by Iain Dale
And that’s, er, it. But, of course, it’s about more than any of the above; it’s actually about equality, isn’t it? It’s about being seen as equal to our straight counterparts. Except, of course, we are not, and maybe never will be – and this is why…
I don’t have any religious convictions, although I am agnostic rather than an atheist. But, with my rather traditional, conservative upbringing, I respect people who do hold religious beliefs. As a child, I was confirmed into the Church of England – I was even a camponologist (a bellringer, for the uninitiated). Well, it was either that or be a choirboy (the less said about that the better). I like going to harvest festivals and, to me, a wedding isn’t really a wedding unless it has been conducted in a church. I don’t like the clinical feel of registry offices. There’s nothing romantic about them whatsoever.
But, of course, under the equal marriage laws, the likes of us can’t get married in a church, even if the church or vicar was prepared to do it. In our case, where neither of us are believers, they would have a very good case for not marrying us anyway; but there are plenty of gay Christians out there who would dearly love to be able to get married in a church, and it is my strong hope that one day they will be able to do so.
But, for us, on an as-yet-undecided date in 2015, seven years after our civil partnership, we’re going to get properly hitched. Well, it’s one way of avoiding the seven-year itch, isn’t it?
Proof that politicians aren’t all the same
Some time ago I got a phone call from the Liberal Democrat MP and International Development Minister Lynne Featherstone. Would I be the guest speaker at a fundraising dinner she was organising?
‘What’s it for?’ I asked.
‘My re-election campaign war chest,’ she replied.
Gulp.
Although I am no longer active politically and not a member of a political party, this presented me with something of a moral dilemma. I don’t pretend that my political views don’t remain firmly on the right of centre, with the odd bit of social liberal leftiness thrown in for good measure, but presenting a daily radio show on LBC means that I deliberately stay away from any sort of party political endorsement.
Furthermore, wouldn’t it be betraying my old friends and colleagues in the Conservative Party – the very people who had supported me through thick and thin when I was fighting a Lib Dem MP in a marginal seat in the 2005 election? A real dilemma.
Except in the end it wasn’t. I count Lynne Featherstone as a friend, and you do things like this for friends, don’t you? You wouldn’t be much of one if you didn’t. But, apart from that, there is another major reason why I would have felt a complete heel if I had said no to Lynne.
Enoch Powell – and I reckon this is the first time he’s ever been mentioned in this esteemed organ – once said that ‘all political careers end in failure’. Well, unless she is forced to resign because she is found in bed with the entire Arsenal reserve team, I reckon it is safe to say that when Lynne goes to meet her political maker, she will be able to look back and think: ‘Not bad, not bad.’
Her crowning political achievement will have been to be the driving force behind the equal marriage legislation. By the time it was enacted, she had been reshuffled from her job in the Home Office to the Department for International Development, but everyone knew that, without her, it probably wouldn’t have happened. She is living proof that politicians can change things if they have the drive, initiative and persistence.
On only her second day in office, back in May 2010, she attended a meeting of junior ministers where they were told if they had any ideas for doing anything major, they needed to get them in early. She immediately latched onto the idea of introducing same-sex marriage. I suspect even she hadn’t counted for the very vocal opposition she would have to encounter, and I know there were times she thought that it would never see the light of day. But, when you have the Home Secretary, Deputy Prime Minister and Prime Minister on your side, you stand a good chance of pulling through.
I remember getting a call from someone in No. 10, at a crucial point in the passage of the bill, wanting to make very clear that this bill was going through only because the Prime Minister was giving it his personal backing and endorsement. The subliminal message was that they thought Lynne Featherstone was claiming too much of the credit. It’s certainly true that few bills ever go through unless the PM backs them – and, on this issue, he has form, having supported gay marriage as far back as his first party conference speech as leader in 2006.
But, in the end, same-sex marriage will be associated with Lynne Featherstone in the same way that we associate David Steel with the 1967 Abortion Act and Roy Jenkins with the legalisation of homosexuality.
No wonder that, in 2012, Lynne was given Attitude’s Politician of the Year Award.
Since then she has led the campaign to banish female genital mutilation from this country. At the Home Office, she persuaded the Home Secretary to launch a very public campaign against this barbaric practice, and talked about it in a way that made the media cover it too. Believe me, hosting a radio phone-in on a subject like that isn’t an easy thing to persuade your editor to allow you to do.
So, for all those reasons, in mid-November, I will be trying to persuade a roomful of Lib Dems to part with their money on behalf of Lynne Featherstone – a woman who can truly say she’s changed the world. For us.
Why Peter Tatchell is right … and wrong
Seeing as this is Attitude’s awards issue, let me present my very own Lifetime Achievement Award for service to gays. And the winner is … *cue drumroll* … Peter Tatchell.
That surprised you, didn’t it?
I have a tremendous admiration for Peter and all that he has achieved since he first came to prominence when he was Labour candidate in the 1983 Bermondsey by-election. His politics are about as far from mine as you can get, but I think it is true to say that, without his zestful campaigning and unwillingness to take no for an answer, the cause of gay equality wouldn’t have got as far as it has. I’ve disagreed with aspects of his campaigning tactics, but there’s no doubt that he has been effective in more than raising the profile of issues of gay equality – he has done a lot for human rights generally. You can sense the ‘but’ coming, can’t you?
