why am I not surprised at this nasty piece of bile from the Daily Hate Mail?

Because Gately was gay there must have been sleaze involved, as that's what you get from that 'lifestyle', isn't it?

Yes, he had smoked cannabis that night but that is not illegal in Spain, as long as it's not ion public. And the Spanish authorities were at pains to stress that drugs or alcohol were not in any way responsible for his death.

Of course, journalists do not take drugs, do they- oh no, of course they don't.

And another man was at the flat- he was bulgarian and they were gay, so they must have had a shag, mustn't they? To be honest, I couldn't care less if they had, but it's the link between homosexuality and immorality lifestyles, and the sniping at civil partnerships which is trotted out yet again by this nasty rag which appalls me.

But again, why am I not surprised?

www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-12207...n-Gatelys-death.html

It's all about a 'story' not the truth.
In the old days they had investigative journalists,now they buy in stories,and dress 'em up to make a different slant on the same piece of news

There's an excellent satire on Jan Moir's 'article' here:

www.dailyquail.org/2009/10/jan-moir-why-...nothing-natural.html

I'd never heard of the Daily Quail before- looks like a hoot!

sorry for posting after myself, but this story is taking wings.

In this age of Twitter, widespread condemnation for Moir and her shocking 'article' is spreading.

www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/oct/16...ely-facebook-twitter

Jan Moir is now the 2nd and 7th most tweeted subject, Stephen Fry, Charlie Brooker, Derren Brown, David Tennant and more have expressed outrage, and....

the volume of complaints caused the Press Complaints Commission site to crash.

maybe this is people power in action.

Hope so!

The Daily Mail is aimed at people full of hatred, so what do you expect.

I totally disagree.

The Daily Mail is one of the few media outlets which still has freedom of speech.

I dont agree with this article - but I agree that this columnist is entitled to her "strange and out of touch" view about poor Stephen Gately's early death.

I have read the article and dont find it homophobic at all. It is the sort of article that appeared regularly about Michael Jackson but no one complained about them at all.......strange.

Media storm in a tea cup. But I find it distasteful that anyone can speak ill of the dead in the press and I dont think she has captured the public mood in this article at all - hence the complaints. She will regret her harsh words for the rest of her career.

not homophobic at all?

'another real sadness about Gateley's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after mythof civil partnerships'

if a heterosexual person had died in similar circumstances, would she have written 'another real sadness about xxx's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of marriage' ??

Moir is now claiming that she is the victim of an 'organised internet campaign.... errm, taste of your own medicine, Ms Moir?

Yes I love the assumption that there were no deaths that day of heterosexual partners and none that proved marriage has failed.

A delightful piece of righteous indignation but terribly badly thought out; the trick of a good controversial column is one that stirs up a similar amount of outrage as this did but which is defensible which this simply isn't.

Jan Moir should read my columns on Live Aid to learn her trade.

The Mail has really collapsed in columnists. Janet is a disaster and Littlejohn has become pale and pointless caricature.

I notice the first thing Dom did at The Sun was dump the frightful Gaunt.

Time for a cleanout Dacre? I am available.

Marriage has been the target for loads of columns in recent years going back....so Civil Partnerships are a legitimate target. It actually means that they are being accepted as mainstream and equal with marriage.

Therefore I still dont see this as homophobic.

Article still leaves a bad taste in the mouth - should never have been published in the first place.

Our press can be heartless.

Daniel Finkelstein in The Times hit the nail pretty well on the head, as follows:


"I am deeply dismayed by Jan Moir's article on Stephen Gately, suggesting that the poor man died of homosexuality.

For Moir's piece contained within it extraordinary statistical flaws.

How did it transpire that everybody on the Daily Mail failed to pick her up on it?

Here is her argument:

Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.

Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened.

There seem to me to be three statistical mistakes here.

The first is that you can learn something useful from a sample size of two.

The second is that you select your sample by reading back copies of the Daily Mail and finding famous people who fall into the category you wish to study who have been in front page news stories in the last month.

There is, you see, a chance that this method will bias the sample.

And third, Ms Moir appears to have forgotten how useful it is to have a comparison group.

It did not strike her that by employing the same sample selection method (Daily Mail stories) she could have found two marriages to compare with the civil partnerships.

All in all I think the statistical errors are so great as to leave open the possibility that Ms Moir's piece of analysis was not designed to get at the truth.

