Patrick Gale: ‘I turned my great-grandfather gay’ | Fictn | The Guardian

Contents:

• TOM HOLLAND’S GAY SEX SCENE SETS SOCIAL MEDIA ALIGHT AFTER THE ACTOR SAID PLAYG THE ROLE ‘BROKE HIM’
• HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: ANTI-GAY LAWS PROMOTE VLENCE, DISCRIMATN ST. VCENT
• THE GAY FATHER I NEVER KNEW
• SCED BY MY SISTER'S BOYIEND PART 1: A GAY TABOO EROTI STORY
• PATRICK GALE: ‘I TURNED MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER GAY’
• THE FIRST GAY PUB I DARED SET FOOT NOW HAS A RABOW PLAQUE. HERE’S WHY THAT MATTERS
• MALAYSIA CUTS SHORT MIC FT AFTER BRISH BAND SLAMS ANTI-GAY LAWS, SGER KISS MALE BANDMATE

TOM HOLLAND’S GAY SEX SCENE SETS SOCIAL MEDIA ALIGHT AFTER THE ACTOR SAID PLAYG THE ROLE ‘BROKE HIM’

‘Tom Holland gay sex ma me google The Crowd Room real quick, ’ another trigued viewer shared. ‘Oh no I got my parents to The Crowd Room and I’ve jt learned that one of my theori is rrect and we will ed be seeg Tom Holland a gay sex scene.

Newspapers, along wh Gay Byrne’s rad show, reported ctuo abe, which gradually me to feature more promently the media.

Vcent to overturn anti-gay laws om the lonial era that have led to a recent wave of vlence and genr discrimatn on the small Caribbean island.

HUMAN RIGHTS WATCH: ANTI-GAY LAWS PROMOTE VLENCE, DISCRIMATN ST. VCENT

Homosexualy ntu to be crimalized the former Brish lony after many hundreds of years, leavg LGBTQ dividuals wh ltle if any legal protectns while vlent crim were beg mted wh impuny, the report said.

Standg crimal s on the island put nsensual gay sex the same tegory as crim like rape, ct, and sexual asslt, although there have been no recent nvictns unr the law. Gay people have been targeted by fay members, neighbors, -workers, classmat and teachers -- as well as police officers, the report said.

THE GAY FATHER I NEVER KNEW

In many of the episos, police allegedly refed to offer assistance, and some s beme openly discrimatory toward gay victims.

Gay workers were also facg job discrimatn a natn already bet by high unemployment. Many of the terviewe said job hirgs and firgs were beg largely termed by sexual orientatn, while other gay people lucky to have jobs faced sexual harassment the workplace.

"The crimalizatn of gay sex giv tac state sanctn to the discrimatn and vlence that LGBT people experience their daily liv and pels many to look abroad to live eely and fulfill their dreams, " said Cristian González Cabrera, gay rights rearcher at Human Rights Watch. Six other Wtern natns -- cludg Domi, Grenada, Guyana, Jamai, and Sat Lucia -- ntue to crimalize gay sex, wh penalti as weighty as a prison for "gross cency wh another person of the same sex. I also knew that my dad mt be gay—bee, well, of urse.

SCED BY MY SISTER'S BOYIEND PART 1: A GAY TABOO EROTI STORY

While I’d never met an out gay man, I kd of knew what they were supposed to be like om movi and TV, and Dad f the mold: He loved to ok; he cleaned obssively; he kept the Internatnal Male talog around, bee, he said, “I like the cloth. “You know, ” I said to Dad, “I asked Mom once if you were gay. “Gay?

“I’m not gay. ” she’d said our kchen—after a long nversatn she’d had wh an openly gay iend om llege, Pat, who had, apparently, been a nfidant of Dad’s. Years later Mom told me that, acrdg to Pat, Dad had been active Lexgton and Louisville’s gay club scene.

) But to actually let me —to s on that blue blanket, look me the eye and tell me he was gay—was somethg he uldn’t do. “I asked Mom once if you were gay, ” I would have said. Gay urg.

PATRICK GALE: ‘I TURNED MY GREAT-GRANDFATHER GAY’

A horny young gay guy like would have never gused! This is a gay taboo erotic story featurg mm sex, explic language and mature ntent. And wonrg how I would have ped wh beg obliged to marry and have children or wh beg propelled to a harsh, isolated and almost exclively mascule environment, was perhaps evable that I should have turned my great-grandfather of urse he uldn’t be gay.

I now repeatedly tch myself lookg at Harry’s photograph and drawg spur fort om the thought of havg a gay anctor who found te, if secret, love at last on a prairie farmstead. Frankly, I’d have served a prison jt for him to hold my hand, like he did his off-whe Vxhall Nova on the drive there, breakg only to change, he took me for strawberry cir the Gloucter, a pub at the park’s edge, takg my tremblg hand his and reassurg me: “It’s actually a gay bar. Gay pubs are far more than bars; they’re refug.

THE FIRST GAY PUB I DARED SET FOOT NOW HAS A RABOW PLAQUE. HERE’S WHY THAT MATTERS

On Sunday, the first a new seri of rabow plaqu will be stalled at the Gloucter – now the Greenwich Tavern – cementg s place gay home the workg-class Medway area of Kent, where we met when he sold me a phone cred rd at the lol petrol statn, “queers” like were wily perceived as predatory, perverted, spic or simply scum.

”After the strawberry cir, served by a man a tight whe vt – the only other gay man I’d seen real life – the squiggly summer sunlight ma a strobe effect through the park’s tre.

The first time I saw wh him, when I was 18, I realised he had echoed the love story of the two protagonists, who also had their first kiss the twilight of Greenwich Park’s tre, and their first experience of a gay pub at the Gloucter. The explanatn for his obssn is now clear: there was such a pcy of same-sex love stori that this was the first time many young people had seen a same-sex kiss, or peeked si an actual gay bar after dark. The project remds people “that we have always been here, good tim and bad, ” David Robson of the London LGBT+ Foms’ Network said when the plaqu were film and my own story were workg-class gay love: not dandyish and sheltered by the polse of privilege, but the btal realy of beg perceived a non-mascule boy.

MALAYSIA CUTS SHORT MIC FT AFTER BRISH BAND SLAMS ANTI-GAY LAWS, SGER KISS MALE BANDMATE

It was a powerful and rarely told tersectn – and one that, even more rarely, ends rather happily, wh a betiful scene of fiance and acceptance played to a Mama Cass waltz on the sk I disvered that I wasn’t the only wi-eyed baby gay my boyiend had been chasg through those ancient chtnuts that summer. For me, the plaque honours that private moment as well as the shared history of the LGBTQ+ ’s the msage I’d impart to anyone who thks such symbols are meangls, as the unique social history of the UK’s gay bars is endangered by gentrifitn, hook-up apps, the st of livg crisis and even assiatn. Like many workg-class, closeted gay boys, I’d hi unr the glovebox of my boyiend’s Nova when we drove back om the park, lt anyone saw.

It whispered to ckney-accented gay boys like me: there are others like you. They know we’re gay, and we live a state where same-sex marriage is legal, so we’re gettg prsure to settle down. I adm this is my first letter about homosexual, ctuo tws, but I’m gog to take you at your word that you two are happy and that I should supprs the imag that me to md of two sets of brothers who lived together and me to unseemly ends: the pack-rat Collyer brothers and the tw gynelogist Marc brothers.

Homosexual ct.