Jan Moir and Stephen Gately

Hi all

I have written this letter to the PCC. I wanted to post it so that other people can use it to complain against the horrific homophobia displayed by the Daily Mail today. We need to show people that it is not ok.

The URL for complaints can be found here: http://www.pcc.org.uk/complaints/form.html

The URL for the article, which you need to provide can be found here: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1220756/Why-natural-Stephen-Gatelys-death.html

Dear PCC

This article not only is based on conjecture and rumour rather than fact, it fuels homophobic attitudes and is horrifically disrespectful to a grieving family.

In her article, Jan Moir thinks she is expert enough to question and overrule the coroner's verdict on the cause of Gately's death. It was confirmed that Gately's death was from natural causes, however Moir suggests that it was due to his lifestyle. This claim is completely ludricious and has no bearing to anything that we can understand as truth. Whether Stephen Gately did or did not do what she suggests in her article is irrelevant to his death.

Moir relies on nasty, spiteful and unpleasant homophobic sterotypes to support the lies and suppositions in her article. She suggests that gay people are promiscious and unhappy, and argues that civil partnerships are in fact damaging. She completely ignores that it is an underlying health condition that killed Gately, not that he was gay.

She makes ridiculous links to the death of Kevin McGee, suggesting that the tragic suicide of one man makes all civil partnerships unhealthy and wrong. This suggestion is so ridiculous and insulting it is almost impossible to know where to start, although we could begin by recognising that the break down of his marriage was only one aspect of Mcgee's depression and that most gay men and women are happy in their relationships.

Let alone the ridiculous suggestion that young men in their thirties don't "just die." They do, I'm afraid. People die, tragically, all the time.

By making all these links and suggestions Moir is basically stating that Gately died because he was gay, and from here the implicit suggestion is that he deserved it. She is enforcing and using nasty and pointless sterotypes to suggest that a lifestyle, a sexuality killed Gately, not fluid on the lungs.

This young man has not even been buried yet. His family and friends are grieving. They deserve more respect than this nasty, snide little article.

I have come to expect hate and bile in the Daily Mail, but this has shocked and horrified me.

Thanks

Sian Norris