1 June

Friday 1 June 2012

The late Justin Fashanu. All Sport UK/Getty

Who says our national game is homophobic? Nine out of ten football fans would cheer for gay players, claims the Daily Mail. A new study found that 93 per cent of fans oppose homophobia and would support gay footballers. Ellis Cashmore of Staffordshire University questioned 3,500 supporters in the first study of homophobia amongst fans.
“It is the market which controls football which prohibits gay players coming out. Almost every major announcement about homophobia in football assumes that supporters are hostile to gay players. We have provided the first evidence that gay players would meet with approval from fans of all ages and backgrounds, tempered of course by fans rivalry, which proves the idea of ingrained homophobia in fan culture to be false.”

Gay Activist will have to take on extra staff to deal with the deluge of football stars coming out.

Oink Flap.

Just as well that a US Appeals court decided that it was no longer slander in New York to falsely say that someone is gay.

The decision wiped out decades of rulings, saying that society no longer treated such labels as defamation. Without defamation, there is no longer slander, the court ruled unanimously. Justice Thomas E. Mercure of the Appellate Division’s Third Department wrote for the court that earlier rulings were “inconsistent with current public policy and should no longer be followed.”

Luka Rocco Magnotta’s facebook profile picture

Members of Toronto’s gay community are distancing themselves from Luka Rocco Magnotta, the porn star accused of mailing body parts of a man he killed and dismembered, reports the Sun News, Toronto. He was supposed to have been a dancer at a gay club but – nobody remembers him at all.

Well, you can’t blame them.

A still from “A Special Pride”. Copyright details being sought

“A group of men and women barbecue burgers, set up a tent and mingle. They’re all members of the Rainbow Support Group, a service of the Pride Center. They also have intellectual disabilities. … ‘Acknowledging that people with intellectual disabilities are sexual is a new development in the human services field, one that is still in the pre-Stonewall days for those who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender,’ says the film’s narration, as Rainbow Support members line up for a group photo shoot. ‘There’s an unfounded expectation that they do not have a sexuality, let alone an understanding of sexual orientation.’ “

This is the new documentary A Special Pride which is being premiered on June 9th at the Connecticut Gay & Lesbian Film Festival.

Advance warning: Gay Activist is kept up to date, and as part of that process, our daily blog posts are deleted after three months. On June 5th we will be deleting all March 2012 daily blogs.

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28 May

Monday 28 May 2012

Photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

The New York Times has been to the Rivers at Rehoboth congregation, in Harlem, a black church which welcomes gay men and lesbians. “Ms. Brown, the church’s senior pastor preaches what she calls a “radically inclusive” message, while Mr. Tolton, the associate pastor, offers as a mantra the phrase “Gay by God.” “God doesn’t make any junk,” Ms. Brown said. “He made us knowing who we were going to be before we were it.” “

Meanwhile in Illinois, USA, measures to make Illinois schools adopt more detailed policies to prevent bullying failed to be enacted by one vote in the state Senate. The bill would have required anti-bullying policies to include a definition of bullying and a statement saying it was against the law. The policies would have spelled out how allegations could be submitted anonymously and how they would be investigated. Policies also would have been required to describe what could happen to students who bully others, such as counseling or community service.

Conservatives objected, claiming the real reason for the proposed measure was to “promote homosexuality”. As usual.

40-29 News has been to see graduating gay military students following the repeal of DADT. “For the most part, it allows us to be a complete person, as opposed to compartmentalizing our lives into different types of boxes,” said newly commissioned Air Force 2nd Lt. Dan Dwyer, who graduated from the Air Force Academy on Wednesday. Students and gay alumni also say the repeal is creating professional benefits by opening doors to mentorship possibilities. Being open about their orientation gives students and experienced military personal one more common experience that can foster a mentoring relationship.

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26 May

Saturday 26 May 2012

Photo: 123 RF

What? You want me to update Gay Activist?

Today?

In this weather? Ha ha ha ha ha – oh.

Eight months after the repeal of DADT, gay midshipmen describe the transformation at the Naval Academy, reports the Tampa Bay Times. Last month, for the first time, faculty members and staff attended an off-campus dinner that had been organized secretly every year by and for gay midshipmen. “It’s been really great, actually,” Bonsall, 20, of Middletown, Del., said of life at the academy since repeal. “Everyone has been really accepting of us.”

