seems to me that some people are more interested in the rights of homosexual couples than the right of a child, male or female, to have a mother and father ( for those with a simplistic and selfish mindset, that  is, father = male and mother = female, they are quite easy to tell apart).
I thought it was interesting that they made sure the child was a male. Does make you wonder what the real motive is. I know the laws of the Ukraine and I also know how you can get around those laws – Gruivna ($$$$$)

I pity this poor child in his later life.   What will happen when they get him in bed with  them.   Will they take turns in bathing him?.   It does not matter what education he receives he will end up a very backward adult.   How sick these people are who support this kind of action?   Very sick I should say.

disgusting

P AEDOPHILES

Very, very, very Sick !!

paedo rock, hang the sick f—–s. no child should be allowed to be within a mile of these unhealthy parasitic low life ****’s

Freaks should not be allowed to have children living with them end of

Its an absolute outrage.  Shame on the person who sold them the child you are as disgraceful as those two

A disgrace. They just want something to play with in their disgusting old age, why else would they specify a boy, having failed to buy one in the Ukraine. They should keep themselves to themselves and interbreed, and discover the thing we all know, that it’s not natural. As always, too many do gooders in this world who only want to appease.

Anyone who agrees with what these two perverts have done is as sick, twisted and disgusting as they are!!!

just another, MUST HAVE accessory, for this pair of poofters.

Its just sick and un-natural, end of..

SICK SICK SICK      another trainee for the gay society

I thought there were laws to protect children from freaks and weirdos.

Sick and very very wrong, what is this world coming to?

Sickening indulgent self righteous faggots -they both suck! -o sooooory no pun intended

Utter disgust at reading this. Another pair of mincers getting headlines for all the wrong reasons.

What I would like to know is why is it alright with the establishment for two perverts to rear a child but for the same child to sit on Father Christmas’s, knee is forbidden and before all the do-gooders jump up and down remember the only reason homosexuality was legalised was because of all the MP;s, Judges and Councillors who getting NAMED and SHAMED.

Forgive my ignorance but has either of these perverts had any input in the baby making process as in filling the turkey baster?

All from the comments on this article. At least they removed the one saying “he won’t need to be breastfed – he’ll be prostate milked”…

But they might come across someone posting a Privilege Denying Dude somewhere, and realise what an arsehole he is. Also, a lot of internet memes are hopelessly misogynist, so it’s nice to see a little fightback. Spread it: http://privilegedenyingdude.tumblr.com/

For some theoretical guidance on how not to be a prick, also see: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/

]]> http://ssy.org.uk/2010/11/privilege-denying-dude-is-privileged/feed/ 21 http://ssy.org.uk/2010/09/have-you-heard-theres-no-such-thing-as-gay-people/ http://ssy.org.uk/2010/09/have-you-heard-theres-no-such-thing-as-gay-people/#comments Sat, 25 Sep 2010 20:40:31 +0000 Brogan http://ssy.org.uk/?p=3820 This week The Office of National Statistics released the figures from a new survey, which claimed that only 1.5% or 1 in 100 British citizens identity as Gay, Lesbian or Bisexual.

After interviewing only a small percentage of the population the ONS have come to the ‘concrete’ conclusion that only “480,000 adults describe themselves as homosexuals — just one in every 100. Another 245,000 — or one in 200 — are bisexual.”

Their statistics also claim to prove that the majority of those who openly admitted to being gay were more likely to have jobs higher up the career ladder than their heterosexual colleagues. 49.1% of gay people are in managerial or professional positions compared to 30.6% of straight people. However, that 49.1% of the boss class have already built up enough cushioning to be able to give up their straight ‘privilege’ and don’t have the worry of losing their position within society because they have the power to control any homophobia they might face. Whereas less powerful working class people, lower down the career ladder, don’t have this protection and have a lot more to lose. The statistic that 38% of gay people are also apparently better educated compared to 21.9% of straight people also backs this up – the ONS just haven’t thought very deeply about why that might be.

Homosexuals, according to this data, are also much younger than the rest of society with “66 percent under the age of 44 and 17 percent aged 16-24″. Which is most probably due to the fact that it’s more ‘acceptable’ to be out in today’s youth cultures than it has been in previous generations.

