King B-Fine fine with homosexuality

Towards the end of last year, King B-Fine's Jah No Dead generated a rage-whorl in the Australian queer community. The run-out of the track called for killing of chi-chi men; when cornered, B-Fine claimed that he was using the term to mean bad people generally, and not gay men:

“Greetings in the name of Jah Rastafari, I would like to make myself clear; in this new video clip, at the end of the video I sing burn down (Chi Chi Man) and I want to make myself clear in that what I mean is to burn down all the bad people, (child molesters, gangsters, rapist, people who destroy the life of another), please everyone am sorry if what you understand was wrong, but I have nothing against same sex, please don’t get me wrong. I believe that everyone is equal. One love.”

Not everyone was convinced by this - it seemed as unlikely as any of Morrissey's desperate attempts to explain how he was being misunderstood, but since then Fine has appeared pretty genuine in his attempts to prove that, even if he meant killing gays at the time, he's over that now:



He's convinced Peter Tatchell that his recanting is genuine. And if you can convice Peter Tatchell, you're either lying incredibly well or genuine.

Riot Said Fred: Moscow gay march attacked

What a charming place Moscow is these days: Mayor Yuri Luzhkov suggested that gay rights marches are "satanic acts" and banned plans for one in the city; when a group of Russian gays and international sympathisers attempted to protest this decision, gangs of violent thugs attacked them.

And the police? They arrested the targets, not the criminals.

Amongst those injured was Richard Fairbrass, who was punched in the face while talking to Reuters (Right Said Fred were in town to play a gig):

Richard Fairbrass, a gay singer with the British pop group Right Said Fred, was punched in the face and kicked by anti-gay activists while speaking to Reuters in an interview.

"We understand this is a gay event and so we came down here today," Fairbrass said before being hit. Blood dripped from his face after the attack.

Tatu had made an appearance at the start of the rally, but appear to have been away from the trouble; Peter Tatchell was punched in the face and dragged away by two policemen.

The trouble seems to have started from a nasty mixture of nationalists and Russian Orthodox fundamentalists who gathered to shout the usual rubbish about sodomites and disease. Interestingly, the governments of the rest of the world seem quicker to pursue Putin over the selling of possibly unlicensed mp3s than they are about this, and other, increasing abuses of human rights in the country. It seems that you're fine to send your police in to help out with a spot of queerbashing, but if you flog a few dodgy Phil Collins tracks online, then you've just gone too far.

Music of totally straight origins

Of course, most of the UK press couldn't find space amongst the 'Danni Behr has to spend a couple of minutes waiting for mob to disperse' stories to cover the nasty scenes outside the Mobo awards themselves (The Guardian being one of the few to note the disturbances.)

Now, we personally think that Tatchell is a pain in the arse - invading a Cathedral Service on that religion's holiest day isn't a political statement, it's senseless bullying - but this time, you can't really argue with his theory that homophobic tunes are making some of the listeners of that music think that it's okay to queer-bash, and we don't really think that the MOBO organisers shrugging and saying "well, we don't pick the records that win" is anything like good enough.

I know moral equivalence is the last refuge of the writer with a deadline, but if Skrewdriver did well at next year's Brit Awards, would we happily sit by and say "well, the industry voted that way, so what could they do?" For Tatchell - a man who's been punched by the best of them - to say it was the most scared he's ever been is quite something; how can the MOBOs want to celebrate and laud queerbashing?

Regardless, Peter, you're probably overstating it a bit to claim on the Outrage site that the awards were marred by anti-gay violence.
Interesting to read the report from the Jamaica Observer, which is headline "Jamaican artistes heckled by gay rights group" - a little bit 'postman wedges arse in dog's mouth', that - but then goes on to examine the reasons for the protests in a bit more depth - which is more than you'd expect The Sun to do.