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Author: Craig Hanlon-Smith

The Pain of Prayer – Hove victim speaks out

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Craig Hanlon-Smith looks at the worrying past of someone who wants to be the next MP for Hove and Portslade.

Local Hove resident AJ Paterson decided to do some homework in the run up to the General Election on June 8.

“I just wanted to be informed before the vote” she told me, “and so I simply Googled the names of those standing locally”.

As she entered the name of The Conservatives’ Hove and Portslade candidate Kristy Adams, AJ was unprepared for the unsettling and upsetting memories from over 17 years ago that would come instantly and painfully, flooding back to her.

From 1995 until 2000, before moving to Brighton and Hove, AJ lived in Bedford, in accommodation supported by a local Christian foundation the Kings Arms Church.

Kristy Adams the prospective Conservative candidate for Hove and Portslade was active in this church, as a public speaker for them in 2009/2010 and her husband was listed as a director of the organisation until 2013, but their association goes back many years.

“I do remember her” AJ tells me: “albeit vaguely, this was a long time ago now, but I clearly remember her husband much more.” 

There is a great deal of information online linking this church with healing practices aimed at curing gay people of their sexuality.

I begin by asking AJ what practices were witnessed during the time as a member of the church’s community. The response is as immediate as it is chilling:
“Yes I witnessed it but I experienced it first hand. There was an occasion where two of my close friends in the church came into my room and prayed over me; to heal me from my sexuality. I know that at the time they felt that what they were doing was right but it was an experience I have never forgotten.”

I ask then, that if their intentions were ultimately of a caring nature, they thought it was the right course of action, in short they didn’t know any better. AJ interrupts me:
“No. It never felt ok. This practice never felt right to me. My sexuality is only a part of who I am now as it was then, there’s so much more but their focus was all on the sexual orientation.

There was a clear direction from the church that homosexuality was a sin and that it needed to be prayed for and I am aware that the language used in the press and online is around ‘curing gays’ but the term the church and those within it used was healing. They were trying to heal me of my ‘gay-ness’.”

Praying the gay away? “Yes. Absolutely”.

AJ tells me that the practice of healing sexual orientation through prayer was commonplace and a clear direction from the church’s leadership. “What they don’t appreciate though, is that however well-intentioned, this is really damaging and it affects the person on the receiving end long-term”.

What the long-term impact of experiencing the practices of the Kings Arms Church has been on her since?
“Ultimately I think they are kind people, but they just didn’t think about that. The long-term impact upon people…..” AJ stops speaking, is silent then breaks down and becomes quite distressed. I am devastated that something I have said has engendered this response and I apologise. “No, no, really I just want people to know about this, I want to share my story so that people are aware.”

Is this is a story you have shared regularly since moving to Brighton?
“For ten years I didn’t tell anyone, not until I first spoke about it in 2010, it was too painful and ultimately this is why I left Bedford.”

Because of the behaviour of people within the church?
“Yes, definitely. I mean they asked me to leave. Because I had ‘come out’ they had a phrase, which was that I was ‘living outside the garden of Eden’ and that this was not compatible with their beliefs so I had to leave.”

What support have you received in Brighton and Hove since moving here? “Ultimately I came here because I knew there was an active LGBT+ community and I wanted to be a part of that and since being here I have had counselling to support me through what has happened in the past.”

To help come to terms with the experiences within this church?
“Yes. It was a form of spiritual abuse. Abuse because they are putting their views of sexual orientation onto someone in a way that is coercive and controlling. And if you don’t do as they wish, ultimately you experience the toughest form of discipline a church or community can impose upon you. You have to leave.”

So picture the scene. You are removed from a community by the very people you thought were there to support you. You learn to live with the abuse, enter a programme of counselling to guide you through what has happened before and live in a community that is as welcoming as it is progressive. And then some 17 years later, a member of that church stands for election in your local constituency, part of a city known for its LGBT+ communities and support thereof.

How do you feel about the prospect of Kristy Adams formerly of the Kings Arms Church becoming your local MP:
“Of course I am concerned. If Kristy Adams were elected, I would find it difficult to be here. People have been asking questions about her background with the church and she is ignoring them and we have so many questions that we need answers to. I know that the church has done some good work with the homeless and refugees, but this election has reignited all that happened to me. A politician’s background is really important in us understanding who they are and what they stand for. Are they going to overturn the freedoms we have fought for?”

It is clear that throughout our conversation these feelings are as raw for AJ today as they ever were and AJ is about to embark on another programme of counselling.

If it is so upsetting, why it is important to talk publicaly about this now?
“I have never felt this way before in this area. The views of the church are the same as they ever were, Kristy Young was part of that church, I have personal experiences of that church. The silence in not wanting to speak of it is not as important as the need for people to know who this person really is, if this individual’s belief in God’s law is more important than the law of the land. She wants to be the MP for Hove & Portslade afterall.”

AJ’s anxiety at the prospect of Kristy Adams as MP for Hove & Portslade is understandable. The Kings Arms Church has connections to a UK wide and international organisation NewFrontiers (previously New Frontiers International) who actively promote homosexuality as a sin that requires healing. NewFrontiers are in–turn connected to a US based think-tank The Heritage Foundation, which bills itself as a research and educational institution whose mission is to build and promote conservative public policies. The Heritage Foundation was heavily involved in advising President Trump’s transition team, and is thought to have influenced the abortion executive order that prevented any federal money going to abortion charities, on his first day in office.

Before we part company AJ and I both agree that this issue is not about party politics. Our current three MPs who stretch across the political spectrum, Simon Kirby, Peter Kyle and Caroline Lucas have all demonstrated that they believe in the freedoms and equalities of the LGBT+ communities in the city. Kristy Adams has until today refused to answer any questions on her views on same-sex relationships or to say if she thought gay sex is a sin.