This survey also explains that: “A third of bisexual households include at least one child but only 8.6 per cent of gay or lesbian respondents live with a child.” Did it even cross these closed minded peoples’ heads that the one third of bisexual families mentioned were quite possibly living in a happy straight household and that the low rate of gay families with children might possibly have something to do with the way society has scapegoated gay parents and how much mad controversy there was about letting gay people adopt.

Naturally surveys like this must be taken seriously due to their obvious ‘accuracy’ and ‘impartiality’. If these articles tell us that only 480,000 adults describe themselves as gay or lesbian then of course we should ignore the fact that 2.2 million or 6.7% of British citizens use Gaydar or Gaydar Girls, just one of the many internet dating websites for LGBT members of society. Never mind the fact that most gay people, just like most straight people, aren’t even on sex hook up or dating websites.

Now that those champions of equality such as The Sun and The Daily Mail have given us this information, which shows us the ‘correct’ percentage of gay people in the British population, The Sun suggests that:

“Now we have a clearer view of the real figures, we need to start asking some serious questions about the vast sums of taxpayers’ money being spent on such a small minority and the disproportionate amount of attention they receive both in Whitehall and in the media.”

You know what would be easier? Turning around

And The Daily Mail proudly states that this survey has exploded “the assumption – long promoted by social experts and lobbyists – that the number is up to ten times higher than this at one in ten.”

Obviously The Sun aren’t completely hostile towards lesbians, as long as it blurs the line between news and porn. The image they used to illustrate the story is obviously a correct representation of lesbians in today’s society and NOT two women both contorting themselves to face the camera for the pleasure of shit head male Sun readers.

Although this ridiculous survey was probably just the result of stupidity at the ONS, the reaction of the right wing press shows that they clearly have an agenda to use homophobia as a way of cutting vital services that the LGBT community depends on, as seen in Glasgow. Here it is pretty much impossible to meet other gay or lesbian people unless you’re one of these well educated, confident, managerial types, who can afford to go to an expensive bar or club. Obviously unsure young people trying to figure out who they are DO NOT EXIST so they don’t need any money spent on supporting their needs.

It’s actually supported by scientific evidence that a major cause of homophobia is the desire to repress unacknowledged or unwanted homosexual feelings. In August 1996 the American Psychological Association did a study in which they used penile plethysmography (basically the technological measurement of hard ons) to “precisely measure and record male tumescence” of men who were avowedly straight’s reactions to to erotic images. Some of the men were professed homophobes, and some were not, who acted as a control group. The homophobic group basically got a lot more aroused by gay imagery than the control group. Questioned afterwards, the homophobes consistently underrated how much they responded to homosexuality.

One group of activists even cleverly wrote to homophobic MPs who voted against equalising the age of consent for homosexual and heterosexual sex, and challenged them to take the same test of their knob’s reaction to gay stimuli.

Basically, the homophobes experienced severe anxiety and a sense of threat from gay images, which the non-homophobic control group did not. While this is in many ways tragic, and would lead us to the conclusion that many homophobes need help and support to come to terms with themselves and their own feelings, it doesn’t give an excuse for some of the truly awful things people do as a result of that anxiety.

There are many cases of prominent and powerful people who were driving a homophobic agenda in religion, politics or society in general who were actually gay themselves. While this self-loathing is tragic, the harm that these people do to the rights and freedoms of others is inexcusable. To celebrate today’s gay pride march, Leftfield brings you a selection of some of the world’s greatest sexual hypocrites (apologies for them all being American, if you’d like us help expand our list to the UK and around the world then give us some extras in the comments!):

1) Pastor Tom Brock, a Lutheran clergyman from Minnieapolis, who is a local radio personality, and broadcasts his homophobic, extreme Christian viewpoints most days of the week. Pastor Brock most famously blamed a tornado that hit a church and convention centre in the city on gay marriage:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH1WVXPN21M

“66.6%! Hello!”

However, he’s been a bit less vocal on the fact that a magazine infiltrated his gay “chastity” support group, where participants used a version of the 12 step programme to try and “resist” their sexual urges. At the group, Brock admitted that on a “preaching mission” to Slovakia he “fell into temptation.”

