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Yup, absolutely.

I've decided it is wise to jettison all thought of attaining a state of happiness or bliss. I've decided I'm likely to get more contentment out of life by enjoying overcoming the constant parade of little (or large!) miseries that life presents! They never stop coming, do they! The devil cannot be conquered! The bugger keeps rearing his fucking ugly head!

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Touché ! So you were sincere when you said it was a brilliant idea. Yea, I know what you mean about implementing it. It is probably propelled by an unconcious wish to blow the Vatican off the face of the earth. How could I say such a thing?

It felt so good giving her the finger. When they were all at univesity together, they all went to the same parties. JG spoke to me often about her, because her husband, who was then JG's room-mate on campus, woud spend the evening literally under her on a sofa during the party. She couldn't keep her hands off him, and wouldn't let anyone anywhere near him. How civilized was that?
And she was just putting JG down when she called me his 'chum'. That word when used in French has the same connotation as 'faggot'. She got off lightly with a finger, and her husband, who knows me and my family, was glad to see someone doing to her what he had failed to do so often. Life is so complicated, eh.
Or do we get more touchy as we get older. Who knows.

One of the first things I noticed about PinkNews threads was the direct way people spoke (wrote) to each other. I can now understand what you're saying about it being part of British life, but at first I didn't know what to make of it. It seemed to be 'honest talk', yet it wan't quite what I had expected. Naïté.

This is the kind of insight you don't find in tourist brochures!

Peter Tatchell must be devastated with the results of the elections. And what about international affairs. Obama is slightly black!

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As for your questions about strong use of language and confrontation, I think it is no less an example of taking "direct action", "confrontational action", against others than your giving that woman at the theatre your finger. Sometimes when people exhibit symptoms of pig-headedness and stubbornness, or outright stupidity, they have to be kicked in the teeth and really shaken so that they experience such emotional disturbance that they forced to justify themselves and may possibly, as a result, question the beliefs they have held.

I am forever grateful to those who in my past did not always treat me sweetly but rounded on me and call a spade a fucking spade!

By the way, this kind of direct speech is very much part of modern British life. I know it's still frowned upon to a large extent in the USA and in Canada. Less so in Australia and New Zealand, interestingly enough.

The direct style of Pink News is nothing in comparison with the way people thrash things out in The Guardian's Talk threads. Thinking of that, I must try to return there more often. Though there are nutters on Pink News, one is generally amongst family, while on The Guardian's Talk threads one is among very articulate people of a much broader spectrum, with gays in the minority.

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Thanks. Actually I did surprise myself when I instantly reported the hate message left on Yahoo Canada News. It's not the kind of thing I would have done before exercising my right to freech speach on PinKNews, believe me. Like you say, we naturally seek the comfort zone. But what a sense of satisfaction I felt when I saw the hateful remark removed from the site.

A Transgender MP in New Zealand? Are you talking about Georgina? I saw her story on TV and I wish I had recorded it. When I talk about it around here, nobody wants to believe me, but she sure impressed me. I believe she's a Labour MP with deep roots in New Zealand's native population.

Ideas of how to implement clinics to cure homophobia? The idea is to have clinical support for homophobes, the rest is education, isn't it? I'm not sure if you're agreeing with me or not.

Maybe it's not a good idea. It would have to start with school consellors, I suppose, when schoolyard bullying occurs. I didn't launch the idea because I had all the answers, but since homophobia in inherent in the Abrahamic religions…. it would need some brainstorming, because I don't think that censorship, which is essentially what I did, leaves a dent in a homophobe's attitude. If anything, he's probably more homophobic than he was before I exposed him. My knowledge of human nature is no better than anyone else's.

And what's worse is that I, like so many others, am inclined to hate other members of the the LGBT population. I was dismayed by the name-calling on certain threads. Seems to be getting better since Ben Cohen intervened.

Can you tell me why we are inclined to tell other gays what they are instead of asking them to tell us what they are. The RCC does that. It tells me what a gay person is. I answer, I'm gay and I will tell YOU what it means to be gay, not the other way round. Then I swear a little bit.

Why do we pick on each other, Eddy? I do it, others do it. Are we the ones who need clinical help or what? Why do we expect other gays to behave the way we do? It's 'Boys in the Band' all over again, isn't it?

