>> Sunday, February 01, 2009
No one really cares that the new Prime Minister of Iceland is a lesbian. What I care about is the BBC's incessant need to have a news agenda and to pursue it. We can see the agenda at work in this report from the omission of a key fact which the Guardian (as so often) doesn't miss out.
The key fact is that Ms Sigurdardotti spent a lengthy time married to a banker (male) and has two grown up sons to show for it.
Guardian readers, no doubt, can be trusted with these facts which suggest rather bisexuality, or confusion, or even bitter ex-banker's wife syndrome (there's a nice little revenge motif in this saga which Icelanders might just be appreciating :-). Nuanced Guardian readers can cope elastically with all the real and tough twists and turns of adult life, unquestionably. Not so BBConline readers, apparently. Maybe their re-education process is still incomplete.
I don't pretend to understand the liberal mindset, but I know that it's much more impressive to think of people with innate characteristics, distinct from other people, which make them homosexual. It's the difference between the exotic and the banal. Choices are banal, and we all make them. Ms Sigurdardotti made hers twice in two directions, but we're only informed about the one which makes her the paragon the BBC are intent on making her:
"It's not only a victory for lesbians, it's a victory for women, actually make that a victory for all!"
(the last line from the BBC's "Gay milestone" commentary)