“I was weak. That place has this really, really weird, demonic energy. I just got weak, and I had been so good for a long time. Things had been going so well for a long time. There’s a lot of gypsies there.”

Brock, who’s also frequently publicly racist, continued: “They’re toothless, filthy; they smell, stink; and the gypsies are trained in how to pick your pocket.”

After he was exposed, the church put him on “administrative leave” while they investigated him. Some attacked the magazine for infiltrating what was supposed to be a private group. If it were really a group trying to help people with genuinely destructive or dangerous behaviour, that might be right. But the fact is this group was a Christian propaganda group teaching gay men to hate themselves. And the magazine didn’t expose anyone’s identity, apart from the Pastor. As they put it themselves:

“Lavender Magazine as a matter of policy do not believe in outing anyone. People are allowed to be crazy and dysfunctional in their lives. There’s one exception: a public figure who says one thing and does another. This is not the first homosexual minister who denounces homosexuality in public and engages in it in private.”

They’re right, and every time one of these prominent closet homophobes is exposed, the less likely another will come along to make others suffer for their own sexual anxiety.

The 100% straight George Rekers

2) George Rekers, a Baptist Minister, helped found the extreme right wing Family Research Council, one of the leading political perpetrators of homophobia in the US. Rekers is the author of such catchy titles as ‘Growing Up Straight: What Families Should Know About Homosexuality.’ The council “promote the traditional family unit and the Judeo-Christian value system on which it is built,” and have used their influence to push political candidates in the US to take up homophobic positions, which have negatively impacted on the lives of millions of LGBT people. You can read some of the organisation’s homophobic statements here, including their call to “export” homosexuality from the USA.

Well, George has been doing some exporting of homosexuality of his own, after he was caught taking a rent boy on holiday in Europe with him. The young man was hired via a rent boy website, where his profile apparently boasted about his penis. However, Rekers claimed he’d been unaware that he worked as a prostitute until midway through the trip, although he didn’t deny hiring him via the site (?!), which has sexually explicit images on its homepage.

Rekers claimed that he’d had surgery and was unable to lift his bags, so had hired the man as an assistant. Perhaps one of the lamest excuses we have ever heard.

As one activist put it: “While he keeps a low public profile, his [Rekers'] fingerprints are on almost every anti-gay effort to demean and dehumanize LGBT people. His work is ubiquitously cited by lobby groups that work to deny equality to LGBT Americans. Rekers has caused a great deal of harm to gay and lesbian individuals.”

3) Ted Haggard was the founder of several different evangelical churches, and part of the elite group of evangelical preachers that had direct access to the White House during the Presidency of George W. Bush. What the President didn’t know was that Haggard was also leading a secret life in which he had sex with a male prostitute while they both got fucked on crystal meth.

Haggard prays to God for more crystal meth and cock

Haggard’s downfall came, appropriately enough, after he appeared on publicly denouncing gay marriage, and the man he’d been having sex with realised his true identity. Mike Jones said: “It made me angry that here’s someone preaching against gay marriage and going behind the scenes having gay sex. I had to expose the hypocrisy. He is in the position of influence of millions of followers, and he’s preaching against gay marriage. But behind everybody’s back [he's] doing what he’s preached against.”

Initially Haggard said that Jones was a liar, and that all the allegations were untrue. However, soon afterwards he admitted in private that they were substantially true and resigned from his position. But that doesn’t mean he’s disappeared from public life. After receiving a $138,000 goodbye package from his church, he went on making cash from continued books and TV appearances, netting him about $200,000 a year. On top of that, he appealed to followers for donations to allow him to “pursue a degree in counselling.”

4) Republican Florida State Representative Bob Allen took his voting orders from right wing Christian homophobic groups like the Christian Coalition (founded by Pat ‘Knobhead‘ Robertson). He dedicated his political career to pushing anti-gay legislation. Which made things a bit awkward for him when he was caught offering a man a blowjob and $20 in a public park toilet, who then turned out to be an undercover police officer.