The experience at Annapolis this year mirrors those at the other service academies, but some future officers worry about what happens after they graduate. While their generation might be accepting, the broader military is made up of people of all ages and backgrounds. Some senior officers say privately that they won’t come out for fear of jeopardizing their careers.

Hamed. Winnipeg Free Press.

The Winnipeg Free Press have been talking to a gay refugee from Iran who is now in Canada. 27-year-old Hamed is sponsored by a Group of Five connected to the Rainbow Resource Centre. “I can’t imagine what would’ve happened to me.” Hamed spent 17 months in Turkey after he was outed. “Being gay in Iran is not acceptable. If someone wants to hurt me or kill me, there is nobody to protect me.” Even in Canada, he’s worried about what could happen to him if homophobic fundamentalists discover his last name and track him down.

“When I came to Turkey, two gays helped me find my way. At that time, I really needed it. I didn’t know anything about Turkey or the United Nations.” Before long, he was helping others who’d fled Iran, and shared an apartment with a transgender couple and a gay man. “I tried to be a family with my situation.”

No, it’s not the new Gay Activist range of sexy mens’ underwear, which we know you are all agog to see. Traditional Ndebele leaders at the launch of the Institute of African Royalty in Johannesburg in 2009. Traditional leaders have consistently rejected LGBT people as ‘un-African’. Photograph: Themba Hadebe/AP

Gays in South Africa are concerned about the traditional courts bill which threatens to undermine gay rights for millions of gay South Africans living in rural areas. The bill is the latest attempt to define, regularise and institutionalise the role of traditional leaders, but the bill undermines the protection afforded by constitutional civil rights.

It would grant individual traditional leaders sole authority to interpret and implement customary law. The bill would also prohibit rural people from opting out of the jurisdiction of traditional courts, preventing access to alternative forms of justice and circumventing the authority of the constitution.

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22 May

Tuesday 22 May 2012

Ravi. Photo: Time

Dharun Ravi, 20, yesterday was sent to jail for just 30 days for the death of Tyler Clementi, his room mate. He could have gone to prison for 10 years and been deported from the country after being found unanimously guilty in March of 15 charges, including invasion of privacy, interfering with a witness, tampering with evidence and the hate crime of “bias intimidation”. Despite saying that “society has every right to expect zero tolerance for intolerance” and criticising Ravi for his lack of apology, the judge angered gay-rights campaigners with the short jail term.

Rev. Charles Worley called for gays and lesbians to be placed in a form of concentration camp. Catawba Valley Citizens Against Hate says it plans a peaceful protest on Sunday outside Providence Road Baptist Church, where Rev. Charles Worley delivered his controversial homily on May 13.

Gay England football fans travelling to Ukraine for Euro 2012 have been warned to keep a low profile for their own safety, after Kiev’s first ever gay pride parade was cancelled on Sunday amid fears of violence from far-right thugs. Television pictures showed Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of the Gay Forum of Ukraine, being kicked and jumped on by a group of men after the event was stopped.

Amnesty International said police in the capital advised organisers to abandon the march just 30 minutes before it was due to start after 500 ultra-right football hooligans had gathered. Thousands of England fans will travel to the eastern European country for Euro 2012, which begins on June 8.

Welcome to the summer of no love.

However some positive news from Britain’s National Health Service. Same-sex couples will be given the same rights as heterosexual couples under guidance issued by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence.

The recommendation follows implementation of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008 which abolished requirement for fertility clinics to take into account a child’s need for a father or a male role model before agreeing to treatment. Gay couples or single women now need only show they can provide “supportive parenting”.

Demand from gay couples paying privately for fertility services has boomed, and the number of lesbian couples undergoing IVF rose from 178 in 2007 to 417 in 2010.
One cycle of IVF can cost up to £8,000 privately. Because success rates are low – typically 20 per cent for a 38-year-old – couples can spend tens of thousands on treatment.

Many same-sex couples receive “outright discrimination” from health authorities, commented some gay spokespeople today, while anti-gay commentators said it amounted to a Government-backed attempt to “rewrite biology”.

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18 May

Friday 18 May 2012

File photo: AFP, 2006

Moscow has banned a gay pride march set for May 27, saying that society would react negatively to the event, which could be seen by children. Vasily Oleinik told organisers the march would “provoke a negative reaction in society”. The public would see the march as a “provocation, causing moral harm to children and teenagers,” the official warned. Organisers of the gay pride, led by Nikolai Alexeyev, had applied for permission to hold a march down a central street with up to 1,000 participants and a rally on Revolution Square next to the Kremlin.

