A British novelist has had her latest book banned by the Dubai Literary Festival because it “mentions” homosexuality. Goodness alone knows what they would think of the books I have just read or am reading at the moment. Not only do they mention homosexuality, they’re all about or by homosexuals! Heavens to Betsy! That dreadful word again? The BBC documentary the other night was all about a homosexual writer, the Japanese Mishima, a strange character indeed. To please his traditional family he married and produced two children, just like Oscar Wilde, eventually at quite a young age committing hara-kiri. Mishima, not Oscar.
Chris bought the new Walt Disney DVD edition of “Sleeping Beauty” and one of the extras was purportedly a potted biography of Tchaikovsky, ho ho ho! Poor Tchaik to have lived in conservative Tzarist Russia. Did he too commit suicide? Did he know the glass of water he drank was cholera contaminated and would kill him? The Disney studios could hardly inform millions of gullible Americans (and others) that this world famous and most popular composer, who wrote some of the world’s most beautiful romantic music, cruised the streets of Moscow at night in search of rough trade. But back to the books: firstly, having read Paul O’Grady’s autobiography, “At My Mother’s Knee” taking us up to his late teens, and thoroughly enjoying that one, we got the biography written by …. oh, whatsisname? Never mind. Not very well written I’m afraid, rather dull in fact. Finished reading it though because it is about a truly remarkable character and here is the strange thing, the great British public, many of whom are still homophobic to a degree and knowing that he’s gay, simply adore him. And this applies to other show business personalities as well, so many of whom have “come out”. Then there is the Bruce Chatwin book Ray gave me, also about a homosexual, also a married one and, finally, “My Lives” by the American writer, Edmund White. Strange that I should be reading these two books in tandem as evidently Chatwin and White knew each other in the Biblical sense in New York. The White autobiography pulls no punches and with calling a spade a spade would have the organisers of the Dubai Festival dropping like so many wilting violets. And, talking about a wilting violet, what about the gay security guard who has been awarded £62500 in damages because a lady wobbled her tits at him virtually causing a mental and emotional breakdown? Oh, come on now! Has the world gone completely crazy? If she’d flashed her pussy at him would the amount have been doubled? If she’d wobbled her titties and flashed her pussy simultaneously, having completely traumatised him, would he have been quids in for three times the amount?
The American anti-gay preacher, the Reverend (?) Fred (god hates fags) Phelps from Kansas and his anti-gay (god hates fags) preacher daughter, Shirley Phelps-Roper, have been barred from entering the UK to stop him from spreading ‘extremism and hatred.’ He evidently wanted to picket a play dramatising the murder of a gay man in 1998. Was that the one where this young student was pistol whipped by two of his contempories? Evidently the play depicts the Phelps’s in a not too flattering light which is hardly surprising. Peter Tatchell thought they should be allowed to visit in order to “discredit themselves, they are odious homophobic bigots. They give Christianity a bad name.” Unfortunately they’re not the only ones who give Christianity a bad name. In some Islamic states homosexuality is still punishable by death.
Fan the merkin! This can’t be Kansas, Toto!
An interesting observation by Mr White in his book, if I may quote – “The more preposterous a theory the more likely it is to appeal to an intellectual, since only what defies common sense can be entertained for long by anyone but a thinker. To believe in the unbelievable, I suppose, is proof of the power of the mind.