Given the opportunity, what questions would you pose to Kristy Adams?
“I would ask that as a citizen of Brighton and Hove, I would like to hear her views on same sex relationships. I would then ask, that as prospective politician, would she give me her word that she would back up the local LGBT+ communities in parliament should there be any future policies that would change or challenge the progress we have made, such as a for example any suggestion of the repeal of same sex marriage. We need to know and she needs to tell us.”

Kristy Adams
Kristy Adams

Kristy Adams has responded to Gscene today, saying: “I supported the government as they introduced same sex marriage four years ago and would vote against any attempt to repeal the legislation; I am committed to all forms of equality. I value acceptance of people of all backgrounds, sexes and sexuality. My personal view is that I can’t believe in 2017 that I would need to state the obvious, I have never been homophobic and find it disturbing to hear of people who are. The LGBTQ community in Brighton and Hove champion tolerance and fight injustice and I share their desire to make our community a place of acceptance; I am unambiguous in my support for the LGBTQ community.”

 

OPINION: Craig’s Thoughts

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Dates for Mates: or Tweet to Meet by Craig Hanlon-Smith.

Social Media is taking a beating. Almost each week there is a television news report suggesting links between an over-reliance on social interactions through the medium of an app, and the failing mental health of our youth.

This week (at the time of writing) BBC Breakfast profiled SnapChat as the latest offender to our collective social sanity. The allegation that messaging online is now so relentless, young people in particular can neither keep up with or track the volume of incoming messages, but a non-responsive position leads to online bullying, trolling and general abuse.

In short, I messaged you, you didn’t message back – you’re dead to me and I’m going to explain precisely how you shall meet your demise. Nice.

In the grown up (gay) world, another type of social media app is taking the blame for the closure of gay bars and clubs alike. It’s no longer a necessity to trawl the dimly lit jam jar window establishments of yesteryear for friends or f***s through the means of an awkward and initially shy conversation. Dispense with the human aspect, just download the application and pick a penis, easy peasy.

The difficulty with cock choosing based on pressing an image the size of a drawing pin head, is that nine times out of ten, the penis is attached to a real person and people tend to be a little more complex and needy than an easily pleased penis.

The problem with firing an unkind unpleasantry at an online messenger on SnapChat, is that the profile is also attached to a person, and how that shady message is read, processed and understood is now in the lap of the receiver not the sender. Think before you click. In both cases.

There are certainly too many stories of young people taking their own lives following an ostracising experience online. One suicide is one too many and theories abound as to why this may be.

One such explanation is that online messages are read back to ourselves in our own voices. We have all received texts, or emails and railed at the tone of them, when in fact it is certainly ambiguous if not actually impossible to read a tone into an electronic message.

If the delivered missive is devoid of a salutation or pleasantry, it’s too often received as hostile, rude and repeated aloud in the tones of our own irritation when in reality it may simply have been knocked out in haste and without thought.

Despite the obvious cute charm of a toddler, we can all remember how cruel kids can be and I’m not convinced they’re any more horrid now than they ever were. But an overly hysterical ‘I hope you die in your toilet’ screamed across the playground is essentially forgotten by home-time. Or if not entirely, at least home is a safe haven from the bullies.

Young people, just like the grown ups, take their phones everywhere and if they host the insults and threats, they take them to bed at night too. Furthermore, young-uns are still exploring who they are and how they fit into the wider world and are at an acutely vulnerable state of their own development. To therefore read and receive threats of violence and intimidation in their own voices, and at home, can have catastrophic consequences. It’s a battle not yet won and a growing problem.

At the opposite end of the scale is a relentless addiction to ‘gay-hook-up’ apps – also affecting the mental health of members of our community. The need to receive messages of appreciation based on a catalogue of images of our body parts, is for some, taking the place of more meaningful encounters.

An online ‘woof’ or ‘grrrr’ sending the dopamine levels off up into the Ozone layer. A not untypical response to a simple ‘Hi’ a pictorial translation of ‘Hi yourself, here’s my penis’, followed by ‘Blocked – this user has chosen to ignore you’. Cocks and shocks; neither particularly developmental for the low self-esteem.

It is, however, not all doom and gloom. There’s hope out there people. If you could just put the penis selecting apps to one-side for a moment, or whilst shopping for sex try your hand at thinking about the human on the other side of the orifice opportunity.

A number of true friends of mine have emerged on to the little seats in my heart from the murky depths of social media. I resisted Facebook for years but five years ago gave in to the pull of online interactions and loaded up Twitter just to ‘see what all the fuss was about’.

In no time at all I was having regular conversations with a select few. In amongst the one-line quips with the many, lay detailed friendship establishing connections largely around the irritations of commuting, and/or an analysis of the social importance of gin or particular ABBA song lyrics (Eye-Roll).

More recently, through the medium of amusing photo stalking on instagram and shared interests established through Facebook status updates, yes, I caved – it took me ten years but let me tell you, I’ve taken to it like a butcher to a field of squealing piggies.

Whatever the social media forum though, online relationships of any type have a limited shelf life. Even the least cautious amongst us are adept at making exceedingly careful choices about which aspect of ourselves and our selectively structured immaculate lives we are projecting out into the information superhighway.

Craig Hanlon-Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith

It’s not that our ‘favourites’ and ‘likes’ are not to be trusted, but true connections are much more about the post-tweet meets, establishing real-time relationships with names, faces and looking deeply into the windows of the soul whilst sharing your nonsense with the beautiful people at the other end of the profiles.

If these friendships are worth the effort; one, you’ll know soon enough and two, they’ll come right back at you with the same energy and enthusiasm you’re devoting to them.

Sure there are still some cock-shoppers on there who’ll drop you a private picture of their penis sooner than say good morning, but I find an eye-rolling emoji or a well placed ‘is that it?’ usually sends them packing their punch-line into somebody else’s joke-book; that’s to say they’ll block you, which is fine by me. Dates for mates? Essential maintenance for the soul. Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

@craigscontinuum

FEATURE: For Whom the Bell Tolls

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Craig Hanlon-Smith spends an afternoon with local artist Mackenzie Bell.