It is the seventh successive year that Moscow Pride has been banned.

Image: Slap Up Inside The Head, Vancouver

One in five lesbian and gay people expect discrimination from housing providers when applying for social housing, according to a YouGov poll. This figure rises to one in four among young people aged 18-24 and older residents over the age of 55. Two thirds of people who contacted Stonewall for help in 2011 said their sexual orientation or gender identity was directly related to their housing problems.

The Equality Act 2010 increased the focus on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues. It requires the public sector to actively tackle discrimination and to consider LGBT needs in the design and delivery of services.

Photo: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty

The lifestyles of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people in Iran are comprehensively and systematically denied by the Islamic regime, which exposes them to horrific punishment, bullying and risk of suicide. The first detailed study on Iran’s LGBT community found its members live under social and state repression, with some being persecuted, forced into exile or even sentenced to death. Researchers led by Bronwen Robertson from London gathered first-hand testimonies from hundreds of LGBT Iranians using face to face interviews or through a secret online forum.

“The bastions of the Islamic Republic of Iran fully realise that an established (albeit secretive) LGBT community exists beneath the folds of fundamentalism in [the country],” says the report. “[But] figuratively speaking, the Iranian government is doing its utmost to sweep the community under a densely woven Persian rug.”

In 2007 President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told Americans: “In Iran we don’t have homosexuals like you do in your country. In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon. I don’t know who has told you that we have!” Iran certainly kills a lot of non-existent people.

Photo: Dai Kurokawa/EPA

African homosexuals who flee persecution in their own countries are abducted, beaten and raped in the places where they seek asylum. Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex people are among the most vulnerable and isolated of all refugees, according to the report by watchdog Human Rights First. This is especially true in places where they are at heightened risk owing to violent attacks, discrimination and laws that criminalise same-sex relations.

Its report The Road to Safety cites examples of violence, including:

• Two refugee women in Uganda who were abducted and raped in 2010 because they had been assisting LGBTI refugees.

• A gay male refugee in Uganda who was locked in his home and a group of refugees tried to burn him alive last November.

• Five cases of “corrective rape” of lesbian or transgender male refugees in Uganda were reported by NGOs between June and November 2011.

•A gay Somali teenager in Kenya who was doused in petrol in 2010 and would have been set on fire by a crowd of Somali teenagers in Eastleigh, Nairobi, if not for the intervention of an older Somali woman.

African countries get angry when we in the West threaten to withhold aid and assistance, and call for human rights to be observed. Well that pressure is not going to go away until they correct their behaviour, and that is that.

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17 May

Thursday 17 May 2012

Reuters

Religious protesters have blocked an International Day against Homophobia march in the capital of the former Soviet republic of Georgia, Tbilisi. Fighting broke out as protesters attacked marchers, tearing up placards, and police made several arrests.

Michael Wardlow. Photo: NICIE

Discrimination is still affecting too many gay men and women in Northern Ireland, says the Equality Commissioner there. The commission received 82 inquiries from people concerned about their rights in the last year. More people were harassed because of their sexual orientation when seeking access to goods and services.

“The law is in place to protect everyone from homophobic treatment and discrimination, and the Equality Commission would like to hear from more lesbian, gay and bisexual people about their experiences and advise them of their rights and options,” said the Commissioner, Mr Wardlow.

In 2011/12 the Police Service of Northern Ireland recorded 200 homophobic incidents, a decrease of 11 (5.2%) on the previous year.

Frank Mugisha. Photo: Mask

Ugandan gay activists have urged President Yoweri Museveni’s government to repeal the penal code that outlaws homosexuality in the East African country. The activists also want the government to block the controversial Anti-Homosexuality Bill, which will soon be introduced in parliament.

 Sex Minorities Uganda’s executive director Frank Mugisha said they were appealing to government to end the abuse of gays. “As we today mark 2012 International Day against Homophobia and Transphobia, the LGBTI community calls on the Parliament of Uganda to reject the Anti-Homosexuality Bill that is still pending in Parliament, that incites unnecessary hatred and violence in the communities where we live and makes us daily targets for hate crimes, making it impossible for us to live freely.”

