Is being gay ‘left-wing’? You wouldn’t have thought so. If being gay is something which some people just are then there is no obvious reason why gays should not be of every political persuasion and none. Why should the fact that you are attracted to members of the same sex mean that you are in favour of higher taxes? Or entirely open borders? Should being gay affect your attitude towards the European Union (in any case hardly a left/right question)?
I ask because this weekend the annual ‘Gay Pride’ event happens in London and the organisers have tried to ban Ukip from attending. The sweeping generalisation – not to mention political presumption – that this reveals is extraordinary.
Firstly because it isn’t as though Pride is non-political. Groups including Liberal Democrats London Region and LGBT Labour and LGBTory are marching. Also on the demonstration will be ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’. Perhaps this group has enjoyed a resurgence because of the saccharine and politically slanted film ‘Pride’ which came out last year. The political vision of that film – and the group’s purpose in the march – suggest that it should be a gay priority to sentimentalise the extraction of fossil-fuels in Wales in the early 1980s. Well ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners’ may be an anti-Conservative grouping (and anti-reality if you ask me), but they should be welcome to march wherever they wish. Yet I cannot see why straight and gay members of that group should be able to take part in an LGBT march while gay supporters of Ukip cannot.
One claim that Pride organisers and far-left wing activists like Peter Tatchell are seizing on to justify their existing prejudices is that Ukip is a ‘homophobic’ party.
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