Promoting Hatred since 1934
The Daily Mail has always had a reputation for right-wing views. As far back as 1934 the paper was backing Oswald Mosley's fascist party. A story in the 15th January 1934 edition was headlined "Hurrah for the Blackshirts". It seems little has changed in the intervening years. Its present editor, Paul Dacre, is a committed right-wing Christian obsessed with "family values". Predictably, the paper is anti-immigrant, anti-asylum seeker and, needless to say, virulently anti-gay. The overwhelming message, pumped home day after day, is that Britain is going down the drain and only a strong (Conservative) leader can save us. To an even vaguely liberal or tolerant mind the values that the paper espouses are truly disgusting. The paper harps on about the threat to family life that homosexuality poses - often by associating it with paedophilia - and spends enormous amounts of money in uncovering relatively trivial stories about gay people that are then inflated into major "scandals" or "exposés".

  "Tower Hamlets: social services funds Lesbian and Bisexual Youth Project staffed by homosexuals.
MP's: Jim Fitzpatrick (Lab); Oona King (Lab)".
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The above is a typical example (Jan 28, 2000), from the paper's regular column: "Clause 28 Watch: How your money is spent" - which reports on local authorities' illegal "promotion of homosexuality".

This pathetic, curtain-twitcher's obsession with sex and sexuality might be seen as worthy of pity, if it wasn't so dangerous. Week after week, the nation's most vicious bigots are wheeled out to write their obsessive screechings about homosexuality. From Norman Tebbit's bilious rants, to Brian Souter's musings as a "concerned father", all shades of anti-gay hatred are offered in the pages of the Daily Mail.

What is more, the paper prides itself on its crusading spirit, organising mass write-ins to MP's, and continuously arguing for the retention of discriminatory laws against lesbians and gay men. It has been at the forefront of right-wing attempts to keep the notorious Clause 28 in the Statute Book (which bans the "promotion of homosexuality" by local authorities). The hatred issuing from the correspondence columns as well as the editorials is fearsome, and the persistence, some would say obsession, with which the paper attacks homosexuals, astonishing.

On February 14th: the Mail gave us: "Why wrongs don't make gay 'rights'". 19th February: "Gay sex laws must stay now". 21st February: "Catholic chief backs gay propaganda ban". 23rd Feb: "Labour peers still defiant in battle of Section 28". 29th Feb: "Church grassroots fury at gay law 'deal'". 5th March: "This sad betrayal of the family", "Family Tax bill could rise to help rich gays". March 6th: "Let gays 'cruise for sex' say Norris and Dobson". March 7th: "Moslem threat to boycott schools if Section 28 goes". March 9th: "Keep Clause 28, Premier is told by majority of his constituents"... and on and on: a relentless catalogue of invention, distortion and slander.

The paper's ability to twist and distort facts in order to make stories fit its narrow agenda is now legendary. Its campaign against the repeal of Section 28 would be a masterclass for any student of hate propaganda. The lies, exaggerations and omission of inconvenient elements to the story are skillfully done, but are also a disgrace to journalism and an insult to its readers.

The day after the Lords ensured the retention of Clause 28 in the Statute Book, the Mail's headlines said it all: "Praised be the Lords", "How the Mail spoke for the silent majority". The paper will clearly stop at nothing in its campaign against homosexuals, and now it is becoming malignant.
Bigot's Parade: From the Daily Mail's Pages...
McKay "We're being battered into submission by gay self-pity. First it was AIDS and the claim that the heterosexual majority was letting gays die rather than seek a cure for the disease to which their sexual habits make them vulnerable. Since this is no longer tenable, we are harried about their status and right to have sex in public places... the drip-drip-drip Chinese torture of gay propaganda results in new laws and 'rights'".
Peter McKay

"If liberal opinion - and this government - worried a bit more about the freedoms of families to get on with their lives...and a bit less about legalising sodomy with schoolboys, it might achieve something useful".

"There are those who feel that stable lesbian couples make ideal parents, but I'm afraid I'm not one of them...it's alarming when such people do such silly things, because it only encourages deviant behaviour in other more impressionable people".

 heffer
Simon Heffer
souter "Section 28 is a gatekeeper to stop licence for militant gay pressure groups in our society who are determined to infiltrate the education process".
Brian Souter. Chairman of Stagecoach bus company. Donated £500,000 to the pro-Clause 28 campaign.
"What a sick society we live in. Michael Barrrymore, the entertainer with a history of alcoholism and drug dependence, wants to adopt a child...A child in the Barrymore household would have less chance than a puppy given at Christmas might have of happiness".
tebbit
Norman Tebbit
young "I personally believe we do need to live by an ideal. One knows what one ought to be living up to and that's the kind of thing that ought to be put to children. It follows then that other forms are wrong and I think it's important to say that".
Baroness Young: Chief organiser of the Pro-Clause 28 campaign in the House of Lords

"Before we rush to embrace this new era of tolerance and equality, it is worth recalling why Section 28 was introduced in the first place ... it was demanded by parents who were horrified that local government was using their money to teach their children that there was no meaningful difference between families with parents of the opposite sex and those of the same sex".		 heathcoat-amory
Edward Heathcoat-Amory