The Spectator’s Notes

Wednesday, 17th May 2006

The worst thing about being conservative is that it is so bad for the character.

‘Values’ tests are becoming more popular, though, as a means of working out which immigrants will make good citizens. A common theme is emerging. A key test of your suitability is thought to be your attitude towards homosexuals. In Holland, would-be immigrants have to watch a video which includes men kissing. If they don’t like it, they are suspect. In Hesse in Germany, a naturalisation test asks, ‘Your adult son declares he is a homosexual. He says he would like to live with another man. How would you react?’ And here in Britain, Ruth Kelly is catechised about her views on homosexuality and, when she declines to answer, is considered unsuitable to preside over public policy. I haven’t seen the Dutch video, and I don’t want to, partly because I can’t get out of my head the line from The Revenger’s Tragedy, ‘That will teach you to kiss closer, not like a slobbering Dutchman’, but the point is that these tests, if honestly answered, would render probably more than half the existing population unsuitable citizens in the minds of the people who set them. Merely 30 years ago, films of men kissing would have been banned in most European countries; almost no one would have been pleased that his or her son said he wanted to live with a man, and would not have been embarrassed to admit it. Even today, no orthodox adherent of mainstream Christianity, Islam or Judaism can be pleased either. There are radical disagreements about values in our society which the test-setters seem not to recognise, or to wish to stamp out. Surely the real test of citizenship and homosexual acts is to do with respecting freedom and privacy — the difference between tolerance and approval. In a truly free society, shared approval is impossible: tolerance is the key. You don’t have to like the idea of Dutchmen kissing one another but, within reason, you should grin and bear it.