No wonder the older generation stayed in the closet

In December 1999, a man was found murdered in circumstances which indicated that sex might have been involved (and here I draw a discreet veil over the recent posturing of a man called Anthony Zammit, about which dramatic event nothing has been heard since). The newspapers reported that the dead man was homosexual. They did not do so capriciously, but because this was a key piece of information in the murder report.

The victim’s brother, understandably traumatised by the murder, was particularly aggrieved by the description of the dead man as homosexual. He protested that his brother wasn’t homosexual at all, and then sued three newspapers for libel. I asked myself at the time: did he know his brother was homosexual but felt shame at having this ‘disgraceful’ fact publicised? Or was he genuinely kept in the dark about his brother’s sexuality?

Either way, it helped me understand just how difficult it was – impossible even – for men of an older generation to leave the closet, how they would have to hide their natures even from themselves and make do with a little cottaging when they couldn’t stand it any more. The dead man’s own brother thought it so shameful that he felt obliged to sue for libel to clear the family name from all smears of homosexuality.

I just wish to make one point about the story in The Times: to describe somebody as ‘a known homosexual’ is not the same thing as saying ‘Formosa, who was homosexual’. ‘A known’ is invariably followed by a pejorative term or a negative description, as in ‘a known criminal’ or ‘a known paedophile’. So while describing somebody as ‘a known homosexual’ is not libellous if he really is homosexual, the use of the phrase gives considerable insight into how the writer of the piece views homosexuals.

The Times, Tuesday, 30th December 2008 – 15:02CET

Article in The Times “responsible”, court rules

An article in The Times reporting on a murder in December 1999 was this morning found by an appeals court to have been responsible and within the limits of responsible journalism.

Three appeals had been filed by Ivan Formosa against judgments which had found that three local newspapers, including The Times, had not published libellous material. Mr Formosa had complained of the manner in which the newspapers had reported police investigations into his brother’s murder in Qawra in December 1999.

Mr Formosa had claimed that the articles, which described his brother as a known homosexual, were untrue and libellous as they tarnished his brother’s reputation. The first court of criminal jurisdiction had concluded that the articles could not be deemed libellous. On appeal, Mr Formosa claimed that he felt aggrieved by that part of the first court’s judgment which had found that the simple fact that a newspaper proclaimed a person to be a homosexual was not in itself libellous.

The Court of Criminal Appeal found that none of the three articles had been written in a sensationalist manner. All had reported how the body of Mr Formosa’s brother had been found and the line of investigation the police were pursuing.