A British homosexual journalist admits that his documentary on the London gay scene is likely to “burn every bridge in the gay world I’ve got.”

Simon Fanshawe is a writer and broadcaster who created the documentary “The Trouble With Gay Men” after becoming increasingly alarmed at the shallowness and destructiveness of the “gay lifestyle.” The film, made for BBC 3 television, questions the emotional and psychological immaturity, narcissism, nihilism and self-destructive tendencies of many in the homosexual community. Fanshawe says he wants homosexual men to “grow up” and get beyond their state of “extended adolescence.”

Fanshawe, who was involved in the early homosexualist political movement, says, “We’ve fought discrimination and prejudice, only to wreck ourselves with drugs and wild sex.”

In his documentary Fanshawe admits that the homosexualist movement has in the main achieved its political goals of equalising homosexuality with natural sexual relations, in abolishing laws against sodomy and creating legal equivalency with marriage and adoption. Given these achievements, Fanshawe asks, “Why do we seem hell bent on behaving like eternal teenagers?”

“We’re hooked on vanity, and regard older men with contempt. Despite AIDS we’re still chasing the ultimate sexual high and what’s more are determined to wreck ourselves on designer drugs. We’re happy to assist the straight world in keeping alive the image of all gay men as limp-wristed queens.”

He says that he has recently “started to worry” about the ways in which “gay liberation is celebrated” in his hometown of Brighton, a major centre of the homosexual subculture. At the annual “Mr. Gay” beauty pageant, which he describes as a “pathetic display of self-delusion”, Fanshawe tells a contestant, “I’m old enough to remember when all those women were fighting against Miss World…What we’re all saying about ourselves is that actually to be really gay, properly gay, what you’ve got to be is cute, and young.”

“Extreme vanity” he says, has been “sewn into gay culture.” It “is now so mainstream in the gay community that otherwise intelligent young men are happy to be treated as sex objects on a demeaning meat rack.”

Gay men, he says, are so “hardwired” towards finding casual sexual encounters, some going as far as plastic implants to enhance their appearance, that finding genuine intimacy is “practically impossible.”

“Vast amounts of our leisure time are organised around sex, straight or gay. But what gay men have done is organise our identity around sex. And that is corrosive. And to make things worse, promiscuity has become the norm.”

The documentarian asks the proprietor of a gay sex bath house, “Paul”, who had just related some graphic stories of group sexual encounters in the establishment, “Are we just swimming around in a sewer which we’re just sort of saying is normal?”

For objecting to the lifestyle of pursuing casual and “extreme” sex and for holding genuine human intimacy as a goal, Paul told Fanshawe that he is “the closest thing to a straight person in a gay man’s body I have ever met. There should be an operation for you, dear.”

Paul was adamant and forthright in his belief that the gay lifestyle is incompatible with happiness and fidelity in human relations, expressing his dissatisfaction with civil unions legislation. “The temptation of other things will always stand in the way of two gay men having a long-term, loving, caring relationship.”

Fanshawe says he is horrified at the lack of emotional involvement and at the willingness of men to engage in “unsafe sex.” The film includes statistics that show the deadly consequences of the homosexual lifestyle. One in nine gay men in London is HIV infected and new cases of HIV have doubled in the city in five years. Incidences of syphilis have increased in the same time period 616 per cent.

“Unsafe” sex, he says, is not the only way in which gay men are self destructive. “If there’s a new drug, gay men will find it and take it,” he states.

At one point Fanshawe interviews a homosexual man who has “done all the drugs” and now campaigns in gay clubs against the growing use of crystal methamphetamine. The man, who could not be identified for fear of reprisals from drug dealers, said that crystal meth is preferred in the gay community because it reduces the inhibitions and allows sex to be brought to an “animalistic” level “devoid of emotion.” The film says that one in five gay men in London use crystal meth.

This story can be found in its original form here.