Jan Moir Tries (And Fails) to Defend the Indefensible

(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 [...]

In Defence of the National Blood Service

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 [...]

Review: Gay Icons

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 [...]

Review: Brüno

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 [...]

Review: Torchwood – Children of Earth

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 [...]

Reflections on Gay Pride in Madrid

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 [...]

Let’s consign the “gay is a choice” debate to the dustbin of irrelevance

“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 [...]

Virgin Gyms ban the pink paper to ‘protect minors’

The Pink Paper reports that it has been blocked on the Virgin Gym internet terminals so as to ‘protect minors.’ When users seek to view Pink Paper news stories they see an error message which tells them that the gym has ‘a moral obligation to parents and guardians to ensure unsuitable content is not available [...]