In February this year the mutually destructive conflict between homosexuality and the status quo once again reared its ugly head as the Mayor in San Francisco declared that he would issue marriage licences to gay and lesbian couples despite the state assembly having passed a Defence of Marriage Act in 1999, which explicitly defined marriage as between a man and a woman. Once again the deeply