We punch, we can't take a punch, and we punch back, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. We're in a rut, and we're depriving ourselves from getting to know each other as ordinary guys who have made ordinary choices for ordinary reasons.

Am I babbling?

Homophobia on the rise in Canada. Holy f*ck! Jean Guy and I went to a musical concert a few weeks ago. Like everyone else I shouted 'Bravo' every now and then. During the intermission, a women who was sitting two rows ahead of us and whose husband had gone to university with Jean Guy, took him aside and told him: 'Will you please tell your 'chum' to shut up during the performance. There are civilized people here.' F*****ck!

At the end of the performance, I waited till she was in the aisle, and I confronted her with a smile and a mischievous look in my eyes and I made g*ddamn sure she saw me giving her the finger. I swear I saw a look of glee on her husband's face. Jean Guy was shocked and left me standing there alone. He took a cab home, and we didn't talk for 2 days, first time in 19 years. Do I feel any remorse? Not one iota, I would do it again anytime I pay $40 for a ticket. Your 'chum' indeed!

It's subtle, but I see it. We notice it instinctively. My kid sister calls me 'Madame', then says "cuse me, I meant Monsieur.' I'dlke to punch her lights out, but then she would go around telling everyone how abusive I was. It's like trying to get away from an octopus! PRIMAL SCREAM ! ! !

I do carry on.

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The idea of clinics which specialise in the treatment of homophobia. Brilliant. Homophobia is a mental illness. It needs treatment programmes.

Interesting to hear that you perceive that homophobia is on the rise in Canada.

Good for you for taking immediate, and relatively simple and easy action, to report that guy who left the hatred-inciting comment. If only all of we gays and lesbians took immediate spontaneous action like that. Unfortunately the self-image of so many gay people is still poor (not their fault usually) so that when homophobic abuse hits them they just take it. I've done it myself. We all seek the comfort zone. It's so much easier to be passive.

I should add that Simon Hughes is not a threat to gay liberation today. He now has this unspoken reputation as being "a bisexual" and he is one of the leading lights of the LibDems and he now enjoys (as "a bisexual") the freedom that the real gaylibbers, like Peter Tatchell and others, fought for so hard. After having been outed by the press, he is now only able to proclaim LibDem policy in regular TV interviews and the like because there is a degree of acceptance of gay men, lesbians, and bisexuals in parliament. I don't believe we've had a transgender MP yet though, as New Zealand has done for example, and I think that shows the true state of gaylib progress in the UK.

Any ideas on how people would arrive at the point where they received treatment at the new Homophobia Clinics? I can't imagine someone going along to their doctor and saying, "Oh, doctor, doctor, I'm in such pain, I have this awful problem, it's really making a total mess of my life. I hate homos and it's killing me everytime I see one. Is there anything you can do?" (Funny, isn't it! And why? Because we can't imagine it happening!) So, maybe the first step, but only after the Clinics have been built are ready to receive the suffering, is to launch a Canada-wide campaign, along the lines of

"Are YOU suffering from homophobia?
Does the sight of a homosexual give you the heebie-jeebies?
Well, hey, no need to suffer!
Not any more!
Ring your local Homophobia Clinic NOW!
Phone 84948 48948 and book your appointment NOW!
Soon, you'll be passing homosexuals on the street, in the workplace, or even at home,
and be totally stress-free!
Now, think about!
Aren't you worth it?
Dial NOW: 84948 48948″

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And you wonder why with your lack of social graces and racist crap. The gays don't love me, so I'll bad mouth the lot of them on a gay site to make me feel better… Boo-f–king-hoo.

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Thanks for answering…and thanks for such a tremendous insight in so few words.

I have the utmost respect for self-taught individuals. Very often, we study at universities without ever making a proper synthesis of our studies. A self-taught person studies with passion, his conscience is his guide. Peter writes so clearly that I took him for a lawyer.

Briefly, I was just now commenting on the thread concerning Obama, and I was saying to Robert, ex-pat, Brit, that I believe we could be setting up educational or clinical programs to cure homophobia, programs that would go hand in hand with the fight for our rights.