Unfortunately, I think Peter is in danger of believing that the tactics he used in the 1980s are just as appropriate nowadays. He is in danger of living in a timewarp, where the only way of achieving a reform is to shout about it, demonstrate and basically cause an almighty stink. He decries the fact that the LGBT community is now seen as ‘respectable’. He alleges that we’ve ‘also witnessed a retreat from radical idealism to cautious conformism’. No, Peter, what we’ve witnessed is a growing realism by LBGT campaigners that the tactics of demonstration and resistance, which once might have worked, no longer do, and that equality campaigning needs to take on a more subtle tone.
He laments the fact that ‘there has been a massive retreat from the ideals and vision of the early LGBT liberation pioneers’. He says: ‘Most LGBT people no longer question the values, laws and institutions of mainstream society. They are content to settle for equal rights within the status quo – despite its many flaws and failings.’
I’d put it very differently. The early campaigners for sexual liberation delighted in splitting themselves off from mainstream society. But what they ignored, or didn’t realise, is that most gay men and women actually see themselves as little different from their straight counterparts, apart from the obvious. We go to the same shops, cinemas and restaurants. We drive the same cars, live in the same places, wear the same clothes. Some 98 per cent of us don’t conform to the stereotype. Put us in an identity parade and you’d never tell us apart. But that’s not what Peter Tatchell wants to hear. We should wear our sexuality on our sleeves. Or, preferably, on our foreheads.
In the end, I suppose it comes down to this: are you a man who happens to be gay, or a gay who happens to be a man? I suspect
that 98 per cent of us would allocate ourselves to the first category. I am defined by who I am. Being gay is part of who I am, but it isn’t the defining factor. And nor should it be. Fundamentalist gays will, no doubt, accuse me of letting the side down, or worse, but I couldn’t give a monkey’s arse.
So, when Peter Tatchell writes that the first Gay Pride marchers saw the family as ‘a patriarchal prison that enslaves women, gays and children’, I almost want to retch. He says that, ‘four decades later, the focus on safe, cuddly issues, like civil partnerships and marriage, indicates how LGBT people are increasingly reluctant to rock the boat and are more than happy to embrace traditional heterosexual aspirations’.
It’s got nothing to do with ‘rocking the boat’; it’s all to do with equality and believing in the institution of family. This has little to do with sexual politics, more to do with extreme left-wing views about family politics.
In Peter’s view, ‘the LGBT movement has finally succumbed to the mainstream politics of conformism, respectability and moderation’. Or, to put it another way, the LGBT movement has matured into adulthood.
That doesn’t mean I don’t recognise Peter’s brilliant campaigning work or seek to diminish it. Quite the reverse. All I am saying is that present-day campaigning isn’t all about shouting and wearing T-shirts with offensive slogans. It’s got to be cleverer than that.
Gay holidays
Nowadays, I would no more think of going on a gay-only holiday than I would think of going on a beach holiday to North Korea. But, then again, perhaps those types of trips aren’t aimed at me. What put me off this type of holiday was a boat trip in Florida I took in 1993. I had driven to Key West from Miami and rather nervously booked into a gay-only hotel. I’d never stayed in one before. Let’s put it this way, it was quite an eye-opener to someone not very familiar with the ways of these establishments. I soon got the hang of it, needless to say. Ooh, er.
One day, I decided to go on an organised day trip on a boat with around a dozen other gay guys. To say that they mostly fitted a stereotype is to insult stereotypes. It was like Sean off Coronation Street meeting his eleven identical cousins, all preening themselves while talking ten to the dozen in the campest of American accents. Not my ideal way of spending six hours bobbing up and down on water, unable to escape. And then came the thunder and lightning, which usually happens at around 3 p.m. every day in southern Florida. Our boat actually got hit by the lightning, which was quite an experience. The screams had to be heard to be believed. It was a relief in more than one way to get back to the shore without having either been burnt to a cinder or deafened by the constant uber-camp babble.
Not that long afterwards, a friend went on a gay-only cruise around the Caribbean for seven days. He described it as a week-long orgy. He reckoned that, at times, he’d had to lock himself in his cabin. Well, he’s a good-looking lad, but I reckon he protested just that little bit too much. I’ve heard similar tales of gay-only skiing trips, where monogamous couples were treated with a diffident air of disdain and contempt because they wouldn’t join in the fun. Perhaps they are the exception, but there does seem to be a common theme to some of these holidays.
And why not, if that’s your thing? It’s a bit like a holiday version of Grindr without needing a phone. I’m certainly not looking down my nose at people who go on what are tantamount to sex holidays. If I were twenty years younger…
Oh, and not married (he adds, hastily).
So, apart from the distinct possibility of getting your end away on a regular basis, what prompts people to go on gay-only holidays? I reckon it’s a bit like supporting a football team. You’re part of a tribe and, when you’re with your tribe, you lose certain inhibitions. You can totally be yourself without worrying what certain other members of society will think. You have things in common, not just a cock. There’s no pressure to conform to society’s norms. The only pressure is to conform to a sort of gay norm, however you define that.
