Do you really want to hurt me?

or, Are gay people the new asylum seekers?

You know how the school bully always used to pick on the easy targets - the fat kid, the ginger kid, the kid with coke-bottle glasses, the gay kid. I think the screamsheets have the same kind of attitude: weed out the easy targets and hit them hard. Bullies have a sixth sense to detect the people they go for. In the case of our beloved daily papers, it's minorities - asylum seekers, Muslims, that kind of easily pigeonholeable foreign type who can be simply dismissed as spongeing shirkers or murderous savages. But what I've noticed recently is a bit more of the old-fashioned homophobia and hatred of gay people, not just from the usual tiresome suspects like Littlebrain but also a lot more in the mainstream.

In the comments to my article the other day about Ally Ross's shamefully pisspoor attack on John Barrowman you'll see the point made that homophobia seems if anything to be becoming more acceptable nowadays. Little Britain, at least, had the defence of having one openly gay man as the key talent. But Horne and Corden? Al Murray's pink-clad gay Nazi (with which, unfunnily enough, John Barrowman appeared in one episode, camping it up to 11)? Is it all good clean fun that shows we can laugh about gayness in a non-threatening way but without having to handle the subject with PC kid gloves? Or is it just a load of cheap playground shit that even Dick Emery would balk at? Is it post-ironic post-PC self-referential intellectualism? Or is it a load of tedious unfunny wank? (On a similar theme, but with regards to race and not sexuality, have a look at Omid Djalili's show on Monday, which is still available on the iPlayer. Shit. Utter shit. "You can't call me racist because I'm saying it about white people" - and I can't call you funny either, you useless fuck.)

I say all this as an introduction to this shameful shower of shit in today's Sun, which makes it clear that if you see a gay man RUN AWAY BECAUSE HE MIGHT RAPE YOU!

JAILED Jack Tweed turned tail and ran from the showers in prison — after THREE encounters with naked gay star Boy George.

He turned his 'tail' - do you see?! Because 'naked gay star' Boy George might have bummed him, mightn't he? Eh? Eh?

A pal said: “Jack isn’t exactly the most comfortable person when it comes to getting attention from other men. As soon as he saw Boy George was standing there naked having a wash he was gobsmacked.

Do you mind if I fix that for you?

I made up: “Jack isn’t exactly the most comfortable person when it comes to getting attention from other men. As soon as he saw Boy George was standing there naked having a wash he was gobsmacked.

There, that's a bit better, isn't it. The Sun, given its fondness for 'lags' (but not paedos!) and presence of 'lovelies' on page 3 is, I'd imagine, the paper of choice for those who've been banged up for whatever reason. Now, thankfully I don't know what prison showers are like but I'm guessing they're not entirely pleasant, whether minor celebrities are in them or not - but I do reckon it's a pretty fair bet to say that Jack Tweed running away from a naked Boy George is a load of cock-and-balls. Yet it gets printed, because it's the same old comical stereotype, the same old rubbish, the same old easy targets.

It's not just the Super Soaraway, either. Angry Mob today looks at how the Daily Mail has been ramping up the gay agenda:

It is an idea fomented by - amongst others - Richard Littlejohn; who sees teaching diversity in schools as a mission to 'peddle' or 'force-feed' 'gay propaganda' to children. So, in the world of the Daily Mail the very act of reaching for equality is seen as an act of aggression - in simple terms the gay agenda is not seeking equality but is actually intent on banishing heterosexuality and converting us all to homosexuality.
This article, like many others, pitches a god-fearing Christian teacher against an evil homosexual preaching 'diversity' and 'tolerance'. The headline, naturally, is designed to raise the blood pressure of any Daily Mail reader: 'What makes you think it's natural to be heterosexual?': Christian teacher suspended over gay rights promotion row.

As Johann Hari pointed out a while ago, there is some evidence that those who are the most homophobic are more likely to be suppressing their own gay feelings. There may well be some truth in that, but I still think the overriding factor is the mentality of the school bully. Our tabloids like to pick out the easy targets, the unorthodox, the slightly different, the 'not like us' and think their readers will cheer them to the rafters if they attack them. And many will. But what perhaps they forget is that they are alienating thousands of potential readers by attacking people because of their race, belief or sexuality. That's partly why people aren't buying newspapers any more - they have a choice of news that doesn't have to come attached to hatred, and they're grabbing it with both hands. And if those papers do die out because of their agendas, then all I can say is good riddance.