His amazing excuse? He was suffering from “confusion”, but had offered the cash and the oral sex because he was “scared of black people” and “didn’t want to become a statistic.” Words fail us.

"Confused" Bob Allen in his mugshot

5) Republican Senator Larry Craig really takes the biscuit for outrageous excuses though. He had had a dependable record of voting and speaking against any extension of gay rights in Congress. However, he was then arrested on suspicion of “lewd conduct” after a police officer accused him of soliciting for sex in a public toilet.

His counter-argument? He had been bending over to pick up a piece of paper, and merely had a “wide stance”, which had caused his intentions to be misinterpreted. However, he went on to plead guilty in court, pay a fine and resign from his Senatorial seat.

That’s it for just now, but we’ll probably be coming back to update this when we have more time to uncover dangerous hypocrites. Feel free to add your suggestions!

Not really, but who needs to tell the truth when you can make funny videos!

Buju Banton is one of the biggest names in dancehall music. He’s been making records for over 20 years, some of his undeniably great music has made him one of the biggest stars in Jamaica, and regarded by many as a voice for the poor majority.

Unfortunately, he’s also a violent homophobe. LGBT rights groups around the world have picketed his shows and called on promoters not to book him because of his anti-gay tunes. The most significant is ‘Boom Bye Bye,’ which is basically about killing LGBT people. It advocates shooting, burning and pouring acid as methods.

Many of his defenders claim that he was still a teenager when he released this tune in 1992, and he’s since moved on and doesn’t perform it any more. The truth is that Banton knows that it’s controversial, and so he’s careful about when he performs it because it can potentially get him in trouble. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t do it though, with his mike being cut off at a 2007 show in New York when he began the song.

It would be one thing if his hatred of LGBT people was confined to records, but it’s not. Several witnesses have identified him as part of a mob that broke into a home in Kingston in 2004 shouting homophobic insults, and then beat two men severely, leaving one of them blind in one eye.

Banton denies the claims, and the police have yet to charge him in connection with the attack. But the Jamaican police are notorious for the lack of care for violence against LGBT people, as homosexuality remains completely illegal in Jamaica and punishable by prison with hard labour.

Also in 2004, the founder of the Jamaican Forum for Lesbians, All-sexuals and Gays, (an organisation fighting for LGBT rights under very difficult circumstances and desperately in need of support), Brian Williamson, was murdered in his home by multiple stab wounds from a machete.

Buju Banton himself is currently in US prison after being charged with possession with intent to distribute cocaine last year. But in the meantime, his homophobic lyrics continue to be a rallying cry for hate, which is why the Eclectic Method have put together this little video to set the record straight:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akOdgE302eA

Souter en route to count his millions in a Scrooge McDuck-style tower full of YOUR CASH

Brian Souter, one of the richest arseholes in Scotland, has just won a court battle to get more taxpayers money for his Stagecoach travel empire.

Shares in Stagecoach have surged in value after it was announced the UK Department for Transport will be forced to pay him subsidies this year rather than next for operating trains into London.

Not many people realise that the although the rail industry is privatised, this doesn´t mean the taxpayer doesn´t pay for it. The rail network was publicly owned for decades and run as a public service, and many routes have to be run this way because they won´t ever make a profit.

So, rail companies throughout the UK receive huge amounts of public cash in order to keep them afloat. Souter is one of the richest men in Scotland, and his empire is set to see £100 million of public cash as a result of this judgement. He also successfully argued that the cash that Stagecoach makes from charging people to use their station car parks shouldn´t be included in the calculation of their revenue.

Souter branded the Department “deceitful” during the dispute, and correctly predicted that “we will end up with a very large cheque.”

He´s a man we´ve written about on here before, as one of Scotland´s premier knobheads. He´s used to getting his own way, such as when he gave the SNP half a million quid just before the last election. The SNP did have a  policy of reregulating the buses, which would have meant that Souter´s gangster style business practices of driving rivals out of business so that he can charge extortionate fares on the routes he controls, would have been brought to an end. However, shortly after he gave the SNP a big fat cheque, this policy mysteriously disappeared. Hmmm.

