by Iain Dale
In many ways gay people are natural Conservatives. Conservatives believe in the freedom of the individual to make their own way in life without interference from the state. They believe in equality of opportunity and social responsibility. I could go on.
To argue, as Labour MP Chris Bryant does, that gay people should never vote Conservative because the Tories would abolish all gay rights legislation if they felt they could get away with it, is simply monstrous. If you put the age of consent or civil partnerships to a vote now, I doubt there would be more than two Tory MPs who would vote to put the clock back. Attitudes in the Conservative Party continue to evolve. No one would pretend that the Tory dinosaurs are yet extinct, but even the likes of Gerald Howarth and Peter Bone are mellowing in their old age. And, frankly, all they do is reflect the attitudes of a not insignificant part of the population.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying gay people should vote Conservative. What I am saying is that it is perfectly natural to do so.
So yes, you can be out, proud, gay and Tory. There’s a lot of it about.
Why do people think gays are paedos?
Here we go again. Back in the 1960s and ’70s, most people, bless them, took the view that the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘paedophile’ were more or less interchangeable. If your predilection was of the male-on-male variety, you didn’t particularly differentiate between men and boys. That viewpoint is still shamefully held by many, especially if they write on this subject for the Daily Mail or belong to some sort of religious fundamentalist group.
I remember a time, not so long ago, when I was involved in a discussion with a senior Tory MP about gay adoption. His line of argument was based around the apparently harmless notion that we must always ‘think of the children’.
I got rather angry: ‘What you’re effectively saying is that gay men are more likely to abuse a child than straight men.’
He started blustering, but that was exactly what he meant. He also came out with the old canard that gay parents would inevitably turn their children gay, even if they didn’t mean to. Nice. Despite what feminist writer Julie Bindel might say in her new book Straight Expectations, if you’re gay, you’re born gay. I don’t know any gay parents whose kids have grown up to be gay, although, by the law of averages, some no doubt do.
It is, of course, nonsense to suggest that gay men have any greater predilection for underage sex than straight men. Or women, come to that matter. I’d no more want to have sex with an underage boy than my own grandmother – and she’s been dead for thirty-five years. Of course, there are paedophiles among gay men, just as there are among straight men, yet, from the way the issue is still covered in some newspapers, you’d think the proportion was 90:10. For some reason newspapers seem titillated (if that’s the right word) by priests or politicians who get caught with young boys. They cover these stories with a sexual prurience that you just don’t find in stories about a builder abusing his twelve-year-old daughter. The truth is that most abuse occurs in the home or between family members, regardless of if it is between family members of the same sex or otherwise.
For some years there have been rumours that MPs and other politicians, as well as entertainers, were involved in some sort of child sex ring in the 1970s and ’80s. Various names have been the subject of rumour and gossip for years. And that’s the point: it is all, so far, rumour and gossip. But a national newspaper – the Sunday Mirror – felt it was justified in publishing all sorts of lurid allegations about various Thatcher government ministers who were supposed to have been present at party conference parties where rent boys were allegedly procured for party-goers.
On the basis of a single source, the Mirror saw fit to name various ministers who are now dead and can’t answer back, yet the newspaper shied away from naming anyone who was still alive, using the phrase: ‘The Mirror has chosen not to name him.’ So the paper is quite happy to make dirty insinuations and allegations against the dead, and thereby sully their reputations, yet shies away from doing the same to someone who can answer back. Cowards.
I make no argument against the setting-up of inquiries into historic sexual abuse by powerful people. Indeed, I welcome them. All abuse needs to be exposed as publicly as possible and the guilty need to be punished with the full force of the law.
However, I fear we are about to enter a dark period for gay people. Just when we thought we had achieved some sort of equality under the law and in the eyes of society in general, we’re going to have to endure yet more poisonous journalism from people who should know better. I wrote in a previous column about how most of us lead normal, ordinary, blameless lives, way divorced from the debauchery some journalists and religious fundamentalists seem to imagine.
So much has been done since the 1960s to gradually weaken these previously deeply held stereotypes and it is up to every decent gay man or woman to ensure that they do not take hold again.
Porn – monkey-spanking has never been cheaper
Let me pose a question to you. If straight men enjoy watching lesbian porn, is it not reasonable to assume that straight women enjoy watching gay men go at it on their BluRay screens? You’d think so, wouldn’t you? But, try as I might among my female friends and workmates, I can’t find a single one who finds the thought of watching male-on-male action in the least bit arousing. Maybe they’re all lying and are too embarrassed to admit it. The reason I say that is because apparently an increasing number of women are ordering gay porn DVDs by mail order. I can’t think they are buying them for their husbands, but you never know!
Interestingly, more and more people are prepared to be very open about their habitual viewing of onanistic porn. Porn has become part of people’s everyday lives in a way it wasn’t even ten years ago. Back in the day, to be found viewing porn, whether it was a smutty magazine or a sitting in the back row of the local porn cinema, would have meant a profound moment of shame for the perpetrator. Nowadays, if you were found looking at Readers Wives or Zipper it would barely raise a titter.