The main drawback is that, if you’re going on a sun-based holiday and you don’t have the body beautiful, there’s that tremendous temptation to come over all shy and be ashamed to reveal all. This thought is reinforced by the adverts for gay resorts and cruises, where everyone pictured is an Adonis with the body beautiful. The reality, I am assured, is somewhat different. I’ve never been on a gay beach holiday, but I’m sure there are plenty of love handles to go round.
My only experience of a gay resort holiday was over New Year 1994/95, when I booked myself into a gay resort in Palm Springs. I hate New Year, so I thought this might be a good antidote to my normally horrendous time on New Year’s Eve. It wasn’t. I have never felt so uncomfortable in my life. It was full of older gay couples, all of whom seemed determined to have a threesome with me. I even missed the midnight celebrations as I had fallen asleep at 8 p.m.! I lasted two days before I drove off to the bright lights of Las Vegas five days earlier than planned. It was almost a relief to re-enter the world of the straights.
Nudity
We British have a very strange attitude to the human body and showing it in public. I’ve never quite understood why. Perhaps it’s an innate puritanism that runs through our society, alongside a rather quaint hankering after Victorian times where a woman exposing a bare ankle was enough for her to be branded a ‘brazen hussy’. I’ve always wanted to use that phrase in an Attitude column. I can now die happy.
The majority of Britons imagine that you have to wear a swimming costume in a sauna, conveniently ignoring the fact that wearing anything that gets between the heat and the skin completely obviates the whole point of being in a sauna. On the Continent, everyone lets it all hang out without worrying a jot about what anyone thinks. Indeed, if you walk into a sauna in swimming trunks or a bikini you’d attract some very odd looks and, certainly in some countries, it’s obligatory to take your clothes off. Neighbours think nothing of taking saunas together completely in the ‘nud’. You’d never get that in this country unless it was all part of the foreplay for a swingers’ party. Not that I would, ahem, know. Obviously.
There is still a prurience about nudity in Britain. Why is it, after all, that many of the pictures in this magazine and others depict people who are semi-naked, but only semi. In Germany, even some mainstream magazines have no hesitation in showing the full naked human form – and most of their readers don’t bat an eyelid.
Recently Rita Ora got into trouble for appearing on The One Show wearing a dress with a bit of cleavage showing. The fuss that arose was astonishing. This wouldn’t have happened even ten years ago, I don’t think. It wasn’t as if she was flaunting her breasts. There was no nipple in view, but even if there had been, so what? What on earth is wrong with showing a nipple? It’s a part of the human body, just like a kneecap. Everyone has two of them, so why are they considered off limits in the world of newspapers and magazines?
It wasn’t that long ago that an erect penis wasn’t allowed to be shown on screen in this country, even in a pornographic film. A woman’s body could be shown in all its glory – you could have close-ups of a gaping vagina – yet a full view of an erect penis was considered too much by the censors. That ridiculous rule was scrapped some time ago, but you’ll still rarely catch a glimpse of a cock, flaccid or erect, on TV, although full female nudity is considered fair game. It’s a sexist old world.
All this brings me to the latest government initiative to restrict our sexual freedoms. In future, no British porn film will be allowed to depict some sexual practices that are perfectly legal for people to undertake in the privacy of their own homes. I’ve never quite understood the desire of anyone to be pissed on, but some people apparently get off on it. Well, it harms no one, so fair enough, I guess, but you won’t be able to look at a British-made film that depicts it any longer. The same goes for inserting non-dildo pieces of equipment into various orifices. Fisting is out. Again, not something I’d either want to try out or watch, but there are those who do. This is the Nanny State writ large an
d I hope there will be enough MPs who will speak out and get this proposal consigned to the big tissue bin of history. Credit to the Lib Dem MP Julian Huppert for being the first to try to persuade the Home Office to withdraw it.
Essentially, this is a proposal designed to wreck the thriving British porn industry, because if people can’t watch what they want to watch on a British-made film, you can rest assured they will find their monkey-spanking material elsewhere. Theresa May’s role as Home Secretary is not to be the Mother of the Nation, it is to defend our freedoms and civil liberties. And one of our basic civil liberties is to watch completely harmless porn in the safety of our homes. Not that I do of course. Oh no. No sireeee! Never let it be said!
Style
Just like beauty, style is in the eye of the beholder. Of course the word ‘style’ means very different things to different people. Some people have it, some of us don’t. I’ve never pretended to be a dedicated follower of fashion, which I am sure you will find a massive surprise given the rather lovely picture that adorns this page. Indeed, when I attended the Attitude photoshoot (a sentence I never thought I’d write) I was given a Hugo Boss suit to wear, which, given the rather odd shape of my body (long in the back, short in the leg), fitted astonishingly well. Now, I’m sure everyone thinks that at these photoshoots we get to keep the clobber. Not a bit of it. So off I trotted to Hugo Boss in Sloane Square to locate this rather well-fitting suit. Naturally I ended up buying two.
