{"id":550,"date":"2009-10-22T16:45:19","date_gmt":"2009-10-22T15:45:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=550"},"modified":"2009-10-22T16:45:19","modified_gmt":"2009-10-22T15:45:19","slug":"still-in-hotel-in-madrid-but-must-comment-on-jan-moir-affair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/?p=550","title":{"rendered":"Still in Hotel in Madrid but Must Comment on Jan Moir Affair"},"content":{"rendered":"

Thursday 22nd<\/sup> October 2009 (afternoon)<\/p>\n

\u00a0I\u2019m bursting to tell you about this hotel. It\u2019s called the Villa Real. It means Royal Villa. I like the way the Spanish word for Royal is Real. The Madrid Ritz can be seen from its windows. There\u2019s acres to cover. As well as the antics of the 85-year-old Gay Mother abroad…<\/p>\n

\u00a0But yesterday I finally managed to read the piece in the Mail<\/em> by Jan Moir about Stephen Gately\u2019s death, which has caused such outrage. I had thought perhaps reports of its horror had been exaggerated. But no, it is beyond belief, unsurpassed in ignorance, innuendo, smugness and nastiness. There is barely a veneer of politeness, let alone respect for a man dead and not even buried, whose death, at the time the piece was written, was unexplained. This woman might as well as have crawled into a public lavatory and scrawled on the wall: \u2018Gays is a load of slags. Kill them.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u00a0Her emission is smeared with moralistic jargon: \u2018dark appetites\u2019, \u2018private vices.\u2019 Gately\u2019s Civil Partner, at the time of his death, was in another room with a mysterious Bulgarian young man (but not one of Anthony Mottram\u2019s kitchens \u2013 see glossary). Moir therefore thinks it reasonable to sneer at the \u2018happy-ever-after myth of Civil Partnerships.\u2019 Later she clearly implies that heterosexual marriage is a model of propriety and fidelity that gays cannot live up to.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Of course, since this drivel was vented (I refuse to call it writing), it has been established that Stephen Gately died of natural causes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Should we take any notice? Moir\u2019s effort has been widely condemned. Furious comments have been pouring in. It\u2019s the Daily Mail<\/em>. What do you expect?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I rather think we should. Anthony Mottram and I were talking about this at the weekend. We didn\u2019t agree. \u00a0No-one would dispute that there is vastly more tolerance and equality than there was twenty years ago when Moir-type tabloid smears, according to Alan Bennett, accelerated and even caused Russell Harty\u2019s death. All the same, gays are said to be \u2018accepted\u2019 and \u2018tolerated.\u2019 Nobody talks about \u2018accepting\u2019 or \u2018tolerating\u2019 straights. How deep and how far does this tolerance go? I\u2019ve always thought the premise of Alan Hollinghurst\u2019s brilliant novel, The Line of Beauty<\/em>, even though set in the 80s, telling: in the end the gays will be blamed, heterosexuals will retreat into hypocrisy, only too glad to direct attention away from their own shortcomings. Beyond the middle-class, metropolitan world of the Poor Little Rich Gays, hate-crime against gays is substantially up. Only last month, Ian Baynham was murdered in Trafalgar Square, not exactly a dimly-lit back-alley, the victim of homophobia.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Difference is ultimately a threat. There is more than a grain of truth in what Jan Moir says. Gay men are more likely to have \u2018threesomes\u2019 with their long-term partner and a new gorgeousness; more likely to be involved with several people in different ways at once; more likely to indulge in slagarama of various kinds in the afternoon, more likely to get hurt, more likely to be subject to violent fits of jealousy having declared themselves above jealousy, more likely to go in for a bit of revenge fucking.<\/p>\n

\u00a0So what! Gay men of my age have been wrestling with these challenges for years. Long-term gay relationships don\u2019t seem to work, at least as far as sex is concerned. I can only speak of what I have observed over time. But instead, there develops an amiable baggy companionship; sex and romance are sought elsewhere. Anthony Mottram and I are an example, sort of, because sex, as far as I can recall, has never been a feature. But we have the intimacy of equals; he has his kitchens (see glossary), at present Vladimir from the Ukraine. The current question is: Will our relationship continue if he forms a Civil Partnership with a kitchen?<\/p>\n

\u00a0I don\u2019t mind the kitchens, but I\u2019m not having them married.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Is it fair on the kitchen?<\/p>\n

\u00a0But why is all this sleazy? Why is it \u2018vice\u2019? Explain, Jan Moir? Maybe it is dysfunctional but can hets really claim to be any better? Monogamy may suit some but not, evidence would suggest, very many. So why not celebrate the gay way of relationships? It\u2019s new, it\u2019s honest, it\u2019s real. Let\u2019s hope straights can learn from it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Thursday 22nd October 2009 (afternoon) \u00a0I\u2019m bursting to tell you about this hotel. It\u2019s called the Villa Real. It means Royal Villa. I like the way the Spanish word for Royal is Real. The Madrid Ritz can be seen from its windows. There\u2019s acres to cover. As well as the antics of the 85-year-old Gay […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adrain-edge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=550"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":551,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550\/revisions\/551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poorlittlerichgays.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}