This week’s overturning of Proposition 8 in California is obviously welcome news. Amending California’s state constitution to state that “only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California” is nakedly discriminatory and Judge Vaughn Walker’s decision to strike it down should be applauded.
There is, though, something else that’s important to [...]
David Laws shouldn’t resign for being gay or renting a flat. These are perfectly fine, normal things to do and be. People need to rent flats, and people often have lovers. To rent a flat off a lover isn’t that strange either. It’s quite sensible in some ways. Having a lover, of any gender, isn’t [...]
This week I want to write about three things: a film I watched (Milk), one protest I did go to (the Party at the Pumps) and another I didn’t (the Big Gay Flash Mob). What ties these things together is the idea of an activist community.
Harvey Milk was the first openly gay elected politician in [...]
(For the benefit of any new readers, FJM is explained here. But to be honest, it’s not very complicated. You’ll probably get the idea pretty quickly.)
It’s been a good week, both for the liberal left and for Twitter. First there was the whole Trafigura thing, which finally came to a decisive end yesterday evening, when [...]
As you may or may not have noticed, there’s recently been a series of ads in various places urging us all to give blood. This is because the National Blood Service (NBS) wants us all to donate now so it can boost its stocks before the winter when we’re all going to have swine flu [...]
Icons are not an ideal means to talk about politics. To make someone an icon is to transform a person into a static timeless idea. All that once was political is violently removed. All that is human is removed too. Graduation ceremonies here in Britain hear quotations from Gandhi and Mandela without reference to the [...]
Guest post by Jon Small
The latest character from Sacha Baron Cohen’s entourage of grotesques to hit the big screen is Brüno, the gay-as-a-lamp-post presenter of Austria’s number one fashion show, Funkyzeit. Brüno began life as a minor character in Baron Cohen’s television shows for Paramount Comedy and Channel 4’s Da Ali G Show. As with [...]
Creating a successful spin-off of a popular television series – a precarious balancing act between pleasing fans of the original and building a distinct brand – is a notoriously hit and miss affair. For every Star Trek: The Next Generation there’s a Joey. The anagrammatical Torchwood is Russell T. Davies’s attempt to explore more adult [...]
At the risk of sounding like a dreadlocked gap year twat, I have spent the last week travelling Spain, attending, whilst in Madrid, the 2009 Gay Pride parade and celebrations. As one might expect in a Western European country subject to a stifling degree of cultural, social and sexual repression until comparatively very recently, it [...]
“Being gay is a choice”. This line of argument continues to be a hobby horse for conservatives, and for people opposed to queer liberation. For conservatives, such an viewpoint is greatly appealing. It seems to offer a way of disaggragating the stuggle for gay equality from earlier struggles for civil rights, and offers a rationale [...]