Mackenzie Bell
Mackenzie Bell

A saunter through Brighton’s magnificent Clifton Conservation Area is in many ways akin to stepping into a painting. The uninterrupted sunlight intensely throwing its reflection back into the air as it bounces off the immaculately maintained white houses. Were it not for the hotchpotch of poorly chosen vehicles scattered around its streets like misshapen beach pebbles cast ashore following a sea storm, you would be forgiven for believing you had been transported to Lyme Regis in Jane Austen’s era.

And it’s this local architectural beauty that Mackenzie Bell and I first discuss when he opens the door and beams at me with the same intensity as the sunlight. His house is beautiful and I tell him so. “Thank you,” he returns, “I’ve done an awful lot to it over the past 30 years.”

Butterflies

I try not to be lured into a welcome coma by the delicate lullaby of the water feature whispering to me through the open kitchen door. Before long we’re discussing hair (of course) and his ill-fated trip to the same Harley Street follicle specialist as Wayne Rooney. “He said to me ‘do you want the bad news first or the good news?’, I told him to give me the bad news to which he replied; ‘Well the bad news is your hair’s too thin, I can do nothing for you. The good news is, that bad news will save you £14,000’.” 

My afternoon with Mackenzie is actually to find out more about his upcoming exhibition as part of the Brighton Artists’ Open Houses, but not before he decorates the kitchen table with pastries. “You’re not one of these on a diet are you?”, and then showers me with coffee as I ignore his suggestion of wine, although I am tempted.

“The exhibition is all new work, paintings I’ve been working on for the past five years. I didn’t want to show you too much today…”, he says before hurriedly rushing into the living room only to return with an array of canvases that he lavishes across the kitchen floor as if Jackson Pollock excitedly at work in his studio. His energy and enthusiasm is as fascinating to behold as it is infectious and I feel a sense of privilege at my private viewing as he talks and walks me through each piece, its technique and textures.

“I’m inspired at the most unexpected of moments,” he adds as he teases and shifts his paintings around the floor as if planning the exhibition at this very moment. “This one came from being in a bubble bath and observing how the bubbles evolved and disappeared before me.” 

Lavender Fields
Lavender Fields

I ask if these works will be featured in the upcoming collection?

“Oh yes,” he enthuses as he points out his use of gold leaf on the more recent works, “I like to use older, almost forgotten techniques but within a contemporary more abstract piece.” Each of the works that I see is certainly arresting and it’s fascinating to see the prolific nature of piece after piece exploring the same themes but from a different angle.

Mackenzie has lived through a varied series of careers including crewing aboard transatlantic liners Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth, managing the Zwemmer Gallery in London and working for an antique dealer in San Francisco. He has taught art across the world from Los Angeles to Sydney but most notably at St Paul’s College, Sussex. Upon retiring from teaching in 1998, he started up a landscape garden design company in his words ‘sculpting’ with plants. He now paints full-time.

“I loved teaching but I gave all my creativity away to my students and at the end of term I was so drained there was nothing left for me. I never produced my own work. I never even wanted to pick up a paintbrush let alone even look at art. It took three years after leaving teaching to feel sufficiently re-charged to start painting again.”

Shortly after leaving his teaching career behind, Mackenzie moved to Cornwall, where with his then partner, and through his love for landscape garden design, they created the Northwood Water Gardens together on the edge of Bodmin Moor. “The fun in creating Northwood was the process. We built lakes with islands and mini sculpture parks on the islands. We planted 1,500 trees and shrubs but once we were open to the public, my role became one of maintenance and hosting. Eventually we closed the gardens to the public although we intend to open again in the future for charity events.” 

RockStrata

I ask Mackenzie if his eye for landscape design makes him a nightmare guest at summer garden parties? He laughs and confesses; “I do have to bite my tongue, otherwise I’d end up rearranging everyone’s garden, furniture and paintings.” So not just their outside spaces then? “No! All of it. I get so frustrated when I see paintings hung so high in people’s houses that you have to look up at them as something to be revered. They should be in your eye-line, they’re to be appreciated not lifted up on some imagined pedestal.” 

Mackenzie lived in Cornwall for 10 years but five years ago met his new partner and returned to the house in Brighton where I’m now inhaling my second pastry of the afternoon. “Leaving [Cornwall] was sad in a way but I missed the vibrancy of Brighton’s art and gay scene.” 

Mackenzie’s early life began in South Devon, studying fine art at Exeter College of Art, before moving to London to study at Central St Martins. “And this was one of the most depressing times of my life, studying at this most prestigious establishment. I was confused and wrestling in coming to terms with my sexuality and literally moving from one bedsit to another every month,” he says as our afternoon together draws to a close and I make to leave. His eyes lock mine in such a way that not only do I believe him, I am rooted to the spot. “Homosexuality was illegal, I was not free to be myself.” And I’m genuinely moved by not only his story, but his sharing of his explosion of creative freedom in his works which are still scattered across the floor.

As I leave Mackenzie to the rest of his afternoon, I think of something he told me about his life immediately after his career in education: “You have to understand that when I started teaching at St Paul’s in Sussex, the world was a very different place. Although it was an open secret, I could easily have been fired for being gay and when I left in the late 1990s, I felt as though I’d carried this like an oak yoke heavy around my shoulders. From that point on, every new person I’ve met I’ve said to them ‘I am a gay man’. It wasn’t until then that I felt free to be my own person again.”

Artists’ Open Houses
Mackenzie Bell’s exhibition is part of the Artists’ Open Houses, open May bank holiday weekend, Saturday 27 to Monday 29, 12-6pm at Venue One on Seven Dials trail: 1 Victoria Place, Brighton, BN1 3FR.