Posted by Daniel Finkelstein on October 16, 2009 at 04:44 PM

Isn't vitriolic harpooning journalism par for the course these days? The tabloids were being slated earlier in the week for suggesting Stephen had 'done a Hendrix', if speculation was bad then this garbage in the Mail represents very poor judgement on behalf of the editors.
As I have said before, the only thing I find questionable about this sad death is my belief that he and his close circle knew of his physical fragilities.
Other than that it's taken up far more column inches than its worthy of.. But I guess with X-Factor running the country the death of Gately does represent some kind of be-all & end-all.
Sad that it overshadowed the great Al Martino this week though - a man who was performing to an amazingly high for more than 60 years

I agree Chris that his death has garnered an inrodinate amount of press coverage.

He was by all accounts a lovely chap (my friend Henry directed and choreographed the production of Jospeh he was in and described him as a thoroughly lovely and genuine person, but lazy as hell lol) but as you point out Al Martino also died and there was little coverage (tho JK mentioned him on the Tipsheet.

The reason I am highlighting this article is the sheer bile of it. Apparently Gaunt is to go from the Mail.


a wonderful letter to Ms Moir has been posted on the Facebook group, which I reproduce below. I apologise for the c word which I dislike, but it is a reference to Charlie Brooker's statement (feel free to moderate tho)

here it is:

Dear Ms. Moir,

It would seem you’ve taken the cap off your poison pen and waded in once again, without care for whom you may hurt in the process. Your piece on Stephen Gately was nothing more than insinuation served up with a great dollop of homophobia. You wrote as if you were an eye witness to the proceedings that night, while offering no proof whatever to back up your snide assertions.

It would appear that you consider yourself a medical expert, knowledgeable enough to contradict the Spanish coroner. Tell, me - when and where did you study medicine? You also link Mr. Gately’s death with that of Kevin McGee, yet there is nothing to connect them. And then you try to assert that both deaths had something to do with both men having been in civil partnerships. I can only guess at the synaptic miss-fire in your small, bigoted mind that came up with that one.

This wouldn’t be the first time you’ve written a nasty, inaccurate and hateful piece about a well-loved person, though, now would it? And it’s not the first time you’ve attracted approbation for your thinly-veiled homophobic views either, is it?

Judging from the picture which heads your column, I’d say you were nothing more than an unsatisfied, frustrated and over-weight sow of no redeeming feature, however heavily made up, and aptly described by Charlie Brooker in his “Twitter” feed as walking “the fine line between being a bitch and a c*nt”.

And your mewling defence of your piece? Hog-wash. You have no business breathing air that a worthy human being could be putting to better effect. You should be proud of the career you’ve carved for yourself, plumbing the murky depths of the journalistic gutter, and, having worked for The Daily Mail, albeit briefly, I can only assume that you’ve found a comfortable sty in which to wallow with others of your kind.

You see how words can hurt?

Yours sincerely,

david wrote:
.

And another man was at the flat- he was bulgarian and they were gay, so they must have had a shag, mustn't they? To be honest, I couldn't care less if they had, but it's the link between homosexuality and immorality lifestyles, and the sniping at civil partnerships which is trotted out yet again by this nasty rag which appalls me.

l


I'm gay, 30 y/o, my partner is 35 and we've been together for 11 years. we are totally monogamous and always have been but sadly I have yet to find another gay couple the same. I don't think it's wrong to suggest gays are more promiscuous but I don't consider that immoral. It's up to individuals what they do.

Yes the Daily Mail can be vile but we live in the land of free speech so let it say what it wants. Thousands of gays are incensed because it probably falls too close to home.

Peter Tatchell wanted an area of London cordoned off for gay people to go cruising for sex so even he acknowledges gay people have more and different sexual needs. Nothing wrong with that at all.

let's face it..it would hard to turn down a hunky Bulgarian !

it's true..of all the gay marriages I know..few are monogamous..then again neither are the hetro ones..it must be something to do with my friends:unsure:

The police have received an official complaint about the article -

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/Showbiz-News/Jan-Moir-Column-Police-Receive-Complaint-About-Gately-Article/Article/200910315408166?lpos=Showbiz_News_First_Home_Article_Teaser_Region_9&lid=ARTICLE_15408166_Jan_Moir_Column%3A_Police_Receive_Complaint_About_Gately_Article

Mike I'm gay too and the reason I complained was not because Moir's piece was too close to the bone. I talked about it with 2 friends (who are in a monogmaous gay relationship) and all 3 of us were moved to complain.

In fact, whether either Gately or his partner had sex with the third man, it is completely irrelevant, and their own business. There are many couples, straight and gay, who have 'open relationships', which are nobody else's business except those involved.

The article was toned down after the complaints started to come in- the original title was "There was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gateley's death". She says his death cannot have been down to natural causes, contrary to what the coroner said, yet offers no evidence.

