THE TIMING couldn't have been worse. Some called it tragic, others called it manipulative, but it was in the week leading up to Pride when the serial killer of gay men story really hit the headlines.
Over 50,000 people turned out for the 1993 Gay Pride march, which wound its way from Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park, with in excess of 100,000 joining in the subsequent revels at Brockwell Park.
As the crowds gathered, the police were out in force handing out leaflets appealing for assistance in catching the killer and advising people to take extra care. The mounted police and their horses were exceedingly tolerant of the wave of hands reaching out to stoke the horses' muzzles whilst conspicuously ignoring their riders.
Once such officer, an Outrage collection-can being jangled under his nose, smiled knowingly and explained that they were under instructions not to contribute to any agencies or get involved in any way other than in the course of duty.
The fact that police, undercover or not, would be mixing with the festival-going crowd was well publicised in advance in the press, in such a way as to suggest Pride would be a tense and dampened affair. Far from it. In the event there was nothing that would squash the atmosphere of celebration and solidarity. As usual, gay and lesbian couples took full advantage of the one day in the year when they can express their love in public, kissing, cuddling, larking around, making new friends, swapping phone numbers.
The builders looked on in disbelief and disgust. The look on the black-cab driver's face said it all. Face to face with an inescapable reality about which they would rather not have to think too hard. (Yes, your noses are being rubbed in it. It is usually you who have strength in numbers with which to enforce your reality: today it is us, and this is our reality.)
Tourists snapped away from open-top buses, grinning and waving back at the parade as if to a troupe of circus performers. The performers who were so inclined duly posed and camped it up.
Others, the history of struggle etched on their faces, held banners aloft with a defiance which should never have been necessary in the first place. (This, too, will get up some people's noses. Just be grateful we don't round you all up and have you shot. We suffer you to exist, but don't push it too far.)
Supporters met along the way were greeted with joyful cheers and much blowing of whistles on pink laces. A person in a hat, I believe it to have been a gentleman attired as a middle aged lady, festooned royal waves and theatrical nods of the head from the balcony of a hotel. A cheer and mischievous hands greeted the living statue of the Virgin Mary in a raised alcove, hands raised in benediction. He didn't flinch.
Chants went up: "We're here/We're here/We're not going shopping" and another to the tune of "Pop Goes The Weasel" ending in the words "Oops, I'm a fairy". A leather queen led the chant: "Give me a 'W', what have you got?" (Altogether now) "Oooooooh!"
Another group of men carried quilts decorated with the names of friends lost to AIDS: gone, certainly not forgotten, and still proud, albeit by proxy. the chief mourner was a man in wig and make-up wearing an elaborate black dress with such a train that two people had to hold it.
All along the route from Victoria Embankment to Hyde Park, via Trafalgar Square and the Strand, leaflets being distributed from the road-side by the inevitable socialist workers' party, Lesbians Against Pornography, Wages Due Lesbians, Outrage and other pressure groups.
There are different ways of looking at Pride, as a lesbian or gay man. On the one hand, this is the day when you can make a statement, attract new campaigners to your cause, pass of information, rally support in the battle against sexual bigotry. On the other it is an opportunity to kiss in public, forget your day to day concerns, soak up an atmosphere of joy, of being oneself. Put both hands together and Pride becomes both celebration and demonstration.
Snapshots: Two middle-aged men walk hand in hand. A very fat woman gives a very small woman a huge, spontaneous hug. A Divine clone wobbles past with his fluttering attendants. A group of moustachioed, leather-clothed men swop witticisms and laugh amiably. A woman with breasts exposed neath fishnet bodysuit leads her tattooed lover on a spiked collar and lead.
I see a woman with multiple decorating scarrings on her arms. I see buttocks exposed through chaps, legions of short hair worn by both males and females, ludicrous wigs, DMs, stilettos, trainers, piercings. I see strangeness and diversity and an absence of shame. And this is of the essence.