10% of all painting sales will be donated to the Rainbow Fund.

West Pier

• aoh.org.uk/trail/seven-dials/

• www.mackenziebellfineart.com

An open letter to the Prime Minister from Brighton & Hove

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith

Gscene columnist Craig Hanlon-Smith has sent an open letter to the Prime Minister, Theresa May about the plight of our gay brothers in Chechnya.

“As my Prime Minister I wanted to write to ask for your update on an issue that is extremely important to me, a member of the UK electorate. You will no doubt have heard of the horrific stories coming out of Chechnya pertaining to the kidnap, beating, imprisonment, torture and murder of gay men in recently constructed concentration camps. And now, that their families are being asked to kill their gay sons before the authorities do. As with all bullies, the Chechnyan authorities are internationally denying their actions and stating how could they possibly undertake such activities when there are no homosexuals within their republic. This response Mrs May insults both mine and your intelligence.

You will possibly have watched in a quieter moment on the campaign trail, perhaps in the overnight bus on the way back from Cornwall, the press conference given by Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin. I was heartened to see a major European leader taking Putin to task on this issue from Chechnya in such a public and open forum. This is precisely the type of action a major European leader should be taking on the world stage.

Could you, therefore, please give me and other members of my community an update on your communication with Putin, or indeed members of the Chechnyan local government on this very issue.

I know that some years ago you appeared not to support our community and voted against the repeal of section 28 but that is old news. You have in recent years publicly supported the LGBT+ communities in the UK, and sent a direct message to the people of Brighton & Hove in the run up to Brighton Pride last year. Brighton Kemptown as you will no doubt be aware, is a Conservative held seat. This change of heart you appear to have had is most welcome and appreciated.

As actions speak much louder than words, could you please give me an update on what action you have taken to make this position on LGBT+ rights clear to the international community, the President of Russia and his Chechnyan counterparts.

When will your press conference be held that challenges Mr.Putin on his refusal to acknowledge this is happening to gay men right under his nose, on his Presidential watch, and that it is both socially unacceptable and against international law?

What letters have you written to address this matter and can we see them in the public domain? I know that your relationships with Ms. Merkel is a little strained at present but I hope that as she is leading by example, you may at least follow in some of her footsteps.

You have written to President Putin I assume? An email? Surely, this is a topic regularly on your discussion list with Mr. Trump as you both made such a public display of your affection for one another at the beginning of his presidency. Whilst you’re at it, could you ask President Trump to confirm or deny whether or not he is rolling back Federal LGBT+ rights in his own country, as surely this would be a retrograde step for the leader of the free world?

I have read today that Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin are working together on a strategy for North Korea, so perhaps you could put a word in for the worldwide gays as these leaders of significant world powers are now such friends.

I appreciate how busy you are in the run up to the general election and that the torture, nay murder of gay foreigners might not be a current priority. In Brighton we are watching you and your government, and I can assure you that gay people vote too. In fact one of your MPs Mr. Simon Kirby in the Brighton Kemptown constituency, holds a tight marginal seat with barely 400 votes needed to swing it. Your support on this issue could really make a difference.

When both supported or indeed cornered, I can assure you that the LGBT+ communities are terrific in coming together and getting things done. Forgive my use of a colloquial term in such a formal letter, but I have always loved the word ‘terrific’.

I saw on the evening news yesterday you, with pride, referring to a previous description of yourself as a “bloody difficult woman”. I can assure you, you are nothing until you have had encountered a “bloody difficult homosexual.”

Please help us to help our Chechnyan brothers. After all, it is part of your job.”

Yours sincerely, Craig Hanlon-Smith

To sign the Amnesty International petition calling for the killings to stop, click here:

Why I’m running the Brighton Half-Marathon in support of Terrence Higgins Trust UK

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith

Gscene columnist Craig Hanlon-Smith explains why he will be running the Brighton Half-Marathon tomorrow (Sunday, February 26) in support of Terrence Higgins Trust UK.

The day is upon me. The decision some eight weeks ago to run The Brighton Half-Marathon is now an almost immediate reality. The training done, the carbs gorged and all that awaits me now as I thread my Stonewall Rainbow Laces through the eyelets in my training shoes is the 13.1 mile run itself.

The past few months have been unsettling and not on a small-scale. As political establishments and ideals I have for more than twenty years publicly shackled myself to are defeated, it is a challenge not to feel despondent, unnerved, destabilised. But as two friends have both pointed out to me over an anxious beer or five, there are some world events that you cannot take to heart or try to manage alone. And as unpalatable as I may find it, perhaps during those twenty years of my comfort, there were those on the opposite side of the political fence who were experiencing then, the instabilities that I feel now. That doesn’t mean that I suddenly agree with them but I do think I understand how they may have been feeling, and a little more understanding of how it feels to be in somebody else’s shoes can go a long way.

And so with the advice of friends ringing in my ear, earlier this year I looked to what impact or changes I could simply effect and help to make a difference however small. I can run. I can probably get a few people to sponsor me and I can lob a few quid at a charity – it’s not much of a stretch, it’s realistic, achievable, get to it.

What I was not prepared for was the degree of individual and personal support people around me would offer. To be one man, sitting on more than £2000 of sponsorship the evening before the run is yes overwhelming, but also encouraging, life affirming and frankly beyond my wildest imagination when I responded to a tweet from Terrence Higgins Trust in late December 2016.

I remember exactly who was the first person to sponsor me, and I know precisely who has been the most recent. And in between? support that has dropped into my charity giving page from as far afield as San-Francisco and Columbia (ah the positives of social media) to my next-door neighbour. I have sat gob-smacked as I have watched the tank fill up from people I have not seen in over twenty years and from people I have never met, from close friends to the anonymous and £500 in the past four days alone. My faith in humankind is restored and I am truly sorry that I ever let it leave for a bit.

