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WORLD PRIDE 2012 : LONDON As the English capital’s main annual gay fest climaxes (3 July 2010), Pride London chair Paul Birrell explains what hosting World Pride could do for the city in 2012. Whilst you can scarce avoid the news that the Olympics are in town in 2012, you may not yet have quite heard that - as well as it being the queen’s diamond jubilee year - Pride London will be hosting WorldPride 2012. {...more...} |
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GET UP ‘N OUT 3! From symphony to salsa, Adrian Gillan suggests another batch of whacky gay social, cultural or sporting clubs to sign up for this summer! LONDON GAY SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA Founded in 1996, the London Gay Symphony Orchestra is the UK’s only LGBT orchestra and one of only a handful in the world. The LGSO was formed as a hub for the large number of gay and lesbian musicians who want to combine their musical and social lives; and prides itself on being run “by its members, for its members”. It plays a wide range of music, from baroque to contemporary. Its patrons include Clare Summerskill, Amy Lamé, Sandi Toksvig, Rt. Hon. Lord Smith of Finsbury, Paul Gambaccini and Ned Sherrin. Artists and groups it has performed with include Jimmy Somerville, Simon Callow, Rosalind Plowright and The Pink Singers. And the LGSO likes to stress it’s straight-friendly too! So if you are a musician, composer or concert-goer; if you have music, money, or any relevant useful skills; or even if you’d like to hire the orchestra for a special occasion - the LGSO would love to hear from you. It welcomes both playing and non-playing members and is always on the hunt for volunteers. {...more...} |
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GET UP ‘N OUT 2! From wrestling to star trek, Adrian Gillan suggests yet more whacky gay social and sports clubs to sign up for this Spring! GAY GORDONS The Gay Gordons is London's LGBT Scottish country dance club. Formed in 2005, it meets twice weekly in London for a class; and several times a year for special club dances; plus throws wider geilidhs and even larger events as often as possible. Scottish country dancing is very sociable and more experienced members are encouraged to partner newcomers, with everyone changing partners for each new dance. The group welcomes anyone and is proudly straight-friendly, merely asking that attendees are happy to dance with either men or women, and that long faces are left at the door. The club runs along cooperative lines, actively encouraging all members to get involved as much as they can or want to, whether that be by simply attending the dance or helping organise outside events and socials. As well as traditional dances, members also regularly create their own - such as “Jimmy's Fancy” and “James' Jig”. Bring along soft-soled shoes. Kilts: optional {...more...} |
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GET UP ‘N OUT! From walking and birding to camping and sailing, Adrian Gillan highlights a few gay outdoor social and sports clubs to sign up for this Spring! GAY SUNDAY WALKING GROUP Call it walking, hiking or rambling: the Gay Sunday Walking group does it in and around London and the Home Counties twice a month - and loves it! One of the walks is always an all-day affair, spanning 8 to 15 miles, starting and finishing at a railway station within an hour's travel from a London terminus, and includes a pub lunch. The other is always a half-day jaunt, covering 3 to 6 miles – also normally involving a pub! Some years there are also weeks or weekends away, even overseas - like recently to Majorca. Membership costs just £5 a year and is open to all gay men and lesbians - and their friends. There are currently around 160 members, mostly gay men; and between 15 and 40 people tend to join any given walk – which is planned and overseen by a volunteer walk leader. The group started in 1972, formally a social club within the Campaign for Homosexual Equality, and is now affiliated to the Ramblers' Association. Members' ideas for new walks and walking activities are always welcomed; as are new members, and their guests. {...more...} |
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SPRING AWAKENING! GMFA’s Matthew Hodson gives his top ten tips for a refreshingly healthy overall overhaul this Spring. Dig this detox! 1. Learn from the past but don't live in it 2. Find out your HIV status If you don't already know, get tested. Learning that you're HIV positive isn't easy but you’re likely to live longer. And knowing your status means that you’re more able to look after your own health and the health of your partners. {...more...} |
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LGBT HISTORY MONTH February 2010 is the UK’s 6th LGBT History Month – aiming to drag an all too oft oppressed and airbrushed queer past out of the closet, as a positive catalyst for social change! Month brainchild, Schools Out!’s Sue Sanders, gives her Top Ten Tips on how we can all get involved. Schools, colleges, unis, workplaces, councils, churches, community centres, youth clubs, museums, libraries and theatre groups - nay every individual and organization, LGBT or otherwise - can do something to promote knowledge of LGBT achievement, past and present. Here are just a few suggestions: |
