Category Archives: gay marriage

The Tories’ New Section 28

by Mark Simpson (Guardian CIF, 25 March 2010) Whatever happened to the Tory party of the 1980s that refused to use taxpayers’ money to prop up failing industries making things people didn’t want? That told us sternly, usually in a helmet of hair-lacquer, “the market must decide”? It turns out the Tories aren’t so laissez-faire if …

March 25, 2010 – 5:23 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in gay, gay marriage | Tagged , , , , | Comments (5)

Let Hetero Couples Get Civilly Partnered

Mark Simpson argues in today’s London Times that heterosexuals should be allowed to have civil partnerships

February 24, 2010 – 1:12 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in gay marriage | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (4)

Not in Front of the Goyim: Gays and Not-So-Open Relationships

Interesting piece by Scott James in today’s New York Times: New research at San Francisco State University reveals just how common open relationships are among gay men and lesbians in the Bay Area. The Gay Couples Study has followed 556 male couples for three years — about 50 percent of those surveyed have sex outside …

January 29, 2010 – 2:05 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in gay marriage | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (7)

Gay Marriage On The Rocks: Ain’t No Surprise

The wheels appear to have come off the gay marriage bus in the US and no one seems to know how to put them back on.  Not even the lesbians. And that’s not according to meddlin’ Limey Uncle Tom ‘slut’ me (as I was dubbed by the Voice of Gay America) but according to the gay-marriage-supporting  New …

December 8, 2009 – 1:04 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, gay marriage | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (63)

Respectability is the New Closet

By Mark Simpson (shorter version originally appeared on Guardian CIF) ‘The more things a man is ashamed of’, wrote George Bernard Shaw, ‘the more respectable he is.’ Gays must now be terribly respectable since, forty years on from the Stonewall riots started by drag queens, hustlers and homeless youths high on drugs — outsiders with …

June 9, 2009 – 2:22 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, gay, gay marriage | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (35)

The Gay Case Against Gay Marriage and Gay Bigotry

By Mark Simpson (Guardian CIF, 30 April 2009) Who would have guessed the dainty opinions of a Miss America candidate would have been taken so seriously by gays and liberals? Miss California, a practising Christian, was last week denounced by Miss America judge Perez Hilton on his blog as ‘a dumb bitch’ and unworthy of the …

May 1, 2009 – 5:33 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in article, Barack Obama, gay marriage, journalism | Tagged , , , | Comments (30)

Gay Civil Unions Replacing Straight Marriage in France

According to the Daily Telegraph, ninety per cent of French “solidarity pacts” a year, some 135,000 of them, are now being made between people of the opposite sex, ‘despite them being designed for homosexuals, who are not formally allowed to marry in France’.  Unlike in the UK, the Civil Solidarity Pacts, or PACS, are open …

March 7, 2009 – 6:52 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in commentary, gay marriage | Tagged , , , , | Comments (8)

Milk Toast: How Van Sant Cut off Harvey’s Balls

By Mark Simpson (Originally appeard on Guardian Unlimited, 28 Jan 2009) ‘If a bullet should enter my brain, let it destroy ever closet door.’ So says Sean Penn as Harvey Milk, the gay activist who became California’s first openly gay public official. Any concern that this may be a slightly melodramatic statement is quelled of course …

February 4, 2009 – 2:50 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in film, gay marriage | Tagged , , , , | Comments (19)

Marry Me, Ms P — But Civilly

A little late –my brain turns to plum pudding during the festering season — I’d like to flag up a section on gay marriage from the stand-up intellectual Camille Paglia’s December column on Salon.com. Mostly of course because it mentions me in a flattering fashion. (If you find mutual love-fests a little queasy, you may …

January 20, 2009 – 4:34 pm | By Mark Simpson | Posted in article, commentary, gay marriage | Tagged , , , , | Comments (6)