To all those who have shown me the colour of their money, I take it to heart and I think you’re all f***ing brilliant. But as a friend most dear recently pointed out, this is not an entirely unselfish act my charity fundraising run. £2k to reduce the levels of social anxiety currently felt by Craig Hanlon-Smith is not much of a sacrifice for others and I admit, I feel great about my little charitable mountain climb, [Darren] you were right, it is not unselfish at all. But it’s actually much more personal than it first appears. Why HIV/AIDS and why Terrence Higgins Trust?

I am running on Sunday with a number of individuals in mind. I can’t name them all here as I have not sought their permission, nor that of those close to them but they will know who they are. When I make a new friend, I am emotionally committed from the off, there isn’t much of a warm-up period and if this is going to work out as a longer term arrangement I feel and therefore act as though we’re the best of friends immediately and throw myself in with forty-two feet – sometimes that approach has been a disaster, others amazing. This is as true today as it was in the early nineties when this story begins.

My new friend some twenty-five years ago instantly told me of his HIV positive status and of the miserable expectations that may bring. Freddie Mercury had just died and for a young recently out gay man such as myself, the news was devastating – much more so for him.

I watched from the side-lines as he was hospitalised many times, had part of his lungs removed, recovered from and then contracted pneumonia once more. I paced the streets looking for him for weeks not understanding where he had gone, only to run into his newly acquired partner to learn he was sick again and once more in an isolation unit.

I can think of two occasions when I thought he would lose the war. But he didn’t. He came back time and again and just in time for the treatment advances that were made in the mid 1990s that saved thousands of people in the UK alone and thankfully him. Time is a great healer but distance from events can sometimes render us forgetful. All those years ago, no matter how ill he was, I never once heard him complain, or show any signs of self-pity, anger, or tear filled sorrow. And two years ago on his fiftieth birthday he took me to one side and said “me, fifty! Who’d have thought it”. So on Sunday he will be the laces in my shoes and the wind beneath my wings, I owe it to him for being so brave and strong. What is a run along the seafront compared to all of that?

Of course not everyone was that fortunate. I have spoken to many people, much older than myself, who talk of the devastation of the mid-late 1980s and early 1990’s, of attending a different funeral everyday for a month as their circle of loved ones and self-made families disappeared. And when I think of my friends, my husband and however short or long the time that I have known and cared for each of them, the idea of losing them all one after another in quick succession all but breaks me. I cannot imagine nor do I want to, the horror of that and yet that is the experience of so many in our community. And so I also run this for a deep sense of love, respect and gratitude I have for them, each of them, and for everything they give without hesitation to me, but also for my community and what it has survived.

U.S based writer Larry Kramer said: “What are you without your history? You aren’t a people. You are nothing”.

Let us not be maudlin, or fearful. Let us celebrate the generosity and kindness that I, you, we have seen people bring, it is wonderful. But let us not forget. Everything that has gone before is part of who we are today. And whilst I cannot single-handedly reverse Brexit or put Hilary in The White House, I can get up off my DISCO arse and do something.

If you would like to sponsor me, click here:

@craigscontinuum

FEATURE: Talking Heads – encouraging men with mental health issues to open up

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Just how honest can two men with mental health issues be? Through their new venture MenTalkHealth, local gents Damian Friel and Davey Shields certainly try to be just that. Craig Hanlon-Smith met up with them both to chat about their new venture.

Davey describes himself as a snowboarding, shirt lifting, media worker in his thirties, who has spent the last eight years trying to manage his diagnosis of depression and anxiety. Damian a twenty-five year old mental health nursing student and part-time barman from Derry in Ireland with a long-standing diagnosis of depression and anxiety, and more recently Tourette Syndrome and OCD. As a barman in local runaway success Bar Broadway, Damian is a familiar face in Brighton, not least of all following his appearances on TV discussing his mental illness and appearance on Channel 4’s First Dates.

The whole point of the podcasts, explained Davey is to get men talking about their own mental health and we felt the best way to do that was to share our own experiences, bring people on our journey as it happens and hopefully to find some humour in the darker moments.

We hope that the humour will be what does it Damian adds, that through listening to that and hopefully relating to it, men in particular will talk about their own experiences too. We want to break the stigma.

I suggest to Damian that breaking any kind of stigma is certainly no small task no but you have to start somewhere and were starting by challenging the stereotype that men shouldn’t cry for example, through to it’s ok for men to have mental illness and talk about it openly.

Davey goes on to say: We know that it works through my own experience. Talking through my own incidents of mental health, opening up to Damian, thinking about the humour in it all, making my experience funny – sort of makes what I went through worthwhile. And I can honestly say that whilst working on this, which enables me to talk and I can talk a lot, has in many ways started to make be feel better. We hope that translates to other people.

And indeed it does. Both Damian and Davey have received countless messages of support and honest feedback via social media specifically twitter. Including one from a former friend who now works with the police, sharing that he loved what they were doing and that in the workplace whilst it can be a struggle to get people to understand issues around mental health, the mixture [in the pod casts] of humour and reality could be a real help. Davey shares others include ‘Listening to your conversations helps me with mine’. And that’s what we want, to be a conversation starter to talk about mental health in a way that’s accessible.

Both men are clearly enthusiastic about the project from the moment we meet, chatting openly and at pace. We honestly believe that it makes the whole experience less scary using humour enthuses Damian, people feel at ease. Nowadays people find that humour can get them through adversity and really horrible illnesses such as cancer and we thought, why can’t it be the same with mental illness? We want to say it’s ok to talk about it. The difficulty can be that when you’re in the middle of your own symptomatic period that may not be the right time to discuss the issues. You can feel ashamed of how you’re feeling  – when you’re out of the woods, or when you listen to others, you can hopefully feel people will understand. That’s the idea.

