Ian McKellen

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Sir Ian McKellen (born 1939) is a British actor who was knighted in 1991 for outstanding contributions to theater. He has gained international recognition for playing Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings series of films. He has also appeared in three films in the popular X-Men series and in anti-Christian films such as The Da Vinci Code and The Golden Compass.

Politics and sexuality[edit]

McKellen publicly came out as a homosexual at the relatively late age of 49.^[1] He was one of the founder members of the Stonewall homosexual pressure group in 1989, along with Matthew Parris, Michael (now Lord) Cashman, Angela Mason and Lisa Power. The initial aim of the group was to obtain the abolition of Section 28 of the Local Government Act passed the previous year, which prohibited any promotion of homosexuality in British schools. The clause was repealed under the Labour government in 2003. Stonewall persuaded the Labour government to replace it with a system of vigorous inculcation of homosexuality to children in all schools from the earliest age. It campaigns for an extreme LGBT agenda imposed by the most stringent means. In 2007, McKellen and Stonewall inaugurated an annual awards ceremony where the title of Bigot of the Year was publicly awarded to anyone who opposed the LGBT agenda or questioned its ideology. The victims were all Christians. One of those Christians nominated for the award was the Rev. Michael Scott Joynt, the Bishop of Winchester, because he said people should be free to question whether homosexuality is a fixed trait. ^[2] In 2007, whilst playing King Lear at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford on Avon, McKellen dropped his trousers and revealed his genitalia to an audience that included large parties of school children and their teachers. ^[3] In 2008 in order to celebrate the repeal of the blasphemy Law, and cause as much offence to Christians as possible, McKellen read out at the British Secularist and Humanist society a poem, entitled, “The Love that Dares to Speak its Name”, written by James Kirkup, in which a graphic description is given of Roman soldier performing a highly obscene act on the dead body of Jesus Christ. ^[4] McKellen is not just an atheist but a virulent opponent of Christianity who in 2009 boasted in a TV interview of ripping pages from Bibles he found in hotel rooms, because they condemned homosexuality. He boasted further of hanging these portions of scripture on a string in his toilet. ^[5] In 2010 McKellen was publicly critical of UK anti-paedophile laws requiring actors to be checked by the police for previous offences before being allowed to work with children. He claimed the laws were unnecessary and denied there had ever been any problem with child sex abuse, although there had in fact been a recent case involving an actor named Rhys Young working in McKellen's own company the Little Theatre Guild. Young was sentenced to two years and four months in jail after admitting to sexual activity with a boy, dating back to 2006. ^{[6] [7]} McKellen has freely made use of his celebrity status to promote his political agenda. In 2009, he visited Perry Beeches school in Birmingham to give moral support to Head teacher Liam Nolan who, in 2007, had been found guilty and fined £1000 and £1500 court costs for performing an indecent sexual act with an unemployed builder John Brown in a public park during school hours. ^[8] McKellen congratulated Nolan on his success in teaching children the Stonewall agenda and stamping out "homophobic bullying" although there was no evidence that any such bullying had ever taken place. ^[9] With the endorsement of McKellen, Nolan went on to direct five schools but in 2016 Nolan was removed from office for a long list of professional misconduct charges, including "a damning financial report" from the Trust. Nolan faced questions over paying himself a 'second salary' on top of his £120,000 p.a. Under Nolan's management the Trust's debts reached £1.8 million. So far McKellen has not commented. ^[10]

See also[edit]

• Hollywood values

References[edit]