![Jan-Moir-and-Stephen-Gate-001[1]](https://queerty-prodweb.s3.amazonaws.com/2009/10/Jan-Moir-and-Stephen-Gate-0011-320x192.jpg "Jan-Moir-and-Stephen-Gate-001[1]")
Here’s Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir offering her regrets for that column. Is this an apology? Or a non-apology? And do you accept?
To my horror, [the column] has been widely condemned as ‘homophobic’ and ‘hateful’. Obviously, a great deal of offence has been taken and I regret any affront caused. This was never my intention.
To be the focus of such depth of feeling has been an interesting experience, but I do not complain. After all, I am not – unlike those close to Stephen Gately – mourning for the loss of a much-loved partner, son, family member and close friend.
To them, I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress by the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.
The point of my article was to suggest that, in my honest opinion, Stephen Gately’s death raised many unanswered questions. What had really gone on?
After all, Stephen was a role model for the young and if drugs were somehow involved in his death, as news reports suggested, should that not be a matter of public interest?
We were told that Stephen died of ‘natural causes’ even before toxicology results had been released. This struck me as bizarre, given the circumstances.
Absolutely none of this had anything to do with his sexuality. If he had been a heterosexual member of a boy band, I would have written exactly the same article.
Yet despite this, many have interpreted my words as a ‘bigoted rant’ and suggested that my motive was to insinuate that Stephen died ‘because he was gay’.
Anyone who knows me will vouch that I have never held such poisonous views.
[…] Indeed, I would stress that there was nothing in my article that could not be applied to a heterosexual couple as well as to a homosexual one.
This brings me back to the bile, the fury, the inflammatory hate mail and the repeated posting of my home address on the internet.
To say it was a hysterical overreaction would be putting it mildly, though clearly much of it was an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.
However, I accept that many people – on Twitter and elsewhere – were merely expressing their own personal and heartfelt opinions or grievances. This said, I can’t help wondering: is there a compulsion today to see bigotry and social intolerance where none exists by people who are determined to be outraged? Or was it a failure of communication on my part?
DelphKC
Yeah, maybe… Her article did have a touch of “those seedy gays” in it though, you have to admit… Just a touch…
EE Keller
Only have to get to the 3rd paragraph to see this is not an apology. Sorry “IF” I offended is a non-apology apology. Sorry I offended is an apology.
Orpheus_lost
So this ugly bitch would would have said THIS if she had been writing about a straight boybander?
“Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.
Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.
Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately’s last night raise troubling questions about what happened.”
I find it difficult to believe that she would have used two examples of straight couples’ marriages ending in sad circumstances as an excuse to call hetero marriage a “myth” or to suggest that all marriages should be reconsidered.
Moir is a lying word-whore whose paper should be boycotted and protested until she is fired.
I guess that means I really don’t accept her non-apology.
Steff
So, one minute…
“…he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk… He was the Posh Spice of Boyzone, a popular but largely decorous addition.”
But now he’s a…
“talented young man”.
TikiHead
She’s feces.
Brian NJ
Brat.
Sapphocrat
I read the “apology,” and re-read the original piece, and my answer is: No. Non-apology not accepted.
Her speculation about a threesome wasn’t the problem; the problem was her wholesale indictment of SSMs: “Another real sadness about Gately’s death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.”
She completely ignores this in her “apology,” instead blaming “a hysterical overreaction” (any of you men catch that slap at _your_ masculinity?), “…much of it … an orchestrated campaign by pressure groups and those with agendas of their own.”
Oh, really, Jan? Name names. ‘Cause I sure didn’t get my marching orders from The Big Giant Gay Head.
But then, Miss Moir appears to be downright psychic, as she claims “many who complained” hadn’t even read her original column. (And you know this… how, Jan? I read every word.)
Finally, she plays victim — of a “torrent of abuse.” Oh, somebody call the wahhhhmbulance!
And then, of course, there’s the “sorry IF I have caused distress…” (classic non-apology; translated: “Gee, too bad _you’re_ so hypersensitive”), and in the same sentence attributes the negative reaction to “the insensitive timing of the column, published so close to the funeral.”
It wasn’t the timing, Jan. And I think you know that.
Overall: Big, epic FAIL.
Jack
‘…I would like to say sorry if I have caused distress…’
There’s no ‘if’ about it. 22,000 people complained, Jan. You DID cause offence. Now apologise properly.
RJ
I do agree. This apology, for me, if heartfelt and sincere, is satisfactory.
While here wording was poor, her timing inappropriate, and the validity of her opinion on the matter infinitesimal, she did issue a heart-felt apology.
Her statement re: young men do not just drop dead was invalid given her lacking medical expertise and training. Evidence suggests…. they do.
To state anything otherwise about the dead does a disservice to the deceased life and the validity of the mourning of those left behind.
I would much rather see this not address to us, but to his partner and his family.
John
If I didn’t think she was a bigot before, I KNOW she is know. What a jerk!
Emily
“I’m sorry. I’m not going to take back what I wrote, in fact, I stand by it all the more now. I guess I’m really just sorry that I may have just turfed my own career. But I expect you to accept my apology nonetheless.