The podcasts, and so far there are five in all, have a chatty, discursive feel, almost like a pub conversation with a friend and certainly have the effect of normalising the subject at hand. Damian tells me We felt after episode one that it was so discursive and chatty we had better drink less wine whilst recording the next two!  As the podcasts are centred specifically around men’s mental health, I am curious to hear about the inclusion of their friend Eli who has now made an appearance in all three encounters. It was our intention for Eli to drop in occasionally as she does in episode one, Davey says, but we had such great feedback about her involvement we asked her to do as many as possible.

Just talking about yourself and your own condition can get very insular Damian adds, but with Eli there she can ask questions or give a woman’s point of view. It’s also interesting that as Damian and Davey are both gay, Eli brings a heterosexual element to the podcasts in discussing her own relationship and boyfriend as part of the recorded episodes. Being two gay men, we’re already by default challenging that heteronormative stereotype, but we wanted a show for everyone and Eli helps us to achieve that Damian explains. My hope though is to have a broader listener base says Davey, yes to build on the support from the gay community first but the contact from the police for example, he’s straight and it appealed to him.

I ask them both why they think that incidents of mental health are so much higher in the LGBT+ community compared to our heterosexual equals. Whilst one in four heterosexual people are expected to develop some form of mental health episode, it is thought to be as much as three in four amongst the LGBT+ population.

Damian begins I think it all links to society at large. And whilst there are lots of everyday elements that now fall underneath the LGBT+ rainbow, we still have a long way to go in getting broader society to be more tolerant.  I suggest that living in the deep and darkest wilds of the UK may be a different experience than living in a large city and certainly Brighton. Yes but even here Damian passionately interjects, there have been homophobic attacks and there are slurs shouted at you which if you’re already verging on the vulnerable can impact on your self-esteem and worth. There’s potentially a lot up against you that many hetero people just won’t come up against – internalised homophobia for example.

I ask if either of them have ever had to access any of the voluntary mental health charities in Brighton both on and off the gay-scene. We’re massive fans of what they are doing and they have supported us on social media. And although neither of us has accessed their support directly Davey explains Anyone we know who has with says they are amazing at what they do.

So where to go from here boys? Will you bring in different people? Yes, definitely. Other people with different diagnoses to us but also  people who have looked after us, looking at the challenges of mental health support on those around us. Both have two best friends who have looked after them when they have been unwell. It’s important to look at the bigger picture, keep the conversation going.

All podcasts from MenTalkHealth can be found on iTunes or via SoundCloud.

For more information on the pair and their venture, click here:

OPINION: Is this language really acceptable?

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

After attending the May/Trump demonstration on Monday night in central Brighton, Craig Hanlon-Smith has been thinking….

I feel incredibly privileged to live in a country where such action is both possible and spontaneous. I know there are many sensible arguments including some made by those close to me, that such action does little, perhaps it is even a waste of time. I disagree. When the democratic election protest throws up an alternative result to the one hoped for, it’s a wonderful thing to see thousands of people, all over the world pour onto the street and use their voices, their actual voices to call for a different choice, another way.

Which is why I’m so disappointed. I’m not a prude, I can swear like the best and worst of them and the language is colourful. It doesn’t mean I’m uneducated, or I cannot think of better or more sophisticated vocabulary, sometimes you just need a good f**cking and everything else besides. I get it.

But to collectively, in the thousands, be making an educated choice to paint a sign that reads “Trump is a c**t”, to hold them aloft whilst singing in chorus “Dump the c**t”, I think was a betrayal. A betrayal of what it is we thought we were trying to achieve. And these signs and chants cannot be blamed upon the leftist antagonistic ‘go to everything’ protestors. I saw you. Your middle class coats and well-heeled shoes. I saw your ‘JoJo Maman Bebe’ kitted out children. I saw your UCL sweatshirt and bugaboo. And I know that you, we, I know better.

Trump has been derided for his misogyny, his self description of his approach to women “I moved on her like a bitch”, his now infamous “grab her by the pussy”. We know that pussy is a softer, more user-friendly kitty cat word for cunt right? Which one did he use and which one did we. I didn’t shout it but I use ‘we’ because we were there together, a collective. Your sign is my sign, your voice is my voice, your cunt is my cunt. It was embarrassing.

And Brighton, mate, WTF? I’ve seen the online footage of the ‘Trump, why are you such a c**t’ song. I mean full marks for choral musicality but 2Unlimited had more sophisticated lyrical content.

Craig Hanlon-Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith

In the days following the Orlando massacre, I was moved to tears by the spontaneous gathering of thousands across the UK. To show our support, our solidarity, our togetherness. And yes we were angry but we were also respectful, perhaps because people had died yes I know. But however nasty, deplorable, erratic and frightening the actions of the new US (and indeed UK) administrations, is the answer to sing that the man is a cunt? Will that support all those people who at the weekend were denied entry to the US because they began their journey in a Muslim country?

I left early, pleased I had attended, but uneasy at the choices we the educated made on Monday evening. Perhaps the truth is that language is just language, words are words, it’s all just a bit gay and we should not worry about it too much.

Or perhaps deep down, our collective casual embedded misogyny kicked in and we thought “what’s the worst thing we can call him? The worst”. We could have gone with “He’s a dick” or “prick”, not that that would’ve been better, but it’s interesting we went with the cruder version of the very pussy we all claim to be so appalled by.

I, of course, do not have the answer. But I do know that Monday evening definitely wasn’t it.

OPINION: Craig’s Thoughts on love

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Love is. By Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum

Love is excitement. Love is exhaustion. Love is daily. Love by the hour. Love is always. Love is never. Love at your leisure. Love that’s a pleasure. Love is now. Love is then. Love is today. Love is tomorrow. Love is never again. Love is light. Love is dark. Love is air. Love is fire. Love is creation. Love is foundation. Love is destruction. Love is the only heaven that is real. Love is hell. For this love, time will tell. Love irresistible. Love untouchable. Love is the longing. Love is the needing. Love the never quite achieving. Love a warrior princess. Love a cowering child. Love is lost. Love is life. Love is death. Love is everything in between. Love is smart. Love is sick. Love is holding. Love is touching. Love is desperate isolation. Love is accepting. Love is believing. Love is overachieving. Love is incandescent indignation. Love is real. Love is not. Love is fiction. Love is hot and will burn. Love is straight. Love will turn. Love that chimes. Love that rhymes. Love is wealth. Love has nothing, on you. 

