Gay News: Helmut’s Cock and Victorian Prudery, 1973

Can you spot the difference?

In 1973 Gay News published a pleasantly erotic photograph of Helmut, a male soft porn 'pin up' star. In the following volume his genitals had been censored in the 'fig leaf' Victorian manner using a star shape. This prompted a protest letter from SLGLF member Gary de Vere.

His irritated 'What on earth is the matter with you' stance prompted him to wonder if Mary Whitehouse or Lord Longford, two religious moral watch dogs, had joined the Gay News staff.

Following complaints from readers he attacked the capitulation to 'respectable' standards of 'decency' demanded from people afraid of their own sexuality and questioned whether the majority of readers would be upset 'at the sight of a cock.' He also attacked the implication that there was something 'rather nasty about the genital part of sex.'

He demanded to know how far Gay News would go to accommodate the views of its readers including dropping articles on police harassment because they believed the police were a fine body of men doing a great job in very difficult circumstances.

In the final paragraph, though Helmut was a 'pleasant surprise', he rejected the notion of turning the paper into a 'pin-up forum'. His final comment was a killer: '...the picture in No.27 makes me feel sick...after all some of us have castration worries, and don't take kindly to pictures of mutilated cocks...'

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