Rancid homophobia in blog run by the Prime Minister’s Office

Andrew Borg Cardona has raised a very important point beneath Mark Anthony Falzon’s column in The Sunday Times. It is reproduced below.

I had meant to write about it myself, but he beat me to it. One of the most obvious things about the posts and comments on the website run by the Prime Minister’s state-paid aide and travelling companion is how homophobic they are.

They are homophobic to a degree that you would expect among the worst sort of far-right trailer trash rednecks, or very backward Maltese villagers 40 years ago. They are toxic, revolting and reveal the worst sort of contempt for gay men – and significantly, it is only men.

Back in the general election campaign, I had written that the Labour Party’s much-vaunted progressive and liberal support for ‘gay rights’ was false and opportunistic, because beneath the thin glaze, the simmering, fetid mass remained, and still remains, of people who think of gay men as ‘pufti’.

Some weeks ago, The Sunday Times columnist Petra Caruana Dingli wrote about the vicious misogyny manifested in the website run out of the Prime Minister’s Office, by his aide Bedingfield. The two – misogyny and homophobia – are interlinked and invariably, where you find one you will also find the other. They are the sentiments of the far right and the backward Mediterranean village, and you will generally find a third factor linked in with them: xenophobia.