Pride has to do with self-respect, with refusing to hide yourself away as though you had a guilty secret, with demonstrating to yourself and others that you like and approve of who you are. Not easy when who you are, expressed through what you do in some of the most intimate ways, is actually forbidden in the law books and punishable!
You go on a Pride march, you don't know who's going to see you there or in the media coverage, still less how they will react. It can involve a great deal of courage and it can be very liberating. Pride then is refusing to give in to the sexual fascists, refusing to cower in fear and compliance. Pride is...pride.
THE PRESS AND THE POLICE
This year, the week leading up to Pride, the serial killer story broke. This was excellent new for the press. Once they knew a killer was stalking the gay (sordid, seamy, promiscuous) meeting places (pick-up joints) of London, they reverted to varying degrees, to the level of the Victorian penny dreadful.
On Thursday 18th June, they had a field day. The night before, they had attended a midnight press conference at Scotland Yard, at which police said they would be interviewing Michele Lupo and Dennis Nilson in the hope of getting some insight into the workings of the killer's mind. This together with Detective Chief Supt. Ken John's impassioned pleas to the killer to give himself up on whatever terms, gave the hacks all they needed to sell, sell, sell.
"Hannibal Hunt for Serial Killer", yelled the Mirror, a model of restraint. Today quoted a criminal psychologist's theory that the killer believed himself to be on a divine mission to rid the world of homosexuals. The Mail went for the gay man with AIDS seeks revenge storyline, managing to make the all-important connection between GAY, AIDS, REVENGE, and DEATH which helps us all to not think of Them as being like, or as important as, Us.
"Gay Killer in 20 New Attacks", said the Evening Standard. Is he gay? We don't know. A box-in said "AIDS Victim's Orgy of Revenge" to point you towards the recycled story of Michele Lupo the Italian socialite of the London fashion scene cum secret SM prostitute, who turned murderer when he found he had AIDS. Lupo took four lives before being sentenced at the Old Bailey in July 1987 to four life sentences.
Below this, another headline: "Naked mud wrestling at the Angel's SM gay club." It referred to the monthly information meeting held by the twelve year old group SM Gays. They are not quite human, of course. They are "sadomasochists who get their kicks by inflicting pain on themselves and their partners."
Not surprisingly, Linda Semple, press officer with the London lesbian and Gay Switchboard (LLGS), described this press coverage as 'outrageous': "They manage to use the sort of phrase which is almost blaming the victim. It seems to say 'If you're engaging in these practices, you deserve to be murdered'. The press has taken this dreadful AIDS revenge killer line. As far as we know, there are absolutely no grounds to believe that."
If anything, it is pure paranoia fodder. Linda is also dismayed by the way in which she sees the existence of a murderer being used to re-affirm negative images of gay people, linking them with disease and death.
"It's that awful urban myth," she commented, "of the crazed HIV positive person going round infecting people deliberately, I think it's been fed into the public consciousness."
Relaying information received from the gay community regarding the killer has become a full-time job for Galop, the gay and lesbian police monitoring group, and the Switchboard. It is a job they are happy to do, but one which should not be necessary. Linda explained the difficulty: "We said if the police would firmly guarantee immunity from prosecution for SM men and those involved in the leather scene, they would get so much more information. They are phoning the Switchboard and Galop saying 'Yes, we have information, but I can't give it to the police or they'll prosecute us like they did the Spanner people.' The fact that they haven't given that commitment makes people not want to come forward."
Switchboard was one of the organisations with which the police consulted when constructing the warning and advice for gay people while the killer is at large. Linda doubts that this level of co-operation would have occurred as recently as five years ago, when issues such as policing of toilets and a less than helpful attitude towards victims of queer-bashing were the norm.
The warning does not advise people against casual pick-ups, although to the outsider this might seem to be the obvious suggestion. There is a good reason for this. "I don't think we should be policing people's sexuality. We are saying, if you're going with someone you don't know, make sure someone knows where you're going-even the bar man will do. Make sure someone sees your partner and make sure someone is expecting you to get in touch the next day."