One thing that Souter didn´t get all his own way on was his attempt to impose his raging homophobic born again Christian bigoted views on Scotland. He bankrolled the Keep the Clause campaign, which tried to get people in Scotland to vote in a private referendum to keep a bizarre law outlawing the “promotion of homosexuality” in Scottish schools. The public ignored him and the clause was repealed, showing Scotland is not as bigotted as the millionaire transport baron.

Souter is so hungry for profit he´s trying to replace ferry services at Yoker with amphibious buses. This is actually true!

This latest judgement has to make us wonder why the fuck anyone would support the ridiculous system we have since the privatisation of the railways and the deregulation of the buses. The SSP has long campaigned for the whole transport industry to be brought back into public ownership, and for all fares to be abolished. Free public transport for all is not only possible, but necessary as a major measure against poverty and climate change. It´s been tried and succeeded in the Belgian city of Hasselt, and in various parts of the USA.

The good news is that support for this idea is spreading. The PCS union, which represents civil servants, recently backed their idea at their conference, and are in the process of setting up a UK wide campaign demanding free public transport, which the SSP and SSY will obviously thow our weight behind as much as we can. Hopefully, PCS members who work for the Department for Transport will have their determination boosted after being branded decitful and dysfuntional by someone who´s making a killing out of the current (dysfunctional) system.

Philip Lardner seems to think he's an MP already. He's not.

A wannabe Conservative MP for North Ayrshire and Arran, Philip Lardner, was today suspended from his party for expressing extreme right-wing views for the SECOND time in less than two years.

Lardner, a primary school teacher in Erskine, Renfrewshire, was thrown out of his party today by embarrassed Tory party chiefs after homophobic comments published on his website came to light this morning. The offending comments have since been removed, but Pink News reports that Lardner wrote that he believed homosexuality to be ‘somewhere between unfortunate and simply wrong’, and in a lengthy diatribe, argued in favour off the reinstating of Section 28, a law which banned teachers from ‘promoting’ homosexuality in schools. Lardner wrote: ‘I will not accept that their behaviour is ‘normal’ or encourage children to indulge in it… Toleration and understanding is one thing, but state-promotion of homosexuality is quite another.’

Ironically, this makes North Ayrshire and Arran perhaps most of the one most polarised constituencies in Britain, without even stepping outside of Labour and the Tories – the incumbent MP is Katy Clark, one of the very few genuine socialists left within the Labour Party, who is defending a majority of 11,000 at this election.

Lardner, on the other hand, typifies the Empire Loyalist/Monday Club right fringes of the Tory party – his extreme views extend well beyond his er, ‘traditional’ views of the family.  Lardner denies the existence of climate change, which he claims is a myth perpetrated by brainwashing ‘carbon-loonies’ out to ‘spoil enjoyment of nice, warm weather’.

His initial suspension from the Conservative Party came in July 2008, after he expressed admiration for white-supremacist  politician Iain Smith, who presided over white minority rule in Rhodesia, now Zimbabwe. He also stated that Enoch Powell’s infamous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech, which said that mass immigration to Britain would lead to bloodshed, had ‘in a small way come true’. In 2005, Lardner expressed his support for British colonialism and imperialism, writing: ‘Take a look at Zimbabwe or a dozen other human-induced African disasters and ask yourself whether the average African would rather be living (or more often than not dying) at the hands of his “free” African brothers, or have a Royal Navy warship sitting benevolently in the harbour?’

LGBT rights' protesters picketing Tory HQ

Lardner contested the 2007 Scottish Parliament elections in the same constituency. At a hustings meeting on the Isle of Arran, Lardner hysterically shouted down group of stunned 16 year olds, who had objected to his stance on trident nuclear weapons, and screamed that they needed to show ‘greater respect for the armed forces, and spend more time looking at war memorials’. Lardner has also gone to great lengths to promote himself in the local press as a defender of the ‘indigenous population’ on Arran, and against foreign invaders. Of red squirrels, that is – but could there be subtle undertones in this rhetoric of his now well reported racist, anti-immigration views? SSY speculates… almost certainly.