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ARE YOU LOSING CONTROL Prone to excess? Terrence Higgins Trust’s Gordon Mundie - on how to start claiming back control of one’s drug or alcohol intake; and how a series of workshops might just help. At THT, we regularly see men concerned about their drink or drug use. For some reason they feel that they have lost control. Alcohol, ketamine, cannabis and cocaine seem to be most commonly used, but we also see men in our drug and alcohol group who feel they have problems with Crystal Meth and GHB. |
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STOP SMOKING GMFA’s Matthew Hodson gives his Top 10 Tips on how to quit cigarettes. Gay men are more likely to start smoking earlier, and to carry on smoking for longer, than our heterosexual brothers. About 40% of gay men smoke, compared to 23% of heterosexual guys. Most people who smoke want to stop, but quitting can be tough, so here are some tips to help you stub out that bad habit for good. {...more...} |
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A MAN'S WORLD? Is our male-dominated gay community chauvenist? Adrian Gillan asks leading lesbians about the rise of the girl bar and gender dynamics out on the scene. |
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“T” IS NOT FOR TOKENISM” In this, the 40th Anniversary summer of the Stonewall Riots, TransLondon co-founder, Christina Alley, argues that trans folk are a vital part of the LGBTQ community. Forty years ago, this summer, police raided the Stonewall Inn in New York’s Greenwich Village – in order to arrest the customers, just for being gay. While such raids and arrests were not unusual, what was important and unusual about this raid was that – on this occasion – the customers decided to fight back. They had finally had enough of being arrested, beaten and, in some cases, even raped, by police. {...more...} |
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SAFE PASSAGE? With many thousands of LGBT travellers attending Pride events and holidaying abroad this summer, Circa heeds timely advice from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) on how best to stay safe whilst straddling the gay globe. “Every year, numerous LGBT Brits travel to global Pride events, or more generally abroad,” says Steve Jewitt-Fleet from the UK’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), which boasts its own highly active internal LGBT staff support group; and was one of the first such government departments in the world to actively address the concerns of LGBT travellers - having waged campaigns as far back as 2002 to help assure all queer voyagers that they’d get effective practical help and advice should they encounter problems overseas. {...more...} |
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THE QUEER VOLUNTEER Fancy putting something back into a community you at least occasionally get something from? Whether to help others, make new friends, enhance a CV or simply get a “warm glow”, Adrian Gillan highlights a need; and gives his top volunteering tips! Headlines of middle class equality, commercial scene hedonism and “Pink Pound” affluence distract from the realities that many LGBT individuals face.Yet,social disadvantages exist as much within the “gay bubble” as they do for society in general, and being LGBT often attracts additional discrimination . {...more...} |
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LOOKING FOR LOVE Lonesome this Valentine’s? Disillusioned by bar and scene? Beating Soho’s streets, solo, gazing in at all the queer candlelit couples? Try our alternative Top 10 Tips for finding long-term love… |
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THE QUEER YEAR (2008) Adrian Gillan looks back upon some of the key events of 2008 in the gay UK.... • JANUARY - Sir Ian McKellen is made a Companion of Honour in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours List. Former Stonewall and Women and Equality Unit chief, Angela Mason, is upgraded from OBE to CBE; and Kylie Minogue gets an OBE. |
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I’M GAY? YOU’RE SUED! There should be a law against people who take offence and sue at being called “gay” – regardless of their actual orientation; and especially if they’ve made, and continue to make, a highly lucrative living from flaunting other selected aspects of their “private lives”. {...more...} |
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GAY GENES CAN’T STOP GAY HATE Scarce a week goes by without the great – allegedly yet deceptively morally crucial - “gay gene” debate flaring up, prompted by anything from queer goings on amongst penguins at New York zoo, to “against nature” jibes lobbed by right-wing fascists or religious thugs. {...more...} |
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CAMP ATTACK DO CAMP GAYS HOLD US BACK? Love the boots dolly, they’re just so so sweetie! Gay Camp: live and let live or time to move on? First things first: there’s no logical - or biological - connection between someone’s sexuality and their general demeanour and behaviour. Such things are social constructs - part conditioned, part chosen. {...more...} |
