Noelle McCarthy: Ho hum, just another bigoted gay-basher

Dear Noelle,

I hope you can help me. I'm an English woman, a fellow column writer actually. Last week I wrote a piece about that young guy from Boyzone who died suddenly on Majorca.

I know they say he died in his sleep or somesuch, but try as I might, I just can't believe that there wasn't more to it than that. He was, after all, gay.

Anyway, my column caused a bit of a stir - 25,000 complaints worth of a stir, to be precise, and its raised all sorts of merry hell in the papers over here, not to mention the internet. I won't even tell you what they're saying about me on Twitter!

Anyway, I'm not really worried about my job - the paper I write for has no fear of publishing robust opinions like mine - but I am getting a bit fed up with being called a homophobe.

I'm not, I'm just calling 'em like I see 'em. It may not be fashionable to cast aspersions on the gay lifestyle any more, but surely there's a place for a dissenting voice in this day and age?

Thanks for listening pet, love your work.

Jan.

Hi Jan,

Thanks for the letter. I know you've probably got a lot on your plate at the moment, what with the controversy and all, so it's nice that you took the time to write. I've read your column, and really, I don't know that I understand what all the fuss is about.

Sure, you took the untimely death of a young pop star, from what medical examiners have declared to be entirely natural causes, and tried to turn it into some sort of moral victory for those who oppose gay marriage, insulting him posthumously while you did it. But hey, it's nothing that moral crusaders before you haven't been doing for years.

I'm sorry to belittle your predicament, but there's nothing in your column that amounts to more than the same old predictable cacophony of dog-whistles and stereotypes - the sort gay-bashers have been peddling since one hot young ancient Greek boy caught another's eye during the decathlon and the noble tradition of same-sex lovin' was born.

For as long as guys have had the temerity to fancy other guys, and girls have had the cheek to lust after other girls, there has been your ilk standing over them and muttering your dark imprecations. You dress it up with concern; concern for society, concern for the children, and most sickeningly of all, concern for gay people themselves.

"That strange and lonely death" you ascribe to Stephen Gately was really just a pretext for you to trot out more of the same, dreary scandal-mongering that attends the life of so many people who dare, in this day and age, to come out in the media and, having done so, go on to enjoy perfectly happy lives.

For a while there, it was looking like Stephen Gately would be allowed to live without stigma as a gay man, but now with your column you've managed to tarnish him in death. Of course there were going to be rumours and the usual mutterings after his passing, on a party island, with his boyfriend and another gay man present at the scene - and where else would you go to find such mutterings but the pages of the Daily Mail?

We know what we're getting when we log on there every day. Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course. There's an appetite for it. I admit to a daily Daily fix myself. How else would I know what Kate is smoking, or what Posh isn't eating today?

I understand your frustration when you say you're sick of getting a hard time for being homophobic. What else would people expect from you? You're a Daily Mail columnist!

Blame all of those liberal kids on Twitter. I think your real mistake was putting your thoughts in a newspaper in the first place. If you knew a bit more about how media are trending these days, you'd realise an organ as antiquated as a paper-and-ink daily is no bastion from which to defend the sort of old-fashioned prejudices you espouse.

The internet lives for your sort, honey. If you had any sense at all you'd have put it up as your Facebook status.

That your paranoid little column generated so much outcry, so quickly, says more about where our media is at than it does about your quaint belief that gays are up to all sorts, all the time.

That's cold comfort for you, probably. Start a blog on the strength of it. The hits will come thick and fast. And the worst thing is, on the internet they don't even wait 'til you're dead.

Chin up!

Noelle