Selecting two gay couples, both where one partner died, is used by her to discredit civil partnerships. What an insult.

Her article breached 3 articles of the Press Complaints Commission's charter.

Here is a link to the original article- it starts nice enough but read to the end.

www.catcha.co.uk/maila.jpg

david x

she's just another scumbag hack and The Mail has removed her article.

What the fuck is she talking about ?..yes people do put on their pyjamas and die on the sofa every frigging day as my 40 year old cousin did a few years ago.

Or as a friend did 6 momths ago..just got into bed with his girlfriend and never woke up.

Her piece was riddled with rubbish. So yobs who go out to the pub and get ratshit pissed are normal are they ?

the more complaints about this garbage the better.

david wrote:
Mike I'm gay too and the reason I complained was not because Moir's piece was too close to the bone. I talked about it with 2 friends (who are in a monogmaous gay relationship) and all 3 of us were moved to complain.

In fact, whether either Gately or his partner had sex with the third man, it is completely irrelevant, and their own business. There are many couples, straight and gay, who have 'open relationships', which are nobody else's business except those involved.

The article was toned down after the complaints started to come in- the original title was "There was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gateley's death". She says his death cannot have been down to natural causes, contrary to what the coroner said, yet offers no evidence.

Selecting two gay couples, both where one partner died, is used by her to discredit civil partnerships. What an insult.

Her article breached 3 articles of the Press Complaints Commission's charter.

Here is a link to the original article- it starts nice enough but read to the end.

www.catcha.co.uk/maila.jpg

david x

I have already seen and read the article thanks. I don't find it particularly offensive and find gay people wanting to "get married" to be far more offensive.
Rather like lesbians who behave like the most foul drunken aggressive male because they think it makes them more masculine... or the gay man who behaves like the bitchiest effeminate girl just to be more feminine. Why gay people want to make some kind of statement to prove their relationship is just like a heterosexual couple, when 99% of them still behave like swingers is beyond me. When you commit to someone and tell the world how much in love you are, it kind of slaps them in the face when they find out you went out picking random strangers up for 3somes. There is nothing wrong with open relationships but those participating in them shouldn't pretend to be monogamous and be held up as examples to young people.

Personally if I was Gately's relative I would want a second post mortem back here as I would find it difficult to believe the explanation given. Healthy 33 year olds do occasionally drop down dead, but extremely rarely from fluid on the lungs having had no symptoms at all. Pulmonary embolism maybe but not fluid.

Mike - I believe that the Gately family had a history of this illness. So it was not as unexpected to them as it has been for the rest of us.

The article was not sensitive to his family and friends and fans who were in grief at that time. It is unwise to speak "ill of the dead" - and I believe that rule should be applied to everyone.

With regards to "sexuality" - I believe we all need to live a life of love. If we "take" all the time then that is no way to live. None of us - least of all a journalist is in a position to judge Stephen Gately on this most personal of things.

As Jesus said when the crowd and disciples were about to stone Mary Magdalen - "He who is without sin cast the first stone" - our society is too judgemental about these things.

RIP Stephen Gately

Mike, I find your comments rather hard to comprehend, coming from a gay person.

For me, civil partnerships are not necessarily trying to emulate marriage, but are more about givng legal recognition to your partnership- with all that goes with it- inheritance rights, hospital visiting rights, etc... thankfully gone are the days when hospital visiting rights were denied to long term partners, or blocked by parents/blood relatives simply because they were of the wrong sex.

I for one am pleased they exist.

With regards to your comments about effeminate gay men and butch women, I think you are judging people using sweeping generalisations. how do you know those people are not being themselves. Gays and Lesbians come in all shapes and sizes, some are naturally butch or feminine or everything in between. You may not be feminine yourself, but other gay men may feel more comfortable and authentic behaving like that. And as for who is faking it and who is genuine, who knows, and who cares, not me.

Many people are surprised that I am gay, others can tell straight away- doesn't bother me. i have come to realise that I can be both, quite masculine or rather camp. I don't put it on, it just depends who I'm with and is often quite unconscious. But I suppose if you saw me in certain situations behaving in a certain way you would judge me as you judged others above. Yet you would be wrong, there is nothing fake about me, however I behave.

As for Jan Moir, Charlie Brooker was spot on in highlighting the big flaws in her article. The fact that she deliberately highlighted two partnerships which were completely unrelated, except fior the fact that one partnet had died and, oh yes, they were both gay couples. That is all they had in common, yet she sneeringly held them up as examples of how civil partnerships somehow will inevitably lead to this kind of outcome. As Charlie Brooker said in his article, drawing conslusions on a statistical example of 2 is very flawed.