Who would have thought that about Ted Heath? Well...

In another blow for freedom and the protection of the vulnerable, Conservative MP Mark Spencer has suggested that anti-terror legislation should be used to punish teachers who hold ‘old-fashioned’ views about homosexuality and perhaps divest themselves of these views to their pupils. I assume this could mean simply reading out bits of the Bible — that pungent little verse in Leviticus, perhaps, with its reference to ‘detestable acts’. Or maybe he would be OK reading out bits from Leviticus if he then made it clear that the Levite priests, and God Himself, were totally wrong on this issue and that homosexuality is absolutely lovely.

But never mind the Levites. These ‘old-fashioned’ views would include doubting the legitimacy of gay marriage and might incur an ‘Extremism Disruption Order’, according to the Nottinghamshire MP whose incandescent brilliance first came to light when he won the coveted ‘2011 Brake Road Safety Parliamentarian of the Year Award’.

So this is where we are. To be caught in the possession of one or two doubts about gay marriage is enough to label one an extremist — and (cue Carlos Santana playing ‘Samba Pa Ti’) not just any old extremist, but a Mark Spencer MP extremist. I think there is a difference between having doubts, rooted in the Christian faith, about gay marriage and pushing homosexuals to their deaths off tall buildings — but to Mark, they’re apparently one and the same thing. These days even the mildest dissenting view — even a mildly dissenting view held by the majority or a large minority of the population — is extremism. This is the new absolutism at work.