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HAIL MARY, FULL OF STEROIDS “Sure,” replied Bud to Buddy, both prowling to the padded altar of the squat-press frame. Speechless in his sleeveless smock, Bud unfurled the oxen slab of muscle once a back onto the heaving bench. Speechless, he readied his push with panting breath and swelling veins in brow and arse, then heaved with buttock-clenching vim. The last squat-pressing gasp passed into moan then grunt, as skin turned red and ‘rhoids throbbed under Buddy’s tender gaze. {...more...} |
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REDS IN BED Would you tarry with young Prince Harry? From ginger minge to strawberry blonde, red-head Adrian Gillan on a crimson fetish, gay taunts and jibes and why reds now have cred, not just in bed.{...more...} |
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ES-SEX BOYS ears of jokes have only put the sex back into Essex claims local lush Adrian Gillan, returning to his out-grown peroxide roots. How do Essex boys turn the light off after sex? They shut the car door. What makes Dagenham Dave’s eyes light up? A touch shone in his ear. {...more...} |
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CLOSET CASE ? When does privacy become a cop out and how closet are YOU? HBeing a “closet” is such a modern luxury. Before 1967 in the UK - and, as I type, in many parts of the world - you would scarce call a guy a closet for hiding what might destroy his very life and livelihood and put him in jail or worse. {...more...} |
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BISEXUALITY: TWENTY MYTHS EXPLODED When does privacy become a cop out and how closet are YOU? Give me an ‘L’, give me a ‘G’, give me a ‘B’: Adrian Gillan dissects the bi scene and biphobia. What are gays so scared of? Even organisations like Stonewall make no claim to represent transgender people, many of whom themselves resist falling under any “LGBT” banner anyway. However, all of us seem at least to pay some lip service - however ignorant, prejudiced, hostile or downright bilious - to the blessed “B”. {...more...} |
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MAD ABOUT THE BOY NEXT DOOR Celebrity schmebrity! Forget Will Young or Justin ‘Trouser-Snake’: It’s all happening next door says Adrian Gillan, attacking the gay world’s obsession with stardom whilst out for a neighbourly knock. {...more...} |
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WANTED: DEAD OR ALIVE Lesbians, Gay men, Bisexuals and Transgender (LGBT) people are: black, white, all races and mixed heritages; daughters, sons, aunts, mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers and uncles; friends, colleagues, employers, workers, unwaged and customers; students and teachers; differently-abled; Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, Muslim, Christian, gentile, of all religions and none; old and young; women and men; from every political slant; famous and not famous; living and dead. {...more...} |
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ANYONE FOR T? Don’t drop the T from the LGB pleads Circa’s own boy bender, Adrian Gillan. To tag on the T or not to tag on the T to the LGB, that is the question? And a pretty controversial one at that, with some of the UK’s most prominent “gay rights groups” quietly ditching the T - doubtless to help lube the passage of their hard-enough-as-is fight for rights! {...more...} |
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FOREIGN BODIES Foreigners as fetish: We love bonking blokes abroad claims rampant rambler Adrian Gillan. Gay boys travel for it, and that’s official: half of us take at least three breaks abroad each year according to recent surveys – more than our straight fellows. And whether beach boy or city boy, we know what packages we’re really after, taking our own horny stereotypic psychological baggage along with us. {...more...} |
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FLY AWAY GAY: QUEER EXPATS From the Cape to the Keys: Adrian Gillan’s Top Ten Tips for wannabe gay ex-pats who’ve had enough of UK life! The UK government estimates 13 million British nationals now live oversees. A disproportionately high number of these expats are likely to be gay – seeking out new lives, often in warmer, equally or more gay-friendly climes, perhaps with fewer family ties to keep them home. Some move with folks when young; some study or work abroad and stay; others cling to Blighty - until they retire. {...more...} |
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SO CUTE IT HURTS It isn’t easy being gorgeous. Eyed up constantly, who can you trust and how can you ever satisfy their expectations? Adrian Gillan meets some pretty sad stunners. If we could be gorgeous - but just for one day! Sure, it’s great enhancing one’s own moderately fine features for a Saturday night out, but do we fully appreciate how utterly disabling it is to be naturally dazzling? {...more...} |
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NO SEX PLEASE, WE ARE GAY Sex, sex, sex: has the whole world gone bonking? Adrian Gillan meets the silent, simmering gays who - for various reasons - couldn’t give a f***. Some are born not wanting it, some end up not getting it, and some just have a lack of sex thrust upon them! Some chose it, some don’t. Some pleasure themselves, some won’t. Some try it first, some never do. Some are happy, some are not. {...more...} |
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ARE YOU A SEX ADDICT? Massive phone bills? Frequent parks in the pouring rain? When is wanting lots of sex a problem? Adrian Gillan meets cheery slapper Tom and recovering addict Pete.