The reason for this is undoubtedly the proliferation of online porn. Older generations are able to access whatever version of porn turns them on at the press of a button. They don’t even have to pay for it any longer. It’s anonymous and, with the advent of smartphones and tablets, available when and where people want it. The same, of course, goes for younger generations, but the difference is that online porn forms a part of people’s lives from a very early age. Smartphones and tablets have ‘normalised’ porn in ways that are not altogether healthy.
Don’t get me wrong, I have a very liberal attitude towards porn. I certainly don’t regard it as exploitative, which is what feminists have long argued. To me, the greatest power a woman has is over her own body. If she wants to sell access to it, far from being exploited, she is empowering herself – just as men are.
But the prevalence of porn in schools should concern all of us. Not just what could be termed ‘normal’ porn, but the sort that would make even liberal-minded people like me turn pink at the gills. In short, fourteen-year-olds are increasingly coming to believe that violence and sex are innately linked because that’s what they see on their smartphones. I remember talking on my radio show to a mother whose fourteen-year-old son was addicted to porn and quite happily admitted it. Being a good mother, she had had a calm, reasoned discussion with him about it and he agreed it was becoming a problem, not least for the number of sheets his mother had to keep washing. But how many parents would actually sit down with a child and talk about porn addiction with them? Very few.
This does not mean I think we should return to a puritanical society where erections are not allowed to be shown on film, as was the case in this country until about twenty years ago. Far from it. Adults who wish to watch porn should be allowed to do so without undue interference from the state. Where porn is concerned, an Englishman or Englishwoman’s smartphone is their castle.
We’re told that watching porn is proof that the person who’s watching it do
esn’t have an adequate sex life or a good and fulfilling relationship. I’ve never bought into that argument. Some people have higher sex drives than others. Better to watch porn and use it as an outlet for a high sex drive than cheat on a partner. Isn’t that the adult way of looking at it?
The transformation of the porn industry in recent years has stemmed from ‘reality porn’, where people film themselves indulging in various sexual acts and then upload the footage on free access sites that are free to view for the end user. In the end, this could spell the end of professionally produced porn films as fewer and fewer people are prepared to pay £20 for a porn DVD or £10 a month for a porn website subscription. Monkey-spanking has never been cheaper!
Gay books – a kick against the pricks
Someone asked me the other day what my favourite ‘gay book’ was. My first thought was: what on earth does that mean? Do they mean that, just because I am gay, I only read books by gay authors or with a gay theme? I suppose if being gay is the main thing that defines you then you might very well spend much of your time reading gay-related literature, but even then I’d think it was a slightly odd thing to do. Why? Because unless you are someone who spends their entire life immersed in a gay sub-culture, you’re probably very much like the rest of the population. You have the same issues, problems, dilemmas, life concerns and pastimes.
But it set me thinking: how many gay-related books have I actually read? Am I letting the side down? I think the answer has to be yes, considering the last three gay books I have read are ones my company ended up publishing. I’d like to think I’d have read them anyway, even if I hadn’t published them.
Bearing in mind most of the books I read are about politics or football, and I don’t read much fiction, there’s not a lot of room for gay authors to elbow their way into my reading time, especially those who write gay-themed novels. Yes, I feel a complete philistine, but I suspect I am not alone.
Let me recommend three gay-related tomes with which you might like to idle away the odd hour or two.
Unless you come from Ireland, you may not have heard of Senator David Norris. He is an independent-minded politician and about the nearest the Irish have to their own version of Peter Tatchell, except that he has never tried to arrest Robert Mugabe. He has probably done more for gay rights in Ireland than anyone else.
His life story, A Kick against the Pricks, is fascinating, and the fact that a gay man came within a whisker of the presidency says a lot for the way the country has become a little more liberal in recent times. But it was his relationship with a former lover in Israel that proved to be his downfall. This man was put on trial in Israel for a relationship with an underage boy, and Norris wrote to the court providing a character witness. The letter was exposed in the Irish press and bang went Norris’s presidential campaign.
His story is one of the most gripping I have read for many years and, when I finished the book, I felt a profound sense of sadness that a political career was laid waste all because David Norris had the temerity to support a friend.
Another gay role model who has a fascinating story to tell is ex-soldier James Wharton. His story of life as an ‘out’ gay soldier, Out in the Army, is emotional, funny and riveting. Indeed, there are times when you laugh out loud and other times when the reader is moved to tears. Wharton’s courageous decision to come out has made it easier for other people in the three armed services to do so, and, as an epitaph, it’s not a bad one.