Love is fear. Love is pain. Love is give. Love is gain. Love is tit. Love is tat. Love is this, love is that, love is getting fat and happy. Love is feast. Love is famine. Love emaciates and starves. Love that cuts and then scars. Love is asleep. Love is awake. Love is speed and love is the break of my heart. Love is calm. Love is riot. Love is enraged. Love is tired. Love is the truth. Love is a lie. Love is life. Love will die. Love is you. Love is me. Love is him. And him. And him. And she. Love that starts. Love that stops. Love that climbs. Love that falls. Love for you. Love is for all. Love that fights. Love that bites. Love for a friend. Love for a foe. Love for good. Love for bad. Love is what we’ve always had, to share, to spare. Love for young. Love for old. Love is frightened. Love is bold. Love that strokes. Love that aches. Love that gives. Love that takes.

Love you win. Love you lose. Love that lands. Love you choose. Love can calm and will bruise. Love that lusts. Love that stares. Love that trusts. Love that cares. Love is a stranger. Love is companion. Love is the messiah. Love a pariah. Love attacks. Love embraces. Love is lazy. Love is busy. Love imprisons, makes you dizzy. Love stands still. Love is walking. Love is running. Love that races. Love for a time. Love that chases. Love that lifts. Love that soars. Love that is lavish. Love that bores. Love that’s cheap. Love that costs. Love that cheats. Love that hides. Love that seems forever lost but then finds its way home.

“Love is the truth. Love is a lie. Love is life. Love will die. Love is you. Love is me. Love is him. And him. And him. And she”

Love is hoping. Love is hating to be alone. Love is waiting, in the dark, the heat, the rain, the every-time for you. Love is never having to wait again, until the next time. Love that lives, love forgets, love forgives and that yet still smarts. Love is patient. Love’s unkind. Love sees all, yet is blind. Love that wraps. Love that seals. Love that breathes and yet steals my air.  

Love is fun. Love is thinking. Love recognises that sinking feeling of escape approaching. Love is laughing when I should be crying. Love is crying when I should be laughing. Love will cry, and will try. Love is leaving and not looking back. Love is again when you think you never should. Love is again when you thought you never would. Love surprises when not looking. Love then leaves when not working. Love is fighting. Love is you lighting up the room, the street, the world. Love that listens. Love that doesn’t. Love that sings. Love that dances. Love that’s loyal. Love that chances upon another. Love that behaves, and restrains. Love of longing, wishing looks. Love of summer sweaty f***s. Love that worships. Love that reigns over me. 

Love on the run. Love that is hunted. Love unrequited. Love is lonely and not wanted. 

Love is not being able to look at you because my brain, my chest, my head hurts. Love is watching you sleep. Love is not sleeping when I know you’re not sleeping. Love is unexplained anxiety. Love is strength when I know you’re anxious. Love is the gravitas of our days, weeks, years together. Love is the minutes when the nights draw in. Love is the summer in the winter. Love is the thawing of the ice. Love is the fresh fall of snow, the first hint of day. Love will shake, love will shock, love is sand, love is rock. Love will calm and caress. Love will cover and undress. Love that is straight. Love that creases. Love that locks and releases whether you want it to or not. Love that roams. Love that strays. Love that plays. Love that stays. 

Love is present. Love is past. Love is the half-light and forever casts a shadow on my soul. Love uplifts. Love is flight. Love holds my hand on infrequent nights apart. Love enduring. Love that’s fleeting. Love that is carnal. Love a meeting of our minds.  

The love that dare not speak its name talks freely. Love is you. Love is me. Love is ours. Love is we. Love for all. Love is free. For now.

OPINION: Craig’s Thoughts: My gay male Icons are my friends and loves

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Bitch, I’m a homo. Or thank f*** I’m not a girl.

2017 begins inauspiciously for the international LGBT+ community. As the inauguration of the US President Elect looms, even those parts of the world whom in recent years have made significant parallel political and social progress, face an ominous future as rumours of rolled back legislation abound.

In the UK we have a Conservative Government led by a Prime Minister who publicly supports the LGBT+ community on YouTube and yet progress so recent seems fragile when resting upon such fresh foundations, foundations that the same Prime Minister voted against in opposition. 

Sceptical? Think of the arguments around PrEP. Would the right of centre pundits and enraged from Esher take to the airwaves with essentially their ‘die bitch it’s your own fault’ message if HIV/AIDS concerned cock-rot that largely affected the male heterosexual community?

And in this, the 50th anniversary of the decriminalisation of homosexuality, note the celebrity-driven social media responses to the football abuse scandal, the immediate comparison of an abusive sex-offender to the homosexual or ‘queer’. Let us not underestimate the immediacy and casual connection of the paedophile with the gay-man.

Whilst we may have same-sex marriage and wider social acceptance it all too easily comes back to an immediate and casual assault on our relationships, our community and our individual selves largely due to an obsession with an assumed sexual practice of anal sex and an automatic pleasurable disrespect for it. 

Let’s face it; it’s the sex that kept us down for so long. Men engaging in physical sexual contact with one another were committing a crime, buggery a sin, a social taboo and men that like doing it? Perverts, certainly not real men.

Think about it, the bottom shaming that takes place within our own kind, in peer groups, relationships, on dating apps (dating, who are we kidding, shag shopping), I’m gay but at least I’m not a receiver – the batty boy who takes it up the shitter is a less of a man than the rest of us, them, you. 