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THE QUEER YEAR Adrian Gillan looks back on the year that was, asking prominent queers what they made of it all. Peter Tatchell (human rights campaigner - www.petertatchell.net; www.tatchellrightsfund.org) Highs of ‘07: Stopping the deportation from Britain of the Iranian lesbian refugee, Pegah Emambakhsh, which probably saved her from imprisonment, torture and possible execution. {...more...} |
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TOP TEN HISTORIC MALE COUPLES OF ALL TIME From the sublime and glamorous to the comic and tragic: Adrian Gillan counts down the Top Ten Famous Historic Gay Male Couples of All Time… 1. Alexander the Great (general 356-323BC) & Hephaistion (confidant and lover 356-323BC) – Alexander had to be pulled off his dead lover’s corpse; shaved his head; and threw a mega funeral! {...more...} |
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NEW CLASS OF “POPPERS” COULD CAUSE CANCER TOO Lack of research means a new class of “poppers” - inhalant nitrites, marketed as “room aromas” since UK sale for explicit human consumption is illegal - may be just as dangerous as its predecessor, banned last year for being carcinogenic, concede health campaigners. This is the surprise fall-out from an in-depth report compiled by Terrence Higgins Trust that sought primarily to alert gay men to the hiked risk of contracting HIV if using “high”-inducing poppers whilst having sex without a condom: since the drug can lower inhibitions – potentially resulting in longer, rougher sex – and since it increases blood flow inside the rectum. {...more...} |
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PLAY GAY AND SAFE Adrian Gillan gives his top tips for how to keep yourself safe whilst out partying; and how to report an incident, should things go awry.
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PERVERSION ALL-PERVADING Surely, argues Adrian Gillan, all but the most terrible sex involves fetish: an erotic fixation on clothing, physique, physical appearance, anatomy, activity, type or “tribe”. Fetish is surprisingly mainstream; perversion all-pervading; and naughtiness the norm. It’s debatable whether any but the most mechanical sexual activity is possible without its fair share of fetish. And even mechanical sex can be elevated to the truly erotic, if fetishised. {...more...} |
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AT HIS FEET Have we got shoes for you! Adrian Gillan bares his sole with gay foot fetishists.”. |
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TALKING DIRTY Lick my love pump! We can all be Bards in our own bedrooms, claims Adrian Gillan. If the English language is one of our greatest assets then why - in bed - are we a nation of frigid mutes? Why do we underestimate and neglect the latent power of words to conjure Eros? I’m not suggesting a dictionary and elocution lessons - although many’s the climax spoiled by my having to ask some bad boy mumbler, “Sorry, what did you say?” at his point of no return. {...more...} |
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GAY GHOSTS Holy ghoulies! As Halloween (31 Oct) looms, Adrian Gillan unearths some homo-hauntings… |
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GAY’S THE WORD Circa relates the iconic London LGBT bookshop’s history, significance and continued struggle for survival in its 30th year. |
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SURVIVING THE SEASON From that drunken office party to folks meeting the new boyfriend: London Lesbian & Gay Switchboard (www.llgs.org.uk) advise Circa on how to best survive an LGBT Christmas. Christmas isn’t always all it’s “crackered” up to be. As the shops start their run-up earlier and earlier, expectations climb higher and higher. Even before December 25th, many people have simply had enough – not least if they don’t actually celebrate Christmas! For many LGBT people, the so-called season of goodwill brings a whole range of additional stresses and strains. {...more...} |
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