At this year's Pride, the Met were out in force, distributing leaflets issuing the warning and appealing for information. They also took out an ad in the programme wishing everybody a happy and safe Pride. Linda: "I think they've realised London has a very big lesbian and gay community and that they have a duty to everybody in the community.
"The whole way the press treated it was only to be expected. Given them the words 'serial killer' and they just go wild. With Lupa and Nilsen it was exactly like this. The press have learnt nothing. The police have learnt a lot."
A MATTER OF CHOICE
Despite expectations, in the twin lights of Spanner and the killer, members of the SM gay community have not gone into hiding. Instead, they were out and proud at the march, carrying black PVC banners high and hiring an information stand at the Brockwell Park festival afterwards.
Derek Cohen is the organiser of SM Gays, a group formed in 1981, as a non-profit making social and educational group for gay men interested in consensual sadomasochistic sex. It describes its aim as being "to encourage safe and lawful SM practices through the sharing of information among people with similar interests." The group offers advice and information for gay SM men on safe SM practices and has published a booklet together with the Switchboard on the subject.
It also advises on what to do if busted by the police: "The first thing is you get a solicitor. There are openly gay solicitors who will give you good advice. if police arrive at your home or whatever, don't say anything. No comment."
Where the killings are concerned, if there is truth in the SM link, then the help of SM gays is particularly important to the police, yet they have extra reasons to distrust and fear guardians of the law.
"They said explicitly with the Peter Walker murder," says Cohen, "that they would have immunity for crimes up to but not including grievous bodily harm. Now the whole point about grievous bodily harm is in connection with Spanner. What they were saying was, if you come to us and you help us with an inquiry into murder, and we discover you've been beating someone, we're not going to give you immunity. And I think the police have discovered that that didn't help very much."
Since Spanner, he said, there have been an increasing number of raids on people's homes where police have been looking for child pornography, but on failing to find any, have instead taken away leathers, jeans, clothes, sex toys, videos, computers, address books...
In Barnsley, 38 men were arrested at a party. "They stripped the place of anything with any vague sexual connotation. They'll take anything they can find," said Cohen. Fortunately, lessons have been learnt from Spanner and 36 of the men retained their right to silence.
Publications have been seized from the Clone Zone in Manchester, a shop into which minors and members of the public sure as hell are not going to wander into by accident. One magazine, FF, has been seized on the grounds that the initials might stand for 'Fist Fucking'.
Cohen sees this as 'queer bashing by the police' as well as a way of boosting arrest figures, now that a new criminal class has been conveniently created. In addition, he suspects that both pornography and the killer are being used as an excuse to gather information on SM people.
What would he say in response to those who describe SM activities as 'violent' and who condemn it as such, whether consenting or otherwise? As far as Derek is concerned, 'consent' is the key word.
"Violence is not a word I would ever use about SM: in fact, just the opposite, violence is the non-consensual infliction of injury on another person. It's an attack against them. SM is sexual activity with people which may involve some makers, some pain, some power, some games, but they are for fun, they're consensual, and in fact there are more levels of intensity.
"Consensuality is the fundamental thing, and I think when people say SM is violence, they're doing just what the law's doing. In the Spanner case, the very fundamental issue was that the judge said consent is immaterial. What the law is saying is consent doesn't matter.
"It's a bit like saying, rape is sex, what difference does it make? It's all sex. Consent is the dividing line between SM and violence, between sex and rape and all sorts of things, and I think people who say SM is violence are denying a very fundamental thing about human rights, which is about consent.
"And it works both ways. It's my ability to consent or deny consent to someone injuring me or causing me pain or tying me up, it's also my ability to consent to actually asking to have that done. If I'm entitled to say 'No, I don't want to be hit, I don't consent to you beating me up' then I should at the same time be able to say "I do want to play this heavy game with you.' I don't see why I should be allowed one sort of consent and not the other."
He is unimpressed and unsurprised at the press coverage of the murder hunt: "There's a lot of discussion about a seedy, dark underworld, whatever. It seems to me, if you're part of an underworld, you don't have banners and stands and walk around saying 'I'm proud to be into SM.' It sells newspapers to talk about people's victims, and to talk about people being secret and embarrassed and ashamed."