And why? Misogyny. That’s right. Misogyny. Young man you’re too girlie girlie, and no man wants to be a girl. Women are bitches, subservient sl*ts, slags. Negative slurs associated with a sexual practice of reception and god-forbid enjoyment, whereas ‘real’ men relax within the lyrical association of a well-bred retired race-horse, now scattering his perfect seed to populate next year’s Grand National with some fierce competition. But one who apparently is a vessel for f***ing not to mention fertility, is a lesser mortal in even the most self-described civilised societies on the planet. Our problem as an international community of mankind is that we just don’t like women. At best, they are tolerated but not on an equal footing. 

Craig Hanlon Smith
Craig Hanlon-Smith

We are taught in scripture soaked schooling, and do not tell me that the Bible was written by God, because it wasn’t, Bible stores written by men that the pains that women endure are the fault of the first woman. Woman who was allowed to exist because God took a rib from Adam and formed Eve, and then Eve, the silly cow, wouldn’t listen to Adam and buggered off with the serpent for a bit of how’s your father or to use a biblical metaphor, took a bite from the apple. Either way, this was the beginning of the fall of man, and it’s the woman we should blame. And therefore men who lie with man as with woman – nasty people at the bottom of the pile and never trust a man on the bottom, in the bottom, as a bottom, oh look – whenever you see a bottom, just kill him and then blame Eve. 

Of course in a parallel universe, we could consider Adam to be an also ran. Had it not been for Eve, Adam’s tale would be an intolerably dull one and would never have been committed to parchment, the true central protagonist, Eve. In short, without woman, the creation of the world would not be.

However, history tells us that patriarchal dominance remains. The Trump card – man wins. Of course the greatest deception inflicted upon womankind by men is to encourage them to hate one another. Remember the two finalists in the race to be the next Prime Minister, where one woman suggested she would be a better candidate for political office as the other woman had been unable to have children?

Nasty. The public tearing apart of pretty much everything Hillary Clinton has ever done or had to say, by women who agreed that pussy grabbing was just banter but who send emails from the home computer worthy of a prison term. 

And so to this our first magazine edition of 2017 themed around our gay male icons; I could list them, and garble on about why these men are to be considered the movers and shakers of our modern times, but the gay men that I find really iconic? I know them personally. They are my loves, my friends, my husband, my neighbours, the regular gay guys who are (mostly) my age and have survived all the shit. The state-sponsored homophobia, the sluggish but final changes to legislation, the bullying, the beatings, the ignorance, the being laughed at and humiliated. And you know who really understands? The women because they’ve had it all too. And when your own community mocks you because you prefer to take it than give, yep, they’ve had that too, mocked by their own sisterhood for being the ‘other’ type of woman. 

And lest we forget boys, in the dark days of AIDS when the gay men were either dying or falling apart under the horror of it all, it was the women who stepped in. The women who set up support groups, who counselled our grieving gay asses, organised helplines and peopled them with their mates so that we might survive. Women who took the time to care, who knew that dismissal felt like a rusty arrow in the gut and did what they could to take that pain away from us, the gay men – potentially a dying breed.

Surely a part of our gay history to be celebrated, but alas no; instead of high fiving our lesbian sisters, who in many cases quite literally saved our lives, we erased their heroics from our minds, memories and gay-male-orientated history books. 

So the next time you’re nasty to a woman, for no other reason than that she doesn’t have a penis, remember bitch, you’re just a homo.

By Craig Hanlon-Smith @craigscontinuum

ALBUM REVIEW: ‘Before The Dawn – The K Fellowship’ Kate Bush

Posted on by Craig Hanlon-Smith

Among Angels

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Before The Dawn – The K Fellowship finds Kate Bush still King of the music mountain.

The release of any recorded material by Kate Bush has become such an event of mythical wonder that even when unnecessary re-workings of album tracks in the form of Directors Cut disappointed in 2011; fans and critics alike spoke positively of the collection with a respectful if slightly distant warmth. Bush has managed to sustain such a loyal support base from both fans and critics alike she can do no wrong, even when she perhaps might. Fortunate then that a good 99% of this latest live release is near perfection.

Before The Dawn is a full audio record of Bush’s now legendary 22 shows at The Hammersmith Apollo in Autumn 2014, with the addition of Never Be Mine (in its Director’s Cut reworking) apparently recorded in late rehearsals and then dropped from the set list at the eleventh hour: “the show would have been too too long” she recently explained in a BBC interview. Split into three acts, the first is a straight up gig running between some of her mammoth career staples, Hounds of Love, Running Up That Hill, King of the Mountain and some of her more anthemic album tracks from the later part of her career including a spectacular opener in Lily from The Red Shoes and again Director’s Cut. Concept albums The Ninth Wave from Hounds of Love, and A Sky of Honey; the second part of 2005’s double album Ariel make up the remainder and majority of what is on offer here.

On stage both these suites were directed by former RSC stalwart Adrian Noble and were as theatrical in performance as expected. The recordings here offer the perfect reminder of those live shows (the promised DVD is nowhere to be seen), and for those whose hours online to Ticketmaster were in vain, this collection is a worthy alternative to what might have been.

In short this is the kind of live album that littered the charts in the 70s, the decade that gave us the slightly more shrill Kate almost forty years ago, it stands up as a work on its own. The production is magnificent and the crowd suitably distant but at the centre of every track, a more mature and impeccable sounding Kate.

We can be in little doubt that Queen of the studio and perfectionist Madame Bush has spent the past two years trawling through the hours and hours of recordings, including her rehearsals, and what is offered here is the best of the best rather than one enchanted evening from the 2014 dates, and the spoken word segments which linked the theatrical elements of both The Ninth Wave and A Sky of Honey are a fraction clumsy out of context. These are the 1% irritations that will no doubt in time evaporate. Largely, with every listen the overwhelming response will be ‘Wow. Wow. Wow.

Unbelievable’. *****

 

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