Following his original suspension, Lardner was approached by the BNP, who urged him to join the party that is ‘his natural home and one that would fully support these statements instead of condemning and then sacking him’. SSY can also reveal that Lardner has stuck up for the rights of BNP members to work as police and prison officers – occupations which have a ban on BNP membership – arguing that ‘loyalty to your nation’ should not be used a pretext to make you a ‘banned person’.

SSY can only speculate what may come next, but we’re fairly sure that a future in politics may still be a possibility for Lardner. He intends to stand as an independent ‘common sense’ candidate (lol!) next week, but when he (somehow) fails to get elected, and if the BNP still seem a bit too extreme, I’m fairly sure he’ll be able to find a nice home in UKIP: climate denying, immigrant-hating, europhobic, racist, empire-loving… UKIP and Lardner were MADE for each other!

The document was apparently the result of a “brainstorming” session, where staff tried to come up with a scenario for an ideal visit by the Pope. You can see at least some of the text here, including suggestions that the Pope should launch a ‘Benedict’ brand of condoms, visit an abortion clinic and bless a civil partnership.

This has led to a storm of condemnation of the memo, branded “offensive” and “vile”. Many revealed that this in fact may not have been a serious planning session, but in fact an attempt to take the piss. Paralysed in shock, the nation gradually came to realise that someone had dared to mock a man who promotes views which we all know to be total nonsense.

The government has apologised and been desperate to smooth things over. Meanwhile, the Vatican itself spoke of “dark forces” at the heart of the British government.

It’s difficult to find a full text of the memo online, and there’ve been differing reports of what it contained (which makes you wonder how many of the people rushing to condemn it have actually read it), but based on what has been mainly reported, is it a case of outrageous prejudice?

Is it outrageous to ridicule the church’s mental position on contraception, sex education, homosexuality etc.? Is deliberately misinforming school pupils about abortion and their sexuality really a set of views that we should just respect? Or is it ok to poke fun at reactionary craziness, even if it is supported by lots of religious believers?

When I was in Catholic school we were taught that two thirds of condoms failed, given no education on different kinds of contraception and any discussion of abortion was solely focused on it being traumatic and wrong for the woman in all cases. We never got to see “The Silent Scream”, a disturbing anti-abortion video, but other pupils did, and it had a major effect on how they view abortion. The film is riddled with inaccuracies and downright pish, Leftfield will be coming back to why it’s nonsense in a later post.

I found it offensive that the Catholic Church was allowed to promote their one sided view of the world in schools, and I wasn’t allowed to hear about anyone’s rights regarding sex education, contraception or abortion – and not only was it offensive, it wasn’t even funny unlike the memo done by hard working civil servants, who no doubt had to take their work to the pub with them.

Some people, including some on the Left, say the memo was out of order because it was an attack on a religious minority and have compared it to the attacks you get on Muslims from the far-right, some evangelical Christians and some very confused ‘secularists’. What’s happening to Muslims today is much, much worse though – nobody is denying the Catholic Church the right to build spires on Churches, enforcing legal restrictions on what Catholic women can wear, or talking about Catholic birthrates destroying Western civilization.

The Pope gets into the spirit of things after blessing a gay wedding

Also, while there is no Islamic equivalent of the Pope, if for example the King of Saudi Arabia were to visit the UK we probably would find it quite funny if people took the piss out of his regime for its interesting stances on community restorative justice (i.e. beheadings for witchcraft) or its unique plan to encourage use of public transport by not letting women drive cars – which has won it plaudits from the Top Gear presenters, including fellow Islamist Jeremy Clarkson.

If the Pope doesn’t like being mocked he should either abandon his views or try and defend them against attack. When I was in RE classes it was pretty obvious to most if not all of the people in the class that the Church’s position on many of the issues in the memo were patently ridiculous – and very few of the people at my school were atheists or agnostics. Most of them would still have described themselves nominally as Catholics, and ignore all the nonsense bits of it, like banning condoms etc. If the Catholic Church had spent half as much time attacking poverty in Scotland and the world, opposing climate change, or other kinds of injustice in society as they did attacking homosexuality and sex education then it’s likely a lot more people in my school and in Scotland would have a lot more respect and time for the Catholic Church.

As it stands today, if the Pope wants to argue that gays are as big a threat to humanity as climate change then he shouldn’t expect people not to say that’s mental.