There has been something positive to come out of the Spanner proceedings. Derek suspects it has had the reverse effect to that desired by Lord Jauncey: "It has brought a lot more people out about their SM sexuality. Sure, I would love to have SM written about in all the newspapers. Unfortunately the likeliest way for that to happen is when people get prosecuted, with the result that there is so much publicity on television, the radio, so much more written about SM organisations. The result is more people saying 'Hey, look, there's more people like us.' You could say that it's backfired.
"People don't necessarily say 'I'm a sado-masochist,' but they do recognise 'Hey, I like a bit of slap and tickle, I might from time to time want to tie my lover up to the bed, I might want to run my nails down his oiled back or whatever' and people say, 'I don't want to have some law book by my bed to say when I've got to stop.'
"Human sexuality isn't compartmentalised like that: it flows, depending on the sex scene, the relationship, whatever, and I think people don't want the law to put very artificial dividing lines to their sexual creativity."
THE QUESTION OF IMMUNITY
Jackie Bennett is one of the police officers at Scotland Yard handling press enquiries pertaining to the serial killer. She is understandably cautious, given the ways in which the words of Det. Chief Supt. Ken John's have been used by the less meticulous members of the press.
The day before I spoke to her, the News of the World had offered its own version of what was entailed in the police's work in hunting down the killer. Amongst other things, the newspaper reinforced the claim that police are working on the theory that the killer is an HIV positive man seeking revenge on 'promiscuous gays who enjoy frequent casual and violent sex.'
"We don't know what the killer's motive is," Jackie Bennett corrected. She described allegations of an SM link as media speculation, and when asked about newspaper claims that all five victims were bound arm and leg said: "We're not discussing that. All we're saying is that they were naked."
The matter of immunity from prosecution for SM people reluctant to come forward with information for fear of implicating themselves for their own private, recently criminalised, sexual activities, is high on the police agenda. A meeting had been set for that afternoon with the gay community and gay press about the subject.
"Our police is that we never make a habit of prying into what goes on the privacy of people's homes," Jackie Bennett said. "SM is not an exclusively gay habit, heterosexual people practice it too. We are not thought police. We need people to come forward with information. We won't be looking for anything else from them."
But 38 gay SM men were recently arrested at a party, for engaging in consenting sexual activities. How can the police expect to win their trust under such circumstances? "We don't make the law: we only enforce it. They are very, very, sensitive to this. That's why we're having this meeting," Bennet asserted.
Later, we spoke again.
"Officers met with gay organisations and media,* she explained. *The police reiterated warnings and appeals to take care. The meeting was positive and constructive."
On the subject of immunity, she chose her words carefully: "As far as we can go without getting into legal problems is to say that our main priority is to catch the killer." Reading between the lines the message would seem to be: come to us covered in scratches and bruises, we've got to ask you how it happened, we can't ignore it.
I put it to her that, in effect, the police were saying that they would not be actively scrutinising their informers for evidence of illegal SM activity. Her reply was terse but potentially reassuring: "We really need people to come forward."
CREATING AN ANTI-GAY CLIMATE
Kayode Olifima, the founder of The Edge Gallery is no stranger to controversy. It was no surprise then when The Edge's latest exhibition - "Sex crimes: repression and censorship in nineties Britain" - got off to a bang with the Guardian speculating about the possibility that the SM photographs and sculptures on display might be seized.
This is exactly what the exhibition is about: it is being staged as a demonstration of opposition to the Spanner ruling, which criminalised consenting sadomasochistic sex, and the subsequent intrusions by the authorities into the sex lives of adults. The Law Lords used the absurdly antiquated 1861 Offences Against the Person Act to nail the convictions. Lord Templeman was quoted as saying: "Pleasure derived from the infliction of pain is an evil thing. Cruelty is uncivilised".
The words 'inflict' and 'cruel' seem somehow incongruous when placed in the context of free consent. What is 'uncivilised', said Kayode, is the authorities 'wanting to put a policeman at the end of everybody's bed.'
An exhibit: two mirrors facing each other. One bears the faces of uniformed policemen, the other two phrases: "Consent is no defence" and "Your body, their civilisation". Look into either mirror and you find yourself surrounded by an infinity of grim faced coppers and the two echoing phrases.
The criminalisation of consenting SM is only the latest restriction to be placed on sexuality. An information board at the exhibition lists three 'serious crimes', as defined by the 1991 Criminal Justice Act (Section 30). Soliciting (cruising, or meeting in a public place); procuring (under which charges of 'facilitation' can be brought against you if you let two gay friends stay the night) and gross indecency, a catch-all phrase that covers any public homosexual act, including kissing and caressing.
Even before the Spanner ruling, then, there were plenty of reasons for the gay community to be less than trustful of the police force. Kayode: "I think it is ludicrous for the police to now present themselves as the protectors of gays when in fact they are in the forefront of criminalising gays. I think that despite all they've said, it's very clear they have a hidden agenda about disreputable sex."
Gay people have not been particularly high on the police list of people to protect, although moves have been made through liaison with the Switchboard and other gay organisations to improve relations. As matters stand, though, of 68 police divisions in London, only six keep records and statistics on gay bashing: were more vigorous records kept, argue some, the fact that a serial killer was on the prowl could have come to light much earlier, maybe preventing further deaths.
Kayode finds the focus on whether the killer is gay, whether he is HIV positive to be both irrelevant and moralistic. The authorities are the real problem, he feels. Violence towards gay men happens "because of the climate where that is a legitimate sort of activity. An anti-gay climate has been created. It is the police and authorities that are creating this climate."
Hysterical? Paranoid? Think on this: there are six different ways in which a gay man can get arrested for having a kiss, listed on an information board at the exhibition. One is Breach of the Peace. It works like this: by kissing, the participants may provoke someone else to become violent towards them. This is an attitude which is being propagated in press coverage of the serial killer. Kayode: "The victim of the assault becomes the cause of it and is criminalised accordingly." Like a woman in a short skirt who has had several sexual partners is probably to blame if she gets raped. Sexuality, it seems, deserves punishment.
The exhibition's content is actually fairly restrained and very well balanced. It does set out to shock, but it is our complacency which it seeks to shock into discussion and debate. Kayode: "What is shocking is not private sexual behaviour, but the authorities trying to dictate what that may or may not be."
There are photographs of women in bondage harnesses by Della Grace, sculptures by Christina Berry and Angus Hamilton, photographs by Richard Sawdon Smith, Gordon Rainsford, a short SM fantasy film, "The Attendant", by Isaac Julian, previously screened at the National Film Theatre. So far only one person has expressed outright distaste, an un-named woman journalist.
The objects on display are not of a violent nature: they are, however, thought-provoking and often touching. A knotted condom, partially filled with blood, hangs on a washing line. A thigh is slit with a razor, a face is raised to bathe in the sun-lit urine showered down from between two hairy thighs. A group of people light cigarettes from a cluster of candles, appearing to protrude from someone's anus. Two pierced nipples are shown with a skewer running through them. Two men kiss. Four images of flagellation are warped through reverse colour negative.
Importantly, emotion, affection and humour are far from absent, the allegory of trust being enacted through the threat of pain, where it is not a threat, through voluntary helplessness and abandon, through the desire to experience tabooed sensations which, because experienced as pleasure, can scarcely be considered pain in the first place. Liberation through restriction. Fulfilment through fantasy. Black nylon stockings or black leather harness. It's just a matter of personal preference.
Lord Jauncey (Spanner appeal): "A relaxation of the prohibition can only encourage the practice which can scarcely be considered as a manly diversion." Information board: "Despite the Operation Spanner verdict, some forms of consenting actual bodily harm remain lawful. These include surgery, ear-piercing, ritual circumcision - and rugby."