Key West, Florida, is largely run by gays and lesbians, and the heterosexuals are delighted with the results. Why don't we get a gay mafia to run the UK? Asks Peter Tatchell
The right-wing press in Britain is scaremongering with lurid tales of a "gay mafia" that runs the country. Not true, but a great idea. Middle England need not be alarmed. I am just back from Key West, Florida, where gay people comprise a quarter of the population and occupy many top city posts. The local cabs are painted pink and the gay rainbow flag outnumbers the Stars 'n' Stripes. Far from being frightened, heterosexuals are delighted. "Gays and lesbians have turned this town around," according to one local official. "They moved in and restored many of our previously run-down, crime-ridden neighbourhoods, uplifting the whole city. Key West used to be a bit of a dump, but thanks to gay people, it is now so well run that visiting tourists rate it as one of the top places they would like to live."
My verdict? Key West has the charm and friendliness of a small town, mixed with the tolerance and openness of a big city. If this is the result of being run by a gay mafia, can we please put gay people in charge of the UK?
The Miss World pageant, which has transferred from Nigeria to London, is sexist nonsense and the organisers should consign it to the museum of bad taste, alongside The Black and White Minstrel Show. My opposition to this female cattle market goes back more than 30 years. In 1971, when the competition was staged at the Royal Albert Hall, I helped to organise a satirical alternative pageant starring Miss Represented, Miss Used and Miss Conceived.
Three decades later, I find myself in the uncomfortable position of defending the Miss World competition against the Islamist zealots in Nigeria who sought to have it banned. They believe women should remain shrouded, housebound and sexless. Their religious fundamentalism is even more dangerous than the patriarchal sleaze of Miss World.
Faced with this intolerance and intimidation, the right to hold the Miss World competition has to be defended. Misogyny is deplorable but totalitarian Islam threatens women more. The freedom to parade on a catwalk wearing a swimsuit may seem trivial. But in a world where clerical fanatics want to deny women any rights at all, trivial freedoms are worth defending.
Tony Blair says there is no money to pay firefighters. He used the same excuse to short-change nurses and teachers - and to deny pensioners a decent income. So how did he suddenly find £3bn to fight a war against Iraq? But there's always money to fight a war. If all governments cut their military spending by just 5 per cent and put the money into a global programme against poverty, within 20 years we could eliminate hunger, illiteracy, homelessness and preventable diseases like malaria, dysentery and TB. To borrow Blair's catchphrase: it's not rocket science.
If there was a proven way to reduce the spread of HIV, you would expect the government to be promoting it - especially on 1 December, World Aids Day. Not so. Despite overwhelming medical evidence that oral sex and mutual masturbation are much safer than intercourse, government prudery stops their promotion in sex education lessons.
Encouraging young people to switch to these less risky practices could help to cut the rate of HIV infection (and teen pregnancies). But new Labour's embarrassment about sex won't allow such sensible, common-sense advice. Meanwhile, the number of new HIV diagnoses rocketed by 55 per cent between 1999 and 2001. Why haven't ministers got the guts to tell kids the obvious truth: sucking and wanking can save your life. Over to you, Alan Milburn and Charles Clarke.
Taking a break from trying to arrest human rights abusers such as Robert Mugabe and Henry Kissinger, I grabbed a few days relaxation at Key West's gorgeous Island House gay resort. A colonial-style timber guest house set in lush tropical gardens, it was a welcome escape from my south London housing estate. Unrushed meals. No hate mail or threatening phone calls. And all those exotic little soaps and shampoos in the bathroom. Spending hours floating in the pool, basking in 28 degree sunshine, may seem indulgent. But I used the time to dream up a new campaign to encourage gay Jamaicans suffering homophobic persecution to seek asylum in Florida, and to discourage gay and straight Britons from taking holidays in Jamaica. If you love the Caribbean, choose somewhere vaguely civilised like Puerto Rico. Boycott Jamaica, where the government jails queers for up to ten years and vigilante mobs exterminate "battymen" like rats.
The death of Mark Chavunduka, the campaigning Zimbabwean journalist, is a great loss. Three years ago, he was tortured by the Mugabe regime. In 1999, armed with evidence of his torture, I seized Mugabe in a London street and handed him to the police. I wanted him charged under Britain's anti-torture law, Section 134 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988. The police commissioner, attorney general and Foreign Secretary have yet to explain why Mugabe was set free.
I haven't given up. My next move is to Bow Street Magistrates Court to seek a warrant for Mugabe's arrest. I hope to create a snowball effect, with other countries issuing arrest warrants, leading to Mugabe's eventual arraignment in The Hague, alongside Slobodan Milosevic.
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