a word on stephen gately

This is a hastily written post, so probably not a particularly cogent one – bear with me (yes, all good posts start with a disclaimer about lack of quality).

Stephen Gately of Boyzone died last week while on holiday in Spain with his boyfriend and another man in the vicinity. The post-mortem laid the matter to rest, and his funeral was held.

I was going to write about how it came as a shock that a person fairly well connected with my childhood – probably my first man-crush; I was ten years old – and one with some memories attached to it (more than Michael Jackson – ironic given A Different Beat had a cover of MJ’s ‘Ben’) had passed away.

But then, when reading about his funeral now, I came across a mention of Jan Moir’s comment on his death. My interest piqued (due to the amount of criticism it had invited), I sought it out.

Read it.

It reminded me of an episode of Queer as Folk (UK; Season 1. Episode.. um, four-ish), where the series takes a sudden turn after the general levity of the first few episodes, by having one of the amiable supporting guys go home with someone towards the end of the episode – he snorts cocaine, convulses, and dies.

It was brutal due to its lack of foreshadowing. On the show, at his funeral, his mother blames his homosexuality for his death, asking whether her son would have ever been in that situation if he had been straight.

That is pretty much what she implies – that his ‘homosexual lifestyle’ was to blame for his death, and that 33 year old men don’t just keel over and die. Not 33 year old straight men, at any rate. But that’s reading too much into her piece.

Yes, he died with two other men in the apartment – it probably means they were having/had/going to have a threesome.

So what?

This week, by the way, Britney Spears’ new single ‘3’ debuted at the top of the Billboard Top 100 singles chart. No, it’s not an abstract song. Fergie’s ‘London Bridge’ from a while ago was also about group sex.

Again, so what?

The problem is the hypocrisy with which being ‘edgy’ by singing about such things is accepted without much fuss, while the gay lifestyle is still considered to be a right royal Roman orgy on a daily basis. While the cases of Britney and Fergie aren’t extrapolated to the straight population as a whole, suddenly Gately’s cause of death is the sword of Damocles hanging over every gay person, a ticking time-bomb of a lifestyle that’s going to explode unless defused?

Ok, my views are slightly liberal, so I’m not going to be outraged (or even ponder over) lifestyles that include drink, drugs, dames/dicks and decadent debauchery on a daily basis (I may have gotten carried away with the alliteration there). But if the lifestyle is going to be ascribed solely to the gay lifestyle – the gay celebrity lifestyle and not the straight ones in this case – I have a problem.

‘…I am sure he would want to set an example to any impressionable young men who may want to emulate what they might see as his glamorous routine.’

Does that imply that gay men are more impressionable than say, straight people who’re bombarded with the gangsta-rap lifestyle, with the Alpha-geriatric male virility of Hugh Hefner, and the general aspiration to an egregious opulence (Lalit Modi/IPL?) that is shoved down our throats by mainstream media?

And this is even without mentioning what she says about gay marriages (well, civil partnerships) – that it shatters the myth of happily-ever-afters in such unions. When did break-ups and divorces and general heartbreak become the exclusive fiefdom of straight people?

Not having my ear to the ground about such things (hell, came across this due to a mention on the BBC website), I’m not sure whether other deaths have had similar opinions published.

What immediately came to mind upon reading this was the recent death of David Carradine – the setting was (sleazy) Bangkok, died by auto-erotic asphyxiation, or so it is rumoured; the official report, of course, being something else – his family believes him to have been murdered. Michael Hutchence of INXS died over a decade ago, suicide being the stated cause, but the same auto-erotic rumour still hangs over that death too.

Their deaths were tragic. Any death is.

But they (purportedly) died of how they lived, not because of what they were.

Stephen Gately, and his death, deserves to be accorded the same amount of respect.

brevity

you..

me..

we.

oui?

--

though a little subsequent googling reveals a 'you me oui'. ah well.