Going undercover! To hunt out homophobia! As if you need hidden cameras to find bigots in the world, but that’s the route taken by ITV’s Afraid to be Gay special, with Gareth Thomas hosting.
“Filmed by a crew, onlookers appear on camera to voice their disapproval, but generally with a degree of good humour and tolerance,” says the teaser. “Then Assistant Producer Harriet Gill carries a concealed camera in her handbag. Taunts of ‘Batty boy’ and ‘Queer’ begin to fly. Everyone is alert to the possibility of violence.”
It’s like Dateline‘s “To Catch a Predator,” but with fag haters! Are the police waiting ’round the corner to pounce on these guys?
Hey, not to belittle the important practice of exposing and chronicling homophobia on both an institutional and individual level, and this is a worthwhile segment, but let’s not kid ourselves. We don’t need, as this show pretends, investigative journalists to run around taping homophobes in their natural environment. As Thomas says himself, they’re at his rugby games, heckling him from the stands. They aren’t hiding in plain sight; they are parading around in plain sight.
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Couldn´t Care Less
Gareth is hot….he should be in the Morning Goods…
The Artist
What great piece! Good for Gareth for finding a new direction in life. Prejudice. Ignorance. Bigotry. NO!!!!!! PEACELUVNBWILD!
Queerty is obsessed with Jarret Barrios. ZZZ. (John from England)
This is the thing Queerty and not sure why again you’re speaking crap but how many more Right Wingers do you NEED to argue that you don’t need EDNA? or Anti-gay bullying policies? Etc etc?
Urgh.
Why do I even bother.
Well done Gareth!
Andy
A poll said a quarter thought gays had too many legal rights. What extra rights do gays have again?
Jack Smythe
those polled thought our having a right to continue to LIVE was too much…
gareth thomas, as well as being as prime a piece of male flesh as i have seen in my 6 decades on this planet, is surprisingly well spoken. he neither sounds nor speaks as one would expect. the UK has it all over the US with primo jocks like gareth and john amaeche out and proud. too bad all our high profile gays are cowards or too mercenary to stand up for the young.
PaulMc
Queerty, do your homework.
This the Tonight Show. It pitches itself directly at a less discerning, mass audience. i.e. hidden camera gimmick, knowing full well what reactions would be, but makes for more melodramatic TV.
The polls quoted actually show increased majority tolerance and acceptance but Gareth has played up the key remaining stubborn rump of intolerance about whom he is specifically concerned (sports fans, school age kids, street yobs).
Not a great show, but a decent contribution to the UK social arena esp. sporting one.
TampaZeke
Why is it that it’s always the fug ugliest fucker in a group that thinks that no gay person could possibly restrain himself if he were to see his ugly ass naked?
That little blond boy is typical of how even the ugliest straight boy/man can convince himself that every gay man wants him.
AlwaysGay
Gareth is a stand up guy for doing this special. The reason anti-gay bigotry is everpresent is because of heterosexuals. Heterosexuals either believe heterosexuality is the “ideal” or the only legitimate sexuality. Those ideas constitute the foundations of heterosexual supremacist thought. Those thoughts go into brutal murders of gay people like Jody Debrowski and the cover ups by the heterosexual police of murders like Vernon Allmond’s as robberies and the release of heterosexual killers like Paul and Tom Ferguson. Gay people need to acknowledge the prejudice of heterosexuals which oppress us.
Yes, Gareth is a very handsome man. Look at his muscular shoulders.
LoveMoby
Great program. Wish they would do more of these in the US.
espada69
The answer is simple, those two men are deeply homophobic. duh. it’s phithetic.