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Rupert Murdoch's Tabloid -- The Sun -- Repents Homophobic Stance

Fires Its Openly-Gay Outer, Wanna-Be Journalist, Matthew Parris

Newspaper's Homophobes Called 'Nazi Like' & 'Deeply Sinister'


By Jack Nichols

London--Following on years of homophobic vitriol common to major newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch, The Sun, Britain's "prince" of the scandal sheets, now claims to have seen the light in the wake of last week's unnecessary hounding of officials in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair. (See Gay Today Top Story November 13: "Great Britain: Scandals Erupt Over 4 Cabinet Ministers") rmurdoch.gif - 13.54 K
Rupert Murdoch

Friday's New York Times headlined the story "About-Face for British Daily That Scourged Gay Laborites." Sunday's slant in the Dallas Morning News touted: "Revelations about gays in (Blair) Cabinet don't faze most Britons --Tabloids' tactics of 'outing' Blair's ministers backfire, polls indicate"

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A sample of the The Sun's coverage from 1996.
The Sun, by far the most brash and prurient of Britain's homophobic scandal rags, was, nevertheless, not as benighted as was The Daily Telegraph, where vicious anti-gay commentary reached into the Victorian era for mood sources. While admitting to a climate of "prurient ferocity" that has surrounded Britain's political elite, The Daily Telegraph moralized about "the homosexual lobby" surmising that gays and lesbians have "got it wrong."

"Most people," generalized the Telegraph, "still feel an instinctive revulsion towards the idea of homosexuality ... This deep suspicion is not unreasonable. One of the most powerful human urges is to love another person permanently and to have children. Homosexuals cannot do the latter and this is the cause of great unhappiness to very many of them."

Lord Tebbit, former chairman of the Conservative Party during the Thatcher era—a politician remembered for having told the unemployed to "get on yer bike," pontificated that gay men and lesbians should never hold high office.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph, he wrote: "However, in a world where Freemasons are being asked to identify themselves as such in order that the public may judge if they are improperly doing one another favours, surely it is important that homosexuals in a position to do each other favours should similarly be outed."

In public rebuke to such Victorian moralizing, however, Lord Tebbit, The Daily Telegraph and The Sun have reportedly been trounced for their anti-gay stances. It appears, according to polls, that the British people—by a margin of 56% who say that homosexuality is morally acceptable-- are hardly focused on politicians as homosexuals and regard the matter as a private one and, as in the U.S. where sex-obsessed conservatives seek the impeachment of the American President, citizens are concerned more about the jobs their representatives are doing than about their sex lives.

As reported in Friday's postings in GayToday, Matthew Parris an openly gay journalist who was a formerly-closeted politician himself, had blithely outed a Blair cabinet member, Trade Minister Peter B. Mandelson, on a popular BBC program, Newsnight.

Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight's anchorman, reported apologetically to the outed cabinet minister that he had not expected Parris to say what he had said. Mandelson rebuffed the apology, however, and replied with a direct attack on Paxman in a three-page letter. Following its receipt, the BBC issued instructions to all of its reporters insisting that no further mention of the Trade Minister's private life was to be made. jpaxman.gif - 19.57 K
Jeremy Paxman (right) of Newsnight

Matthew Parris maintains that the outing he performed was neither premeditated nor malicious, and that he had acted on the belief that "openness" helps rather than hinders the nation's political life.

Since the end of last week, however, Parris, an employee of both London's Times and of The Sun, has been fired from The Sun which has apparently repented its homophobic references to a fifth of those running the Blair government. Parris retains his job at the Times, however.

The Sun, in an extraordinary about-face, now seems to regret having sensationalized Blair's cabinet ministers and says that it will no longer reveal the sexual orientations of government officials except in instances where there is an "overwhelming public interest."

Only two weeks previously The Sun had attempted—with its lurid front-page headlines-- to trigger public fears of "a gay Mafia of politicians, lawyers, palace courtiers, TV bigwigs or even police officers". The tabloid had called on the Prime Minister to "Tell Us the Truth, Tony!"

Michael Jacobs, general secretary of the Fabian Society, a research institution, said: "The polls show that people think homosexuality in public figures is not an issue, that it's irrelevant, with younger people much more tolerant than older people…We think that's very heartening."

Media mogul Rupert Murdoch, who now lives in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and who owns The News of the World and The Sun, has long allowed his editors to stir up anti-gay hysteria in both Britain and America. Murdoch also owns The New York Post. Of Murdoch's homophobic editors Mr. Jacobs was quoted as saying:

"What they are trying to do is deeply sinister…They are claiming there are conspiracies and hidden cabals. That's how the Nazis got started. The general reaction of the public is to reject that venal journalism."

© 1997-98 BEI

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