Gay News (much thanks to The Knitting Circle.)

This was Britain's first fortnightly gay newspaper, which was founded in June 1972 by Denis Lemon and Andrew Lumsden. It ceased publication April, 1983. One of the contributors in the early 1970s was Bryan Derbyshire.

Denis Lemon was born in August 1945 and died in July 1994. An obituary by Richard Smith in The Pink Paper, 29th. July, 1994, issue 338, page 5 read. "The last year has seen the British gay press finally coming of age with a number of new titles. But none of these would have been possible if it were not for the groundwork done by people like Denis Lemon a quarter of a century ago."
"Although he is perhaps best known as the last man in Britain to be convicted of blasphemy, Denis was, more importantly, one of the founding fathers of the British gay press and editor and proprietor of Gay News during the 1970s."
"In one of his last peices of journalism - marking the fifteenth aniversary of the blasphemy trial - he wrote in Gay Times: 'We naively consider free speech and a free press as bastions of our society, but that's only true if you have enough monetary clout and the establishment likes the tone of your voice'."

In 1974 it was charged with obscenity after a cover photograph of two men kissing but won the court case.

A black and white reproduction of the cover for the 17th-30th. June, 1976 edition is shown in Jivani (1997), page 170.

In July 1977 Mary Whitehouse brought a case of blasphemy against the then editor of Gay News, Denis Lemon, for the publication of the poem called The love that dares to speak its name by James Kirkup. The poem described the sexual feelings of a Roman centurion as he imagined having gay sex with Jesus of Nazareth on the cross. The title of the poem aludes to the poem Two Loves by Lord Alfred Douglas. Denis Lemon was tried and found guilty at the Old Bailey. He was fined £500 and given a nine-month suspended sentence. The Gay News lawyers (Geoffrey Robertson and John Mortimer) had been careful but were surprised by this prosecution as it was the first successful blasphemy case in fifty-five years. The British public are still not allowed to see the offending poem.

A black and white photograph of a demostration in 1977 against the Gay News conviction is reproduced in Jivani (1997), page 171.

The Whitehouse Souvenir badge was still available at 20p each in 1979. It had been included by the Sunday Times on 1st, January, 1978 in their list of outstanding badges of 1977.

Bibliography

• Andrew Lumsden, (1988), "Parrot cries", in Radical Records: Thirty Years of Lesbian and Gay History,1957-1987, pages 195-205.

• Keith Howes, (1995), "Outspoken".

• Geoffrey Robertson, (1998), "The Justice Game", Chatto & Windus

  Geoffrey Robertson was one of the barristers at the 1977 Gay News trial. It is one of the trials that he discusses in this book.

• Alan Travis, (2001), "Bound and Gagged: A secret history of obscenity in Britain", Profile, 344 pages, ISBN 1 86197 229 8.

  Arrest this author by Robert Potts in The Times Literary Supplement, 23rd. February, 2001, page 26. "The poem 'The Love That Dares To Speak Its Name' by James Kirkup, printed in Gay News in 1977, suggested a homosexual relationship between a Roman centurion and the crucified Christ; it was successfully prosecuted under Britain's laws on blasphemy, and, as Travis says, is 'still banned' in this country, the law not having changed in the interim. (Travis is wrong, though, to say that the law is still on the statute books; the statute law was revoked quietly in 1967, but the common-law offence survives.) Travis quotes extensively from the poem, including the most offensive parts. It is hard to see how he and his publishers have not committed the offence themselves. Travis may be relying on his own misunderstanding of the law in question."

Press cuttings

• GAHLA web site: http://www.galha.org/glh/gaynews.html