(Additional reporting and images by Jack.)

The real question? Who's under his hands, just out of shot?

In an absolutely bizarre move, retired senior US General and former NATO commander John Sheehan has attempted to blame gay soldiers for what has been called the worst massacre in Europe since World War 2.

In 1995 a small force of 400 Dutch peacekeepers guarding the Bosnian town of Srebrenica was overwhelmed by Serb forces who went on to kill thousands of Bosnian Muslim men.

Now Sheehan has come out to say that the reason this happened is because Europeans have “socialised” their militaries.

“They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military – that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality. That led to a force that was ill-equipped to go to war,” he said.

“The case in point that I’m referring to is when the Dutch were required to defend Srebrenica against the Serbs. The battalion was under-strength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them. That was the largest massacre in Europe since world war two.”

The General feels awkward: He's not hugging back

In testimony to Congress, Sheehan tried to depict gay people as in some way insanely sex-crazed, claiming that same-sex attraction would undermine a unit more than attraction to the opposite sex in a unit containing men and women.

He also tried to claim that Dutch senior officers told him that having gay soldiers “sapped morale” and contributed to the disaster. His claims have been dismissed as “total nonsense” and “not worthy of a soldier” by Dutch officials. The Prime Minister of the Netherlands said his comments were “shameful”, “unthinkable” and “beneath anything”.

Presumably if the soldiers had been fully red blooded, beef munching, super hetero troops like the American Army, then a force of 400 on a peacekeeping mission would never have been overwhelmed by a larger force of hardcore paramilitaries. I mean, just look at how hard they are in Iraq and Afghanistan, relying on air power from thousands of feet above, satellite guided missiles and FUCKING KILLER ROBOTS to fight for them.

Honestly, is there actually ANYTHING Americans won’t blame gays for?

Jack Irvine contemplates 16 year old boys' bottoms

(With additional reporting by Sarah, Liam T, and Neevvy.)

Regular readers will know that Leftfield has carried the best coverage of Purcellgate in the Scottish media.

Leftfield favourite Purcell is now reported to have fled Scotland. In his absence he’s left behind a high powered and expensive team of lawyers and PR men to make sure that no one could ever allege he’s done anything dodgy. And that’s because he totally hasn’t, honest.

Heading the team is former editor of the Scottish Sun Jack Irvine. Now a PR consultant specialising in “crisis management” (what crisis?), he’s also been notable as a leading behind-the-scenes campaigner for organised homophobia.

Irvine was one of the main men behind the Keep the Clause campaign, which tried to stop the Scottish Parliament repealing a homophobic law that prevented schools from “promoting homosexuality.” Introduced by the Thatcher government in the 80′s, the real aim of this stone age legislation was to prevent children being able to learn about the possibility of being gay in sex education classes.

When MSPs finally got round to abolishing this nonsense, a powerful coalition of some of Scotland’s leading capitalists came together to try and defend legalised homophobia. The most famous of course was Brian Souter, head of Stagecoach buses, who got rich by cutting routes and driving rivals out of business. He’s also most notable for being Scotland’s most famous homophobe, as well as having donated £500,000 to the SNP just before their election to government in 2007.

But others involved in the Keep the Clause group included founder of the Sports Division stores and Scotland’s richest man Tom Hunter; Kwik Fit founder and multi-millionaire Sir Tom Farmer; Souter’s sister and Scotland’s richest woman Ann Gloag (who at one point was richer than the Queen); David Moulsdale the owner of Optical Express; and former head of Strathclyde Police, and then Metropolitan Police Commissioner under Thatcher Sir David McNee.

Many of these individuals also used Jack Irvine personally for their own PR. Irvine, who once described gay men as “Slobbering queers who want to get their hands on 16 year-old boys’ bottoms,” in the Scottish Daily Mirror, seemed the natural choice to run a political campaign of right wing homophobia on behalf of all these powerful Scottish figures.

The campaign was ultimately a failure, despite the attempts of Irvine and crew to engineer a fake “referendum”. Around 70% of Scots who received the ballots for this put them where Keep the Clause’s politics belonged-the bin.

Soapy Souter gets to grips with the "gay problem"

Irvine has found other ways to express his homophobia during the course of his career. In 1999, when Bank of Scotland announced a major business deal with rich televangelist, homophobe and general right wing bastard Pat ‘Knobhead’ Robertson, Irvine was on the front line defending BoS from gay rights protests. He also used a column in the Scottish Daily Mirror to peddle hate on a regular basis, such as this gem on the decision to equalise the age of consent for gay and straight 16 year olds:

“A pretty young boy of 16 can’t vote for his local MP, but he can now be buggered by him… So equality is the key, is it? In that case, shouldn’t 16-year-olds get the vote, be eligible to become, say, policemen? No? Why not? Because they’re not mature enough. But they are deemed mature enough to be bum chums for sleazy old pervs.”

But what keeps Irvine in sharp suits is his work for PR company Media House, which he founded in 1991, and which has helped him to the position where he’s been described as “Scotland’s answer to Max Clifford.” According to his biography page on the Media House website:

“Irvine specialises in international litigation and is a founding partner of Tactical Response, a confidential consultancy that advises boards on sensitive matters such as extortion, terrorism, fraud and abduction. They are operational on a global scale.”

That global reach will come in handy now that sources close to Purcell have indicated that “Mr Purcell has left the politics of Glasgow behind and is now resting and recuperating in the sun.” Leaving aside whether, as the former top man in the city, Purcell bears any responsibility for Glaswegian politics being a “mire”, we hope that as and when he does return to Scottish politics he’ll be refreshed by his experience on holiday. Indeed, he may even be able to recommend time on a beach for others with a chemical dependency stress and exhaustion. Most people with the same kinds of problems aren’t able to afford to recuperate in the sun, and find themselves in much less attractive surroundings. We hope Purcell one day finds the time to try and change the scapegoating and lack of support for people who may or may not allegedly have drug problems.

We also hope it’ll give him time to reflect on the contradiction of an out gay man employing such a notorious homophobe to defend him. Indeed, Irvine, who has used the infamous “but I have gay friends!” defence against accusations of homophobia, likes to claim his relationship with Purcell proves he isn’t a bigot.

According to another source “”Steven has always had an interest in the southern hemisphere and it is thought he might be spending some time there.” This mysterious and cryptic statement leads on to our bonus feature, Leftfield’s new favourite guessing game:

WHERE IS STEVEN PURCELL?

So, we can take out 50% of planet Earth from the equation. What options does that leave us with? Leftfield offers a few suggestions:

#Perhaps Stephen has hotfooted it over to Australia. He is rumoured to be about to surface on the new series of I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! where he will surely be a Glaswegian viewer favourite for those gruesome bushtucker trials. It’s possible that he’s been receiving advice from former contestants such as Daniella Westbrook (insert comment about deviated septums), Peter Andre (on how to revive a flagging career) and Brian Harvey, a man who knows all about addiction, since the day that he ate 47 baked potatoes and then accidentally ran himself over. It’s quite likely. Just sayin’.

#Maybe he’s in Colombia. Colombia is a lush and beautiful country, straddling the cool blue of the Caribbean Sea and the Pacific Ocean. To the north lie the impressive Andes mountains. To the south, the mystery and allure of the Amazon Jungle.

Steven P hangin' in Medellin

For the people of Colombia, Steven Purcell could certainly offer the wisdom of his extensive public service experience to assist with Colombian issues, for example he might be able to assist with a number of aspects of the Colombian exports system – agriculture, quality control, product testing… We know that Steven has been welcomed with open arms by several political organisations in the country who have received his direct financial support in the past. He is said to be keen to try out those local delicacies that have not yet reached the nutritionally challenged streets of Glasgow.

Colombian superstar Shakira was earlier overheard welcoming Purcell to her homeland, going as far as to say “Phwoar, I saw him earlier and I can tell you, even if he has lied about those SPT expenses, sure as hell his hips don’t lie”.*

*Shakira did not actually say this. Probably.

#This one may be a long shot, but you can’t deny that Antarctica IS completely covered in white powder…

So where is Steven? The first correct answer on a postcard will receive 1 dildo, slightly used, courtesy of Brian Souter.