My favourite gay-themed novel remains Alan Hollinghurst’s The Line of Beauty. Set in the excess-fuelled Thatcher era (the Iron Lady even puts in an appearance), it remains a classic and was so good it was eventually made into a TV drama. Centring around the character of Nick Guest, who rents a room from a Tory MP, it’s a hedonistic romp full of beautiful people and drugs. Having been a Commons researcher for a Tory MP at that time, I have to say I never encountered any of these kinds of excesses. Perhaps I wasn’t looking in the right places.
Gay-related publishing is becoming increasingly difficult, not just in this country but also in the United States. The demise of physical bookstores, or indeed the virtual disappearance of specialist gay-related bookstores, has meant that fewer and fewer mainstream gay-related books ever see the light of day. The gay porn-inspired fantasy fiction genre will always have its right-handed place, but if you are an author with a gay-related book to publish, it’s increasingly difficult to find someone to publish it.
All this means that such authors end up self-publishing their books as eBooks on the Kindle. So, if you have a Kindle, search for gay novels and gay non-fiction and you might uncover a few gems. And usually for 99p!
Is there any such thing as bisexuality?
Inside the mind of every bisexual is a gay man struggling to get out. At least, that’s the view of many. It’s a widely held view that bisexuals are people who either want the best of both worlds or are still too scared to embrace their inner gayness because they are in some sort of mid-way sexuality transit lounge.
At the end of June, Tory MP Daniel Kawczynski announced to his local constituency party that he was bisexual. As far as I know, no MP has ever done that. To his utter astonishment, the thirty people present rose as one and gave him a standing ovation. I wondered at the time whether they would have done that if he had said he was gay.
It is commonly thought there are degrees of bisexuality. On a scale of sexuality, where 0 means completely straight and 100 means completely gay, a bisexual, could, I suppose, be anywhere in between. Are you bisexual if you have had a one-off tryst with the same sex? Does that mean you are at 10 on that scale? Or can you be bisexual if you are 95 per cent gay but still appreciate the curves of a female? I can still appreciate a woman’s breasts, yet my partner says he never notices them. Does that make me more of a bisexual than him?
I suppose a true bisexual is someone who is at 50 on that scale and doesn’t have a particular preference one way or the other.
I always knew I was gay, but I was twenty-eight until I did anything about it. Times were different back then. I had numerous girlfriends, but when it came down to ‘it’, I pulled away. That’s not to say I didn’t find women sexually attractive or didn’t do anything (short of ‘it’). I did, but I always knew I didn’t want ‘it’. I think most gay men have experimented with a woman ‘just to be sure’ – and who can blame them? – but experimentation does not a bisexual make.
I think there are comparatively few people who are what I would call ‘genuine’ bisexuals. Simon Hughes may or may not be one of them, but the Liberal Democrat deputy leader seems to be a politician who can’t quite get out of the transit lounge. Should we blame him for that? Should gay men criticise him because he can’t bring himself to admit what most people assume he is – gay? Not at all.
In the end, sexuality is something very personal. It is something that most people don’t have to speak publicly about or declare to the world. Hopefully the day will soon dawn when it is exactly the same for politicians. It would be nice to think that many a shoulder will be shrugged when a politician declares himself or herself to be gay. But even in these days of so-called sexual liberation, politicians’ sexualities are still phenomena that set the media and political worlds a-tittering and a-Twittering.
Daniel Kawczynski will feel a weight has been lifted from his shoulders. Yes, he will be the subject of gossip at Westminster, but that goes with the territory. There will be members of his family and long-term friends who feel let down by the fact he hasn’t been honest with them. But, in the end, they will realise that for people of a certain age, these things are incredibly difficult.
I was forty when I came out to my family, although most of my friends in London knew. Two of my best friends, who I had known since university days, didn’t, and it was one of the hardest things I had to do when I told them that I had been lying to them for the best part of twenty years. It turned out that both of them had guessed anyway, but, even so, I found it very difficult to get the words
out without blubbing.
In twenty years’ time, I really believe that no politician will have to come out of the closet, because the closet door will have been open for years. And if there really has been as much progress as I hope, no newspaper will be remotely interested in a politician’s sexual proclivities. I can but live in hope.
Lesbians – do gay men have it easier?
Even in 2014, gay men in Britain still suffer discrimination and insults. It happens more rarely nowadays, but there’s little doubt that there are still people around who believe homosexuals should expect to be treated badly because of our ‘perverted’ lifestyle.
But gay men have it easy compared to the nation’s lesbians. When I was a teenager, I assumed there were far more lesbians around than gay men, mainly because you saw them on TV more. As time went on, that changed – but, even now, a lesbian character in a soap opera causes more negative comment than a gay male one.
Not that long ago I read a review in The Spectator of a biography of Dusty Springfield, which my company Biteback had published earlier in the year. I read the review after our marketing manager Katy Scholes (herself of the lesbian persuasion) sent me the online link. Her email read: ‘Have you bloody seen this?’ She’s direct, is Katy.
The review was written by Roger Lewis, who’s a big-shot reviewer for the Mail on Sunday and someone my company would want to stay on the right side of. The review started off with this pearl of a paragraph:
