Stephen Gately’s windower has complained to the Press Complaints Commission about the infamous Jan Moir article the day before his funeral. Now that the dust has settled, was the Moir firestorm really out of proportion? It was certainly surprising, but only because the Daily Mail has a long tradition of printing homophobic articles which haven’t caused nearly the same level of fuss.
The difference here was that Gately was a star, and they seem to have underestimated the growing tide of resentment from bloggers, commentators and the general public to the Daily Mail‘s hysterical and often factually incorrect outpourings. Jan Moir poured scorn on the fact that Stephen’s Death was from natural causes even in the face of coroner’s report which clearly stated that it was. In other words, she wrote lies, which makes her extremely vulnerable as far as this complaint is concerned.
More disgusting than the factual inaccuracies were the parallels Moir drew with the death of Matt Lucas’ ex-husband, a completely unrelated incident. “It strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships”, she spewed. No one ever said all civil partnerships would be happy ever after. A year after the first ceremony, law firms began offering their dissolution services in the gay press. But so far, less than 1% of civil partnerships have ended in dissolution. Not bad I’d say, though it is still early days. Has the Daily Mail made headline news of this fact? Of course not.
Moir is just the tip of the iceberg. In particular, the paper seems to love defending religious bigots’ “rights” to discriminate against gay people. The prime example is its sympathetic articles towards Islington registrar, Lillian Ladelle, who has taken her employer to court for the right to refuse to conduct civil partnerships on the grounds of her religious beliefs. Which is odd, as the civil marriages she conducted have nothing to do with religion. God cannot even be mentioned in the ceremony.
Just this weekend, Welsh rugby player Gareth Thomas made the decision to come out. However, as usual, the Mail on Sunday chose to focus on the negative aspects of his coming out in their headline. Instead of summarising his decision as brave and historic, the headline reads “‘It’s ended my marriage and nearly driven me to suicide. Now it’s time to tell the world the truth – I’m gay”. Carefully phrased so you could read that what caused his troubles was gayness itself, not his fears of the reaction to it.
But I believe that the Daily Mail‘s agenda is becoming out of step with society today. Most of the people who complained about the Stephen Gately article were not gay. It’s becoming increasingly hard for so-called middle Englanders to believe the Mail‘s subtext that gay and lesbian people lead lonely and dangerous lives. Or buy in to rhetoric about a big old gay conspiracy to undermine family values when straight people are the parents, brothers,sisters, cousins, friends, colleagues, constituency members, sports fans – I could go on – of out gay and lesbian people.
The fact that resolutely middle England brands such as Marks and Spencer asked for their advertising not to be displayed alongside the Moir article underlines the fact that other conservative institutions are ahead of the Daily Mail when it comes to gay people, and if it continues on its current editorial tone will start to look increasingly out of step, old-fashioned and needlessly vitriolic, even to its traditional readership. In the meantime, I wish Stephen’s widower Andrew Cowles all the best of luck with his complaint to the Press Complaints Commission, as the chairman of the PCC is Paul Dacre, the editor of the Daily Mail, who made the final decision to print Moir’s poisonous filth in the first place.
