Pink Sauce

Catching with the current sex scandal (very complete wikipedia entry there) rocking the (pretenciously named) " God's Own Party " only a few weeks before mid term elections, I have to admit to being slightly confused. Mrk Foley (52, single, apparently more or less openly gay) is basically being accused of having had fairly explicit online conversations with teenagers (about 16 years old) working as pages in the US Congress. Large extracts of the messages have been published in the media (see link above for examples). Apparently no sexual encounter ever took place. This is perhaps not of the highest morality but I can't really see what is actually wrong here. The teenagers are supposed to be chosen from amongst the most clever of the whole country and reading the extracts they very much seem to know what is going on here and they don't really seem fussed about it. Foley is not forcing them to respond to his questions and if they weren't happy with the turn of...

Ireland did it, Scotland did it too, the UK are about to do and Italy have done it... Now it is France's turn to ban smoking in public places. At last! The last time I was there, I almost died in a club: Everybody seemed to be chain smoking. This week, after a five-month governmental inquiry, a parliamentary committee approved a proposal to ban smoking in public areas. Under the measure, cafes, hotels, restaurants, discos and casinos could designate spaces for smoking only if they could be “hermetically sealed areas, furnished with air-extraction systems and subject to extremely rigorous health norms.” [...] France was also in the forefront in the anti-smoking movement in Europe, passing the toughest legislation on the Continent in 1991. Smoking was banned in most public places, including restaurants, except in designated areas. Tobacco products were required to carry health warnings. Cigarette advertising was banned in 1993. But there were loopholes, and application of the law ha...

Religious Rights vs Gay Rights: Should the Gay Police Association be prosecuted for inciting religious hatred ? The Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association ( GALHA ) is hosting a panel discussion around the threats to prosecute the Gay Police Association ( GPA ) following its advert linking religious belief to homophobic incidents. The panellists will consider the issues the advert raises and discuss the rise of religiously-motivated homophobia in general and the increasing clash between religion and gay rights. Date: Friday, 13 October 2006 Time: 7:30 PM Venue: The Library First Floor, Conway Hall 25 Red Lion Square London WC1R 4RL Map Nearest Tube: Holborn ALL WELCOME - Free Admission. Wine/Fruit Juice Available. Tags: London , religion , gay , LGBT , GLBT , lesbian , bisexual , transgender , free speech , GPA , Gay Police Association , Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association , GALHA , homophobia , gay rights .

I like Sarah Waters ' books. I have read two of them so far and have her other two on my shelves for future enjoyment. As moderator of a reading group and co-chair of an LGBT Network, I recently sent a letter to Virago (her publishers) asking that my email be forwarded to her in which I suggested her attending a meeting of the group and an event organised by the Network. I did the same thing at the same time for Jake Arnott (author of The Long Firm trilogy and Johnny Come Home ) at Sceptre. Someone quickly phoned me to tell me that Jake does not have email (something I know to be true) and asking me to send a letter to be forwarded to him. Virago's reply was quite different. I very quickly received an email from one Clara Womersley with the very curt few words: rather sit on hot coals??!! No signature nothing else. I know that Ms Waters has been shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize (as I am typing this, I am hoping she will be the winner to be announced in a few minutes), w...

Today Slightly is away... He is in Brussels to help the EU select a logo to celebrate its 50th anniversary next year. You can read about it on his blog , of course. What he doesn't know (yet), is that the gay blogosphere is talking about him ... And, yes, this is all my doing... I sent out the press release... I know he is already hating me for that. :O) Tags: fame , European Union , gay .

I was quite pleasantly surprised this morning, as I was trawling my favorite blogs that one of my pictures (posted on my flickr account ) had been given the grand title of "Picture of the Day" for 03 October on the London based and London centric: Londonist... The comment accompanying it ran as follows: Zefrog's simply titled Road starts right in your face and just keeps on going. With so much of London being iconic and often built on a huge scale it's refreshing to find someone not afraid to get down on their hands and knees and take a snap of something we all take for granted. proof ... I am now officially good at "get[ting] down on [my] hands and knees"... Take note, gentlemen! Tags: London , Londonist , Picture , Photography , Road .

Following last week's ill judged attempt by the Lib Dems to fight homophobia by branding it "gay" as in uncool/naff, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center are following down the same route with a campaign claiming that "HIV is a gay desease". I think there is a tiny but VERY important word missing here: "also". Yes, many sufferers of AIDS happen to be gay and yes, there is a general apathy in the community in regards to prevention but there are also millions of straight people who are ill and this sort of campaign is, I think, only giving credence to that good old right wing religious view that HIV and AIDS are the "gay cancer" and gay people's fault. Tags: gay , LGBT , GLBT , lesbian , bisexual , transgender , homophobia , gay rights .

Following Friday's debacle, Saturday brought four hours of relaxed, companionable wanderings between the Royal Academy of Arts, Wong Key, Any Amount of Books, Caffe Vergnano and St Martin in the Fields. A refreshing change. Ahoj... Tags: London , gay , LGBT , GLBT , gay scene , dating , men .

11.40 pm. I close the front door and shut off the world, climb up to my room and here I am, survivor of yet another attack of bad luck. Tonight was the scene of another low in my already subterranean track regard with strangers. I am sure some scientist of the extreme will find it some day and hail it as the missing link in the evolution of protozoa into amoeba. Or something charming like that. Location: Village bar, Soho (very gay bar in a very gay part of town) Time: 9pm, Friday night in the lull between the ebb and the flow of two waves of customers. Characters: Two men in their early thirties, meeting for the first time, although they have been in contact electronically for about a year. The meeting was a last minute arrangement made earlier in the day. Duration: 75min approx. Surpringly we managed to find a seat (near the open Fench window on the street) and I was instructed to go and sit while (let's call him) PSJ went to the bar to order drinks. He came back with 3 class...

An Apology... of sort. My recent post on St George has somehow found itself linked to in a news item on the blog of the Campaign for an English Parliament. This has generated a couple of comments. One of them, while I understand that it was possibly not very nice, was certainly quite inarticulate and I therefore was not able to reply to it. The other reacted to my affirmation that the nationalist right wing had highjacked St George's flag and insisted that this was only a media driven perception of the situation. This is where I have to apologise I think. I like to try and be fair and I think that in my hurry to get to the quirky bit of news that post was all about (that St George is the Bridegroom of Jesus and therefore could potentially be the patron saint of same-sex unions), I produced a rather shoddy bit of writing and rather caricatured St George's fans. I would say however that when the perception of people claiming allegeance to St George might be media driven, a gene...

I have just been helping Slightly put in English this letter to newspapers I wanted to send. I thought I would share it with you, as these are my views too. I recently came across a press release for the new Liberal Democrats Youth and Students group anti-homophobia campaign called "HOMOPHOBIA IS GAY". Enclosed were badges bearing that same slogan, and A5 leaflets asking people to sign a petition against homophobic bullying at school. As a member of the LGBT community, I find this a very praiseworthy initiative. As a communications consultant, however, I have to point this out as a very badly thought out slogan. At best, it sends a conflicting message (isn’t “homophobia” a sort of contrary to “gay”?). At worst it re-enforces the current trend that the word "gay" refers to something “bad” or “naff”. Following the recent controversy around a BBC presenter's use of the word "gay" in accordance to some apparently justifiable new meaning of the word in play...

Update The Gay & Lesbian Humanist Association has learned that an evangelical Christian politician, Rev George Hargreaves, the leader of Operation Christian Vote, a fundamentalist Christian political, will be seeking a private prosecution of members of the Gay Police Association in relation to this. Link . At the same time, we learn that Stephen Green has been cleared of the public order charges after handing out anti-gay leaflets, but now plans to take civil action against the police for infringing on his freedom of speech. Link . Gay campaigners have welcomed the decision by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) today that the Gay Police Association (GPA) will not be prosecuted for a controversial advert linking religious statements to homophobia. [...] The protests against the ad were led by Christian Voice whose leader Stephen Green faces trial on Thursday for public order offences after handing out homophobic leaflets at this year's Cardiff gay pride. Further details @ pink...

Letters From Guantanamo , presented by Gavin Esler was broadcast on BBC Radio Four on Wednesday 27 Sept 2006, repeated Saturday 30 Sept 2006. Listen to the programme here (40MB Mp3 file, 43 min). Guantanamo Bay is the world's most controversial prison, the heart of George Bush's "war on terror". Over the past few months the BBC has obtained access to the biggest cache of letters to come out of Guantanamo from someone still detained there. He is known to the Americans as Enemy Combatant Prisoner 345, Camp Four, Guantanamo Bay. His employers - the Arab TV station Al Jazeera - call him Sami al-Hajj, a cameraman who was picked up on the Pakistan-Afghan border almost five years ago. And his young son Muhammad, who is just six years old, hardly knows him at all. 'Abuse' Sami's story emerges in his own words, through the letters he has sent out and which have been through the US censorship process. Here's a flavour: "Who are these people who are held in...