Signed,
Jan Moir”
uffda
She really doesn’t get it does she? No. I think she does, she’s just trying to change what she wrote, but we have the original column as proof. Read it again; see if you believe the sincerity of this “apology.”
Me
What a cunt. I’m not going to mince words or wax eloquently. What a total cunt. Even if drugs were involved in all of the cases she mentioned, it likely has more to do with the world these celebrities inhabit rather than with whom they sleep. The same tragedies of excess befall countless celebrities – gay or straight. Her focus on only the gay ones in a ham-fisted attempt to make moral judgements and denounce gay marriage makes her a total cunt.
Brian NJ
Fundie fuck Moir wrote that Gately’s death, “strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships.” She believes that gay people are not as happy in their unions, and used a tragedy and an anecdote of why gay relationships are inferior. Bigot.
Then she uses the hurt and anger of the gay community to inflict further hurt, by calling gay people “hysterical” and stating that her column was only wrong because a family member may have read it. The purpose of her second article is not apology, but to accuse the gay community of opportunism. But she is the black cat who pounced on death as a way to advance her evil conservative christian agenda.
hardmannyc
She’s obviously only “apologizing” because the publisher of the Daily Mail is feeling the Press Commission (which got a by-far record number of compliants about the column) breathing down its neck.
In Britain, the government has more controls over the press than here.
Attmay
I non-accept her non-apology, and I don’t even like boy bands.
jason
Well, it does sound potentially seedy. Nightclub, unexplained circumstances, third party. It would be just as seedy if it were a straight couple. We gays need to stop using our homosexuality to insulate ourselves from the sort of criticism that applies to everyone else.
After all, we’re striving to be equal, not special.
Phoenix (The Daily Fail Sucks @SS)
Dear Jan,
Fuck you….with a rusty hacksaw.
Love & Kisses,
Phoenix Is Phabulous
p.s. Good luck on your future job hunt….NOT!!!
Phoenix (...And When I Say It Sucks @SS I Don't Mean That In The Good Way Either)
Also, Jan The Bigot,
What makes you think a straight people are better at being monogamous than gay people? Hello, Peaches, the (straight) divorce rate is 60%. For the straight couples that don’t get divorced, 60% of those are cheating. (Sounds to me straight marriage is a bigger failure than gay domestic partnerships.) From what I can tell straight people I know personally, they screw around as much if not more than gay people. Also, since when is it that only gay people have open relationships? Only gay people have threesomes? I know plenty of couples in open relationships….and guess what? They’re all middle-aged, straight couples! I also know plenty of straight couples who’ve had threesomes, too.
And why bother with monogamy anyway? Monogamy was invented during an era when women were property. Women were chattel and the property of their fathers who sold them and their hymens to their husbands. Is that something we gay folks actually want to emulate? How about everyone’s body is their own property and is not “owned” by another person? How about that?
A Non
Come on do you really expect any better from a Daily Mail columnist. Jesus the whole paper is full of bigotry and lies and it is getting worse. There are still some good journalists that work for the Mail but they seem much fewer and farther between recently. The whole paper is angled one way to appeal to racist housewives who live in places like Surrey. Fact. That’s not just my opinion. I am a journalism student, I have been told this from insiders who have far more knowledge on the subject than I.
It’s not even the journalists that write the thing. They may be perfectly good journalists but they write about what they know will appeal to the Daily Mail readership. A newspaper is a business like any other sadly.
Only answer = BOYCOTT the DAILY MAIL. But the racist homophobes who are the papers bread and butter are not going to do that unfortunately. Not much we can do apart from not buy it.
Brian Miller
Who cares?
If *nobody* paid attention to her shit, she WOULDN’T have an audience.
Instead, the hysterical drama queens have catapulted her into a position of prominence in the right wing that she’ll enjoy for years… a steady gravy train.
Good going guys.
pauline
“To die on the sofa while your partner is sleeping with someone else in the next room”… Once again I think Ms Moir has inaccurately protrayed what happened that night. There is no suggestion that Mr Gately’s partner Andrew was anywhere other than in his own bed, Mr Gately’s family announced very early on in the piece that the guest was sleeping in the spare bedroom, alone! There is nothing to disprove this. Does Ms Moir never put up people who need a place to stay?
Perhaps it’s kindness she doesn’t understand?
another complaint under way from me.
here’s the link so you don’t have to read any more poison.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1222246/The-truth-views-tragic-death-Stephen-Gately.html
Steven
@RJ I cannot see how this apology can be seen to be satisfactory. She insulted everyone who has died/suffered the same kind of medical condition that killed Stephen Gately, not just the man himself.
drew
@RJ…..’poorly worded’!!!! She is, no doubt, a highly paid journalist for a national newspaper. So she has no excuse for poor wording.
IF she considers herself a journalist then she should make a decent apology….however that is not important at this point because no-one would believe her now. I hope she gets sacked. She writes a column in which she likes to shock, maybe she went too far this time. If she can’t take the heat then she should get a new job.