ScottishMediaMonitor.com
Title
Scottish Media Monitor - Examining the treatment of sexuality in the Scottish media
Description
Examining the treatment of sexuality in the Scottish media, this monthly column by Garry Otton, called the Scottish Media Monitor, first appeared in January 1996 in Gay Scotland magazine. It was sparked by what was widely seen as inadequate reporting of the violent murder of 35-year-old Michael Doran in Queens Park in Glasgow in the summer of 1995. Here, a gang of three lads and a 14-year-old girl went on a queerbashing rampage putting a hammer through one guy's head, beating another so badly, he was unable to walk and finally murdering Michael Doran. Michael received 83 blows to his body. They stabbed him several times in the groin, stamped on his face until they had broken every bone in his head and left him in the bushes, choking to death in his own blood. With their clothes still bloodstained, they joined their friends at a nearby party bragging about what they had just done. In the face of widespread abuse of gay human rights in Britain, BBC Radio Scotland boasted how it had just produced a programme on lesbian poetry.
Within weeks after Michael's tragic murder - a copycat of the Queen's Park murder that led to the last hanging at Barlinnie Prison in the sixties - Thomas Hamilton gunned down a classroom of kiddies and their teacher in a school in Dunblane. Despite no evidence Hamilton sexually molested children in his care, or was indeed himself gay, the Dunblane tragedy became sexualised and gays were swept up in a tidal wave of moral panic.
Scoutmasters and gym teachers, boys' club managers and priests were dragged across the pages of the Scottish press in frenzy. One 'sex beast' after another was 'caged'. A 24-year-old was jailed for three months after being found on school grounds in Paisley. A 77-year-old man was sentenced to four years for taking pictures of kids at the seaside in Ayrshire, a drunken 37-year-old priest faced shame and retribution after allegedly groping a 16-year-old and Iain Macdonald was jailed for 18 years for the rape of Charles Kumar. Charles denied he was gay, but later went on to win a heat in the Mr Gay UK contest and work in a gay sauna. Iain still languishes in prison. Public toilets, saunas, parks and swimming-pool changing areas throughout Scotland became flash points of moral warfare. A 29-year-old man was sentenced for peeking at two 14-year-old boys in one swimming-pool changing area, and at another, a 34-year-old scoutmaster faced indecency charges after filming boys with a video camera. A swimming-pool attendant warned parents 'all their children are at risk', and was reported in a tabloid begging more staff to patrol open changing-rooms. 'The only way to clampdown on this kind of thing is by fitting screens to the top and bottom of cubicles and security guards watching at all times', he said.
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