PeaceOUT UK is Europe’s first gay hip-hop festival. Friday the 20th October 2006 The DiTch Bar 145 Shoreditch High Street London E16JE www.peaceoutuk.com Tags: London , Hip hop , gay , LGBT , GLBT , lesbian , bisexual , transgender , rap , PeaceOUT .

Death In Venice and other stories by Thomas Mann A collection of portraits where most people will recognise a bit of themselves, or a lot, as I did already with Tonio Kroger... The title story about an older man falling in love with an adolescent and loving him from afar, is, of course, one of the classics of gay literature. Tags: book , books , reading .

St George , as patron of England and all its flag waving morons (most of them are, let's face it), has, for the past few years, been highjacked by football fans (mostly) and the nationalist far right. This morning was presumably a news starved day. Not wanting to annoy people any further with the Brown/Blair saga, the Today Programme had a short slot ( listen here (4.88Mb Mp3)) with Clive Paine, some pernickety local historian, defending BBC Radio Suffolk's decision that St George is ("foreign",) not English enough and should be replaced as patron saint of the country with St Edmund, forgetting in the process that there is very scant evidence of dear George's existence anyway. This choice of St Edmund, whose sole claims to fame seem to be "a home-grown, defender of the homeland, saint" and to have (unsuccessfully) fought the invading Danes (like the BNP is now fighting the invading immigrants, one can't help but think), does not strikes me as the m...

Spending time outside of London, away from civilisation, brings out the worst in certain persons. You'll need to follow that link and read the post if you want to understand what follows. Yes, it is me in the picture but I was only LOOKING at the books. Slightly, on the contrary "liberated" two of them AND it was his idea in the first place. Ok, I admit I just didn't find anything I found interesting. The reassuring thing is that, considering the (pungent) quality of the punters of the place, the staff would probably never imagine that anyone would be interested in...erm..."liberating" any of those dusty old things on the shelves. The Churchill first edition ( Painting as a Pastime ) Slightly picked up is probably worth about £30 though... Not bad for £5.50 for two meals outing! There are three more shelves for us to explore... Tags: London , books .

Last week, the "Muslim world" rallied in anger against Pope Benedict XVI and forced him to apologise for comments he made the week before about the relation between violence and Islam during a speech ( edited version ) he made in a German university. Death threats against the Pope, attacks on Churches, burning of effigies of the Pope, his being equated to Mussolini and Hitler and the killing of nun and her bodyguard followed. In my mind this “incident” around what the Pope said is like the one surrounding the Mohammed drawings earlier this year : politically orchestrated by people in the "Muslim world" who have an interest in keeping the animosity against the western world alive. The fact that it took a month and a visit by local Muslims to the Middle East to start the cartoons crisis seem to indicate this. It only took a few days in the Pope's case but the fact that there is a delay seems conclusive that some sort of manipulation is happening (I also think ...

Here are the posts to this blog I could have written, had I not been such a lazy bugger. In consequence, you will only be able to read samples of them. I can hear a general sigh of relief. Tomato Teaser Monday 18 September This afternoon, I attended a photoshoot for one of Slightly's projects. About a year ago, he launched a blog mixing food recipes and pictures of hunky guys. The blog has since been so successful, that he decided to pitch it to a publisher. The shoot is part of the process of creating the proposal. This involved £20 worth of tomatoes (about 4/5 kilos), a semi-naked man (complete with tatoos), a photographer and the inevitable hangers-on. Below is a short video of the shoot: Thames Festival Fireworks Sunday 17 September This week-end was Ken's Thames Festival . It involved, some sort of fun fair on the South Bank, and performances. There was also a night Carnival, which for me mostly meant delays for the bus I was on coming from Regent's Park from a picni...

It seems that old stories on this blog are coming to haunt me today (see previous post). Do you remember this ? It seems that there won't be a trial after all. I haven't heard from the lawyers again, so I rather thought that much. Apparently , Mr Cole and the papers involved came to some sort of (financial) agreement. Tags: football , soccer , gay , LGBT , GLBT , sport , bisexual , homophobia , Ashley Cole , gay rights .