The reason for my conviction is that here in Canada we have our gay rights, and they are secured, but I notice that homophobia is on the rise, perhaps more subtle, but on the rise.

For example, yesterday this story broke in Yahoo News Canada: 'Book Examines Human Tragedy of RCMP Gay Purging'. It refers to a book entitled 'Canada's Voice: The Public Life of John Wendell Holmes' (UBC Press) by Adam Chapnick.

Google both these names to get a quick idea of the caliber of the scholarship we are talking about here.

Chapnick describes the gay purge carried out by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police starting roughly about 10 years after Kinsey had published his famous 'Report' in 1948. Thousands of Canadian homosexuals were officially observed, arrested and questioned. Their jobs, their families were in the balance, etc.

Few of these homosexuals have names on the records, but Chapnick found the entire file on Holmes and exposed the fact that a 'fruit machine' was used to force him to confess to a same-sex relationship he had had in Russia as a top diplomate. ('Fruit machine = measuring the sexual reaction to porn')

This was 2 years before Dearden directed the movie 'Victim' in which Sir Dirk Bogarde played the role of an homosexual being balckmailed, and 3 years before Otto Preminger directed 'Advise and Consent' in which Don Murray played Brig Anderson, a senator with a secret. Who says movies do not reflect reality?

At the end of the story on Yahoo News, readers are invited to leave a short comment, and of course I couldn't resist, having had my formal education at the PinkNews Academy of Speaking Your Mind.

At the same time, we can see comments left by others. One of the comments floored me, struck me right on the forehead. Someone called Muad'Did had left two words: 'F@gs everyware'. I reported him instantly and his post was shortly removed because I insisted it was a crime in this country to incite hatred and/or violence against a legitimate minority group whose rights were protected…

Similarly, in England Simon Hughes is still around. That alone is a major threat to gay liberation.

Homophobia is a mental illness that can be cured, as is well explained in Bruce Hilton's 'Can Homophobia Be Cured?'. Hilton, an American, is director of the National Center for Bioethics and a syndicated weekly columnist.

When all is said and done, having a homophobic comment removed from the Internet is easy compared to helping someone suffering from this subtle and sanctimonious mental illness.

Call me crazy, but my hope for gay rights in America are with Obama for the moment.

Also, I wonder if Peter Tatchell has ever written on a cure for homophobia.

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Thank you for all that enlightenment into the past and the total hypocracy of Hughs too. I do not think Peter would want MP status now, they are too tainted. Instead Peter is doing what he likes best, fighting the Gay-Rights corner and winning too.normandy 57c

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You could just as well have said '…poor confused Canadian readers.'

It never would have occured to me to interpret Tatchell's Republicanism this way. In the States, a Republican is usually a right-winger, something like a Conservative here in Canada.

That also explains AdrianT's comment (37).

Clever of you to realize how America could be confused by the use of the word 'Republican' to describe Peter Tatchell's political penchant.

In the same way, we over here don't realize how many years Peter has been at it, and how much social distinction he deserves. It's only been about a year and a half since I stumbled onto his website and I did recommend it to some friends because he writes so well, and also about relevant subjects. Someone told me he is actually a lawyer.

So when I heard he was Republican, I put him in the same political theatre as Andrew Sullivan, an American who is admitedly leaning to the right, who is gay, and who writes about LGBT issues, often in Time Magazine.

Andrew also has his own website. My partner and I remember clearly his comments about same-sex marriage. He wrote that with legislation in place, for the first time in history, a young gay man would be able to dream of meeting the the man of his dreams in terms of settling down in a monogomous relationship, an idea that does not necessarily go down well with all gays in the States.

But to push the idea a bit further, on the off-chance that the British Monarchy decided to call it a day, and GB did become a Republic, then I imagine Peter's politics would resemble those of the American Democrats or the Canadian Liberals or NDP's (probably the latter).

Interesting insight.

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When people say Peter Tatchell wouldn't accept a Queen's Honour, such as a Knighthood, because he's a republican, they mean that he is not a royalty-lover, that he like many wishes to see that outdated and feudal system swept aside and England become a republic.

So, when we say he's "republican" we mean he's a true left-winger, a true democrat, who wants Britain to become a republic.

Nothing to do with the American meaning of being "a Republican".

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