Killing a gay man is no worse than killing a disc jockey

24 June 2006

Most people in the country, I suspect, would view these discrepancies as politically correct nonsense — and terribly unjust to boot. Killing someone because you hate the fact that he is gay is not really any worse than killing someone because you hate the football team he supports, or the suit he is wearing, or the social class from which he originates. They are all acts which are pretty much equal in their quotient of evil. But somehow we have got ourselves into a position where these ludicrous, politically motivated judgments are made all the time and we have become so inured to the whole business that we do not complain. One reason this should be the case came in a recent edition of Question Time, from Sheffield, which was remarkable in that the three politicians (Lord Faulkner, Theresa May and Mark Oaten) on the panel agreed with each other — in an incalculably earnest and terribly concerned manner — about absolutely everything. And, more remarkable still, the studio audience agreed with the politicians. It was an agreeably calm ocean of nodding heads and polite applause and political consensus.

And yet my guess is that the overwhelming majority of people in the country would have disagreed with almost all that the politicians and the audience had to say. For example, the panel and the audience were pretty much in agreement that Sir Ian Blair, the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, should not be held to account for the erroneous shooting of an innocent Muslim resident of Forest Gate and the subsequent lies which issued forth from the Met press office; but that the police had to be extremely sensitive and consensual when dealing with Muslim communities in general, and tread very carefully. I reckon most ordinary people think the precise opposite: that Sir Ian should be held to account because he, or his men, got it badly wrong again — but that this should not stop the police investigating Muslim communities with great rigour.