Roshika Deo. Photo: Roshika Deo

Gay rights activists in Fiji are accusing police of homophobia after the first planned pride march through the Pacific nation’s capital was cancelled at the last minute. Roshika Deo, a trustee of rights group Oceania Pride, says the group received a permit last month to hold the march this evening but police told them on the morning of the event that it had been cancelled. “They said we cannot march today because they did not realise they had given a permit for gays to march,” Deo told AFP.

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14 May

Monday 14 May 2012

Dr Damien Riggs. Photo: Flinders University, Australia

There is no scientific evidence that children with heterosexual parents ‘do better’ than those with same-sex parents. “The Australian Psychological Society conducted in 2007 a large review of literature on parenting by same sex couples, and found the evidence shows that children in these families do at least as well as those in heterosexual families,” said APS spokesperson Dr Judith Heywood.

That literature was based on 30 years of research tracking children in same-sex homes, added Dr Damien Riggs, a Flinders University lecturer in social work and planning. It suggested that on some measures, those raised by gay couples were better-adjusted than others, he said. If there were any negative consequences of growing up with non-heterosexual parents, they would be the consequences of discrimination, and those were the same across all marginalised groups.

Gay event in Burma. Undated photo: Gay Star News

The Guardian have been to Burma to see the gay community there.

“The nightclub is heaving… and packed with drunken dancers. At the bar, the young sons of Burma’s elite are buying bottles of Jack Daniel’s and Johnnie Walker with thick wads of dirty kyat notes…. a cultural transformation is taking place on the dance floor. Clubbers are grinding up against each other – girls on girls, boys on boys – singing along to American hip-hop blaring out of the giant speakers in the corner.

In a country that still criminalises homosexual activity – a legacy from when the British once ruled this country of 50 million – such sights have long been kept out of view. But as Burma slowly opens up, many of its lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) population are hoping they will no longer have to stay in the shadows.”

Wow. Be careful though.

“”When we cruise, we cruise with everyone else – gay or straight – because we don’t have 100% gay venues here,” says Chitoo, 33, a gay Burmese living in Rangoon. “If we did, the government would arrest us. But now Daw [Aung San] Suu [Kyi] is bringing human rights on to the table, and through her our voices will be louder than ever before.”

Some expect the change to be rapid, such as Douglas Thompson, a gay activist who founded the LGBT-friendly travel company Purple Dragon 15 years ago and has been operating tours in Burma and other south Asian countries ever since. “If it’s anything like India or China or Vietnam … when things begin to open up, people meet and communicate,” he says. “Gay is an idea that people bring with them. It’s a lifestyle that is really for most people [in Burma] still completely alien.”"

The strains in the UK’s coalition government are beginning to show. Defence Secretary Philip Hammond is the first senior member of the Government to break ranks and raise doubts over the Coalition’s commitment to legislate for gay marriage, suggesting yesterday that gay marriage was too controversial and not enough of a priority to spend political capital on. Mr Hammond appeared to link gay marriage with proposals to reform the House of Lords – neither of which, he said, were a priority for the voters. “If you stop people in the street and ask them what their concerns are, they’ll talk to you about jobs and economic growth, the level of the wages they’re earning, wanting to see real growth in wages again.”

His comments were met with irritation by the Liberal Democrats. A source close to the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said: “We would fully expect Mr Hammond to support government policy regardless of his views. Gay marriage is something which is backed by both the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.”

Your Activist thinks it has no chance of being legislated for the time being.

SP

6 May

Sunday 6 May 2012

David Cameron in happier, gayer times. Uncredited press photo

The difference a few days makes. Just hours ago the Tories and Liberal Democrats received a thrashing in local council elections, losing more than 800 seats between them, mainly to a reinvigorated Labour Party, although probably mostly as a protest vote against economic austerity and failure. Now Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister David Cameron is expected to drop his plans to legalise gay marriage after his party’s miserable showing in those elections sparked a backlash from angry Tory backbenchers. The gay marriage pledge is expected to be dropped from the forthcoming Queens’ speech.

Photo: Help Valerie

Ediage Valerie Ekwedde’s deportation to Cameroon has been temporarily halted after he refused to board a flight from London to Paris. Campaigners say his life is at risk because he is gay and should not be removed from the UK. Mr Ekwedde fears persecution in Cameroon. The UK Border Agency found “no credible evidence” he was gay. The pilot is said to have decided not to fly with him out of consideration to other passengers. Mr Ekwedde arrived in Britain last November claiming he had been persecuted in Cameroon because of his sexuality. In July 2010, the UK Supreme Court ruled that two gay men from Cameroon and Iran were entitled to refugee status in a landmark ruling. The Supreme Court heard that in Cameroon jail sentences for homosexuality ranged from six months to five years.

