ANGRY MOB

Hagley Road to Ladywood announced it last week: anti-gay propaganda is back at the top of the Mail agenda.

Since Stephen Gately's death last week, the Daily Mail has been desperately trying to dig up some dirt.

In spite of official confirmations that the Boyzone star died of natural causes, the Mail has decided that the unfortunate death of an innocent 33-year-old man is fair game (see, for instance, Paul Scott's unashamed hatchet job the day after Gately's death).

The lowest point was hit today by Jan Moir with her article "Why there was nothing natural about Stephen Gately's death", where this overpaid munter spurts industrial amounts of venom and homophobia. Look at this bit here (our emphasis):

"Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships. Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael.

Of course, in many cases this may be true. Yet the recent death of Kevin McGee, the former husband of Little Britain star Matt Lucas, and now the dubious events of Gately's last night raise troubling questions about what happened. It is important that the truth comes out about the exact circumstances of his strange and lonely death.

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".

How do you call that? This appalling vulture takes two tragic cases: a young man who died in his sleep and another who hanged himself, to give off the most homophobic shit ever written in about a decade. What the hell has their sexuality got to do with their "hedonistic lifestyle", let alone their death?

How obnoxious would it be if, the day after Jan Moir finally pops her clogs, opinion columnists start pontificating about "the dangerous lifestyle" of eating too much and earning too much money for writing shit articles in tabloids?

Is Jan Moir really that thick not to register that scores of heterosexual celebrities engage in the same "hedonistic lifestyle" she stupidly assumes Stephen Gately and Kevin McGee were leading?

And yet she should know better. Half of what her newspaper is about is that sort of sordid stuff. The Kerry Katonas and the Jordans, the Amy Winehouses and the Russell Brands, the Ashley Coles and the Steve Joneses...Or how about the list of heterosexual celebs who killed themselves? What stuff are you on, Jan Moir, to be capable of writing such a low, vile, judgemental little story in the wake of a personal tragedy?

How can such levels of intolerance be printed on one of Britain's most popular brands of arse paper a mere two days after the news of yet another homophobic murder in London?

Is there a limit to the shameful, distasteful, hate-soaked drivel the Daily Mail can put into print?