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Gay news: No abusive or discriminatory language used, says PCC
Jan Moir
Press watchdog rejects complaint about Jan Moir's Stephen Gately piece
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) has rejected a complaint made about Jan Moir's article in the Daily Mail last year, in which she questioned the circumstances of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately's death.
Gately's civil partner Andrew Cowles had said he was disgusted by the article, originally headed Why there was nothing 'natural' about Stephen Gately's death, and claimed the newspaper had broken the PCC's code of conduct on three grounds, arguing that it was inaccurate, intrusive at a time of grief and contained homophobic remarks.
Gately died of natural causes at his holiday home on the Spanish island of Majorca on October 10 last year, reportedly after drinking there with Cowles and another man.
Moir's article, published the day before Gately's funeral in Dublin, claimed his "more than a little sleazy" and "strange and lonely" death was "another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships" and said: "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."
She also compared Gately's death to that of Kevin McGee, the former civil partner of Matt Lucas, despite the fact that Gately's was due to natural causes whereas McGee committed suicide.
The PCC subsequently received over 25,000 complaints, "by far the highest number of complaints ever received about a single article in the history of the commission" it reported. However, the regulator, whose chairman is Paul Dacre, the Daily Mail's editor, rarely investigates complaints made by people not directly involved with the article in question.
In its statement, the PCC said it could "understand how the column had generated wide anger", that it was "uncomfortable with the tenor of the columnist's remarks" but that censuring Moir, and the Daily Mail, would represent "a slide towards censorship".
The PCC's code says that the press should avoid making pejorative references to a person's sexual orientation, but its statement said it found no abusive or discriminatory language in Moir's article.
It said a distinction should be drawn "between critical innuendo which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society - and discriminatory description of individuals, and the code was designed to constrain the latter rather than the former".
On the subject of Moir's claim that Gately's death had not been "natural", it said that while it was controversial and speculative, it "could not be established as accurate or otherwise".
It said the timing of the piece was "in questionable taste" but that did not in itself constitute a breach of the code.
It concluded: "Argument and debate are working parts of an active society and should not be constrained unnecessarily."
PCC director Steven Abell said the case had been "difficult but important", adding that the regulator had recognised the "flaws" in the article but decided it "would not be proportionate to rule against the columnist's right to offer freely-expressed views about something that was the focus of public attention".
