Lee Alexander McQueen

Lee Alexander McQueen, aged only 40 and found dead by his own hand on the eve of his idolized mother’s funeral, was a gay fashion designer of undisputed genius. He combined Savile Row craftsmanship with rare imaginative style, from rippling visions of Kate Moss to the intersexual video posturings of Lady Gaga. His last act inevitably stirs memories of the shooting of Gianni Versace in 1997. Self-described as the “pink sheep” of his Lewisham-born family, McQueen was always confidently out and gay, as reflected in his bizarre and spectacular shows. It is significant though that he once compared his creations to armour, giving protection to the wearer, hinting at an inner vulnerability which had its own unerring cut and motif. Read the rest of this entry »

Derek Jarman's garden at Dungeness

Best known as a gay activist, writer, artist and filmmaker, Derek Jarman’s physical end in 1994 followed an heroic and well-documented struggle with AIDS. A last act was to make a film whose completely blue screen and soundtrack commentary was a brave testament to having gone blind. He lies over Romney Marsh in one of England’s most beautiful sheep-frequented chuchyards, in the towering presence of a two thousand year-old yew tree.

Derek Jarman

Jarman was a gay renaissance man, cheekily canonised by the Sisters Of Perpetual Indulgence in a shoreline ceremony before his clapboard cottage and lovingly created sculpture garden, where he managed to grow a profusion of bright flowers and herbs in the nuclear terrain of Dungeness. His journals similarly captured the vibrancy of gay life and gay politics against the backdrop of a Thatcherite Britain.

The rebel in Jarman was closely shadowed by a late 1940s, early 1950s upbringing, travelling to rather grand places as the career of his RAF father Lance dictated. This ambivalence showed itself in Jarman’s appetite for lying across Charing Cross Road protesting with Jimmy Somerville with members of Outrage!, his attraction to cruising and all the liberating elements of the thriving London scene, and a private reticence at betraying the values of his parents’ privileged world. In paint, celluloid and intimate writings Jarman wrestled with his vision of a new gay Jerusalem.

It was Jarman who took the homoerotic story of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian, a young man pierced with arrows, featured in such gay literature as Yukio Mishima’s Confessions Of A Mask, to make the film Sebastiane in 1976. Not only was the dialogue in Latin, giving it a certain stylistic campness, but as a way of looking positively at gay sex, it was a pioneering British production. Read the rest of this entry »

LGBT a dirty word for Black History Month?

October is Black History Month, and human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has criticised the Black History Month organisers for not celebrating the sexuality of black heroes such as Malcolm X.

Malcolm X

Speaking in the Guardian Tatchell expresses concern that the Black History Month website fails to identify the majority of past black figures who are LGBT, including Malcolm X who Tatchell has identified as bisexual. Tatchell states

“Perhaps it is unintentional but Black History Month sometimes feels like Straight Black History Month. Famous black LGBT people are not acknowledged and celebrated. Either their contribution to black history and culture is ignored or their sexuality is air-brushed out of their biographies.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Mothership Blog columnist John Hartley talks about Stephen Gately’s remarkable life and sad death

Stephen Gately

Once again, as a result of ever speedier communication, the world reels from the untimely death of a celebrity. As James Dean for his generation, and more recently Princess Diana for ours, Gately’s exit reminds us of the brevity of life and our own mortality, with the sad spectacle of someone good-looking and youthful, with the world at their feet, being torn rudely from life.

What makes it more grotesque in this case is that Stephen was found by a handsome Bulgarian guy who had apparently spent the night with Gately’s civil partner, cold and dead “in a preying mantis position” by his sofa, in a sunbathed luxury island villa that many gay men would consider a blissful dream.

Much will be written on the undoubted talent of the former Boyzone star who had a successful solo career, and then performed creditably on the West End stage. Moreover, his courage in coming out (like Will Young) and keeping his fanbase intact, secured him an affectionate place in gay history. Read the rest of this entry »

RIP Stephen Gately

Questions and answers are flying around after Stephen Gately’s death.

Here’s what we know:

Stephen Gately was only 33, in the prime of his life, and as far as we’re aware, in good health.

It is far from normal for a fit 33 year old man to die sleeping on the sofa.

The night before he and his civil partner Andy Cowles had gone to Palma’s Black Cat gay club and had met a bulgarian guy there.  The bulgarian guy (Georgi Dochev) had returned with them to their apartment.

Now the plot thickens.

Georgi and Cowles retired to the bedroom together, while Gately remained on the sofa.  The following day, at 1pm, Dochev left the bedroom and discovered Gately’s dead body on the sofa, and according to him, in a weird ‘praying mantis’ position. Read the rest of this entry »