Some of the attendees at this year’s Equality Forum. Photo: South Florida Gay News

The Equality Forum in the US is under way and JTA proudly reports that Israel is the featured theme. The events in Philadelphia, which end today, feature an array of Israeli gay performers and activists, as well as an address by Michael Oren, the Israeli ambassador to the United States. The forum brings together a number of gay activist groups. They have a different theme every year. This year is the twentieth consecutive annual event.

Patekile Holomisa. Photo: New Age

There is an attempt to turn the clock back in South Africa. The National House of Traditional Leaders wants to remove a clause from the Constitution which protects people on the grounds of sexual orientation. The clause, in section nine of the Constitution, reads: “The state may not unfairly discriminate directly or indirectly against anyone on one or more grounds, including race, gender, sex, pregnancy, marital status, ethnic or social orientation, age, disability, religion, conscience, belief, culture, language and birth.

ANC MP Patekile Holomisa, who chairs the constitutional review committee, said sexual orientation was a difficult subject. “The last time this issue was discussed was about same-sex marriages. Most of the people in the caucus were opposed to it, but then Luthuli House and the leadership instructed us to vote for it,” he said. Holomisa heads the Congress of Traditional Leaders.

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4 May

Friday 4 May 2012

Nikolai Alekseyev during his picket near St. Petersburg City Hall on April 12. Photo: Gay.ru

Nikolai Alexeyev was convicted today of spreading “gay propaganda” among minors in the first such ruling in Russia’s modern history. A city court in St. Petersburg fined him 5,000 rubles ($170) for breaching the law, which was controversially introduced by lawmakers in Russia’s second-largest city in February. He pledged to appeal the decision. Alexeyev was briefly detained last month after he picketed the city hall in St. Petersburg with a poster which said that “homosexuality is not a perversion” (pictured). He said the judge has not presented the grounds for her decision, and that they will only be available next week. Calls to the court went unanswered shortly after the ruling.

Photo: Michael Cheetham

Congratulations to the London Gay Men’s Chorus which has reached the ripe young age of 21. The choir was begun in 1991 by a group of nine men – none of whom are in the choir any more – who used to meet at a social group called London Friend, where they would play their favourite CDs. “Someone said to them: ‘Why not start a choir if you’re so into music?’ so they rehearsed a few pieces to raise money for charity and put on their first gig at Angel tube,” says chorus chairman Alisdair Low.

All Africa looks at the routine arrest and detention of men who are suspected of being gay in Cameroon. Human rights activists are angry.

On 19 November 2011, Paul Ewang was arrested by the police and kept in custody for two days. “I was in a bar with a friend who is quite effeminate. When we left, the barman started swearing at us and poking us with an iron rod… He hit me with the rod, shouting: ‘Gays, it’s a gay couple.’ People came out and started assaulting us. They were gathering old tyres to burn us alive when the police arrived and took us to the station. We were kept in custody on charges of homosexuality. I fainted at the end of the second day, out of exhaustion and hunger, and was taken to hospital,” says Ewang. He is free because he managed to escape from the hospital.

‘Marc’, manager for the Centre Region branch of gay group PAEMH, recalls his own experience. Seven years ago, he was arrested and held for over 12 months in the Central Prison of Yaoundé. He was having a drink at a bar in Yaoundé when three policemen raided the place. “They said they were looking for a man whose face they didn’t know, but who regularly frequented the bar. Therefore, they were going to take all forty of us to the station for identification.” The police officers said the homosexuality charges were simply based on information that the bar was frequented by gays. “On June first , all eleven of us appeared before a judge who immediately signed a committal order. That is how we ended up in prison.”

The prosecution only started looking for ‘evidence’ of homosexuality three months after their incarceration, and subjected the accused to rectal examinations in a desperate attempt to find ‘traces of sodomy’. “Some bribed their way out,” Marc says, referring to those who left the police station. “But I refused to do so because I hadn’t done anything wrong. Ten other people also refused to ‘negotiate’, as we say in Cameroon, and the policemen kept us in custody on charges of homosexuality.”

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3 May

Thursday 3 May 2012

Richard Grenell

Openly gay spokesman Richard Grenell left the Mitt Romney campaign because he was ‘silenced’ while his boss refused to defend him against personal attacks. Mr Grenell, Mr Romney’s former foreign policy and national security spokesman, felt his reputation was being destroyed by far right criticism that he would advocate for gay marriage inside a Romney White House. Mr Grenell resigned after less than a month on the job and cited ‘personal reasons’ as the cause for his departure.

A gay bar in Copenhagen has confirmed it has barred straight couples from kissing there. Jobbe Joller, the founder of Homosocialt Fællesskab, said a bouncer at the Never Mind bar in the Danish capital told a woman in his party she could not kiss her boyfriend. Confronting the bouncer, he said: “The bouncer replied that it was unacceptable to conduct in that kind of behaviour at a gay place and that Never Mind receives a lot of emails from its gay guests concerning the high number of straight guests that visit the bar. I asked him if it was not the same as saying that black people are not allowed to kiss in Never Mind, but he disagreed and told me that the owner of Never Mind may decide who can kiss and who can’t kiss in the bar.”

So now you know. Never mind.

Averil Power. Photo: Eamonn Farrell/Photocall Ireland

The Irish Government has blocked a move to protect gay doctors and teachers from being fired due to their sexual orientation. Justice Minister Alan Shatter claimed Fianna Fáil senator Averil Power’s Employment Equality Bill may not have been able to pass “constitutional muster”. Ms Power said appropriate wording could have been worked out at committee stage, but the move was voted down. The Gay and Lesbian Equality Network described the Government’s attitude as “very disappointing”. Ms Power told the Seanad provisions in law that could see schools, hospitals and other institutions sack staff because of their orientation “serve as a daily chill factor for gay lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people”.

Di Natale. Photo: Getty

Udinese striker Antonio Di Natale has stated that the taboo of homosexuality in professional football will not be broken any time soon. “Professionally, I admire Prandelli and am fond of the man, but I disagree with him [on homosexuality],” Di Natale told La Repubblica. “Breaking the taboo of homosexuality in football is difficult, almost impossible. I wonder how the fans would react? I’m sorry, but I disagree with the choice to go public, at least in football because privacy is very important. Our world, in some respects, is very complex.”

“You are here: Home » Moral Depravity”, says Radiance Weekly, helpfully. They mean us. Oh, yes they do!

“Homosexuality is a mental disorder and psychological perversion which psychologists call a sadomasochistic perversion – an act of changing good and right into bad and wrong. The result of this act is very dangerous: 1. The perversion of justice 2. The perversion of the truth 3. Sexual diseases like gonorrhoea and syphilis, which kill the patient slowly and painfully.”

Wow. Would you like some more of this enlightenment? Okay then, brace yourselves.

“A study shows that gay persons are mentally retarded and they hate children. Those who need children either adopt or get them through heterosexual unions. It is proved that sexual permissive practices spread deadly diseases like HIV and AIDS. It is discovered that after 1960 the rates of sexually transmitted diseases rose sharply. In 1993, Simon Le Vay who studied the mental status of homosexuals and heterosexuals found an important difference in the size of the hypothalamus, a part of the brain that regulates hormones. Genetics also influence such an attitude. A study on 33 pairs of homosexuals revealed that they had a distinctive genetic pattern involving X Chromosomes. There are clinics rendering service to homosexuals who are mentally disorder. In India, there are seven lakh homosexuals affected with venereal diseases.
Stop this menace or face consequences, may be destruction of the world.”

What a load of piffle.

Tony Whyte

Gay Activist is sad to note the passing of Tony Whyte of Sheffield who has died age 84.

“From the late 1950s to the ’70s his limp-wristed camp act, long before the days of Larry Grayson and John Inman, was the talk of the town. His catchphrase was, ‘Shut your gob, Tony’s speaking’. Glasgow-born, Tony’s real name was Frederick York Clark Wight. He spent much of his childhood in the Fulwood Cottage Homes orphanage in Sheffield, reflecting: “I was born of good parents but on the wrong side of the blanket.” National Service saw Tony stationed in Germany and Austria with the Army Medical Corps, then he signed up for six years as a medic in the Navy. Out on Civvy Street he worked first for a tailor in Attercliffe, standing in the doorway to attract custom, later becoming the ‘singing waiter’ at the now demolished Rotherham House pub, near Castle Market. Later he worked at Firvale Infirmary – now the Northern General Hospital – as a geriatric staff nurse.”

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