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. Those backing a ban on Ukip activists attending Pride point to a couple of nutty party members who have said a few nutty things. All parties, it must be said, can be held guilty of that. And why is one Ukip party councillor who blamed heavy rainfall on gay marriage so much more serious an indictment on a party than the fact, for instance, that the Liberal Democrats in recent years harboured an MP who appears to have been a rapacious child-abuser?
As an outsider from all political parties, it strikes me that Ukip has a rather open-minded view of gays. One proof is not just in the preaching, but in the practise. For instance the party has an openly gay MEP and a large number of open LGBT candidates among other prominent party figures. Contrast this with the Liberal Democrats, a party which may preach one thing but practises something very different. Remember that until its evisceration at the recent election the Lib Dem Parliamentary party seemed almost entirely made up of closeted gay men who only came out when forced to do so by a media scandal. Hardly ‘gay pride’ is it?
The panjandrums of Pride are also seizing on the fact that Ukip didn’t lead the charge on the institution of gay marriage. Well let me break some news to these big gay bigwigs. A few years ago most of them weren’t on board with gay marriage either. I well remember that when I was arguing the conservative case for gay marriage (including in The Spectator), among the groups that would not support the call for gay marriage was ‘Stonewall’. That group is, of course, one of the most prominent groups now involved in this weekend’s ‘Pride’. But back then Stonewall claimed that equal marriage was not a priority and that other issues should take campaigning precedence. Of course they had, and have, every right to that view. But should being so very late to the gay marriage cause disqualify Stonewall from participation on Saturday? Nigel Farage has clearly stated that Ukip would certainly not revoke equal marriage legislation should the party somewhat surprisingly come to power. Why should Ukip be banned from Pride and Stonewall not?
Now the latest weasel-claim of the Pride organisers is that Ukip supporters must stay away for health and safety reasons, as though the organisers cannot – or will not – provide safe passage to people they have helped to smear. Oh the ironies. Back when Pride marches had a point they really could be dangerous. That is one thing that made the movement necessary. But today if there really was any threat to any participants in Pride it should be something which should make every other participant rally around the people under threat, not abandon them. In the same way I would hope that if Imaan (the Muslim LGBT group) were under any threat whatsoever for their participation in the march that every other marcher would stand alongside them and defend them.
Some people, including Peter Tatchell, do seem to be realising that this whole Ukip-ban might be wrong. But they retain their support for a ban on Ukip at Pride. And this is where we get back to the left-wing thing. Because in his search for a reason to ban gays from Pride Tatchell argues that, ‘Ukip… wants to repeal the Human Rights Act and withdraw from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)’. His follow-on claim is that the European courts and conventions protect gay people. So he asks, ‘Why would any party, other than a homophobic one, want to break links with a court that has done so much good for LGBTs?’ Well goodness me. Perhaps it is possible that some Ukip gayers notice that most of the real advances in gay rights have come courtesy of the British Parliament rather than by the arm-twisting of a foreign court. Or perhaps they have other political priorities from Peter Tatchell. It is possible is it not? But what the Pride organisers obviously don’t get is that their own politics are by no means necessarily the politics of all, or most, gays.
Yet let us play this game back at Peter Tatchell. He has himself stood for the Green Party in the past and remains a vocal supporter of that loony left party. Well I – and a lot of other gays – have a real problem with the politics of his party. We don’t think Natalie Bennett is the ideal person to get the British economy really going again and we don’t like some of the party’s truly bigoted policies. For instance, among the policies of the Green Party are that all Israelis should be boycotted in Britain. This includes, for instance, a String Quartet from Jerusalem or a singer from Tel Aviv. The Green Party’s policy is that on top of a full trade embargo, a Jew living in the historic homeland of the Jewish people should be banned from bringing their culture to the UK. The party’s policy thereby also singles out for exclusive punishment the only state in the Middle East which affords equal rights to gay people (instead of throwing them off buildings or hanging them from cranes). It might well be asked, might it not, ‘Why would any party, other than a homophobic one, single out for censure a state which has done so much good for LGBTs?’
But should gays from the Green Party like Peter Tatchell be banned from taking part in Pride because of their affiliation with a party which pursues overtly bigoted, sectarian politics in international affairs? I shouldn’t think so. But this is a courtesy, it seems, which although able to be extended from the right to the left, is not a decency that can be returned in kind. The latest talk is that if gay Ukip-ers do have the temerity to turn up to this weekend’s festival of openness and tolerance then other attendees will be encouraged to turn their backs on them as they march past. As though Ukip were the KKK rather than a party with more than four million voters who wish to leave the EU.
Contemplating the disintegration of Pride from a cause with a purpose to a left-wing party in want of meaning I am reminded of the affliction identified by the late Ken Minogue as ‘St George in retirement syndrome’. In this situation the crusading knight, having slain the dragon, spends his days scouring the land looking for ever-smaller dragons to slay. Having won the major gay rights battles – thanks to contributions from the political right and the political left – perhaps it is time for the organisers of Pride to contemplate retirement?
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