Mail on Sunday columnist calls Moir 'homophobic, repulsive'

It looks bleak for Jan Moir.

Mail - and Mail on Saunday - columnists are distancing themselves from her deeply offensive views. Is the paper preparing to sack her, or are they hoping publishing critical comments will dilute the anger?

Janet Street-Porter says she was:

astonished to read in Jan Moir's column last Friday that his death 'strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships', and '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 points out that she disagrees with Moir, saying she:

didn't think that Stephen Gately's death was sanitised, as Jan claims.

Then she asks something many of us have wondered:

What exactly was bothering Jan?

The fact Stephen was gay, the fact he was in a civil partnership, or the fact that he or his partner might have enjoyed sex with someone they had just met?

But that was as nothing compared to what columnist Suzanne Moore had to say. Her article is damning, although conveniently - and rather cowardly - avoids referring to her by name.

But from the headline 'Whatever killed Stephen, it wasn’t being gay' it's not hard to know who she's on about. She begins:

Let's get just one thing clear: the cause of Stephen Gately’s death was not gayness...

Those who pruriently pick over the circumstances of Gately’s death will find that no doctor signed a certificate with cause of death ‘homosexuality’.

Which is exactly the implication that so angered so many people about Moir's vile column.

Moore continues:

What has been so offensive to many are the insinuations that his death is connected to the death of comedian Matt Lucas’s ex. How is it?

Or that these tragedies are somehow the result of civil partnerships – as though ‘straight’ marriages are non-stop heaven.

Again, she is giving voice to what so many people were asking on Friday. And then:

A man was kicked to death in Central London recently by two teenage girls because he was gay.

So while many of us could not care less, homophobia is alive and kicking. It is repulsive to see it repeatedly kicking the corpse of a popular young guy.

Oof. So there it is.

Moore calls Moir offensive, prurient, homophobic and repulsive.

Of course, for someone who writes for the Mail newspapers to complain about homophobia just because there has been this outcry is a little like shutting the stable door.

As Paul Dacre is Editor-in-Chief of the Mail group titles, it is likely he will have approved these two columns.

But it's still not an apology.

And, as far as we know, Moir will be writing her bile again this week...