It's the day of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's funeral, and his death is still making headlines in the UK, where there's outrage after an opinion piece in the Daily Mail newspaper questioned his 'lifestyle' and the 'sleezy' circumstances of his demise. Stephen Gately In a column originally titled 'Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death', columnist Jan Moir questions whether the star's death - widely reported as occurring from 'natural causes' after a drunken night out left him choking in the early hours of the morning - was connected to his 'gay lifestyle'. "The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath," wrote Moir. "Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again. "Whatever the cause of death is, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one." She concludes: "As a gay rights champion, 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. "For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see." READERS REACT Hundreds of comments began to flood into the Daily Mail's website today, many of them expressing rage at the blatant and opportunistic homophobia in Moir's column. The page was re-titled: "A strange, lonely and troubling death" and several extreme comments were reportedly deleted by the website's moderators. As British showbiz critic Charlie Brooker wrote on Guardian.co.uk: "It has been 20 minutes since I've read her now-notorious column, and I'm still struggling to absorb the sheer scope of its hateful idiocy. "It's like gazing through a horrid little window into an awesome universe of pure blockheaded spite. Spiralling galaxies of ignorance roll majestically against a backdrop of what looks like dark prejudice, dotted hither and thither with winking stars of snide innuendo." Meanwhile, Moir has no shortage of enemies on Facebook, where a newly set-up group named 'The Daily Mail should retract Jan Moir's hateful, homophobic article' has over 8,700 members, many of them leaving comments calling for her to be sacked from the newspaper and urging her to apologise to Gately's family. "The prurient, offensive and bigoted article" by Moir "makes unfounded and sickening allegations about the tragic death of Stephen Gately, before going on to bash civil partnerships and gay lifestyles," the page's authors observe. The original Daily Mail article, Charlie Brooker's response and the anti-Moir Facebook group are linked below.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News Staff
First published: Saturday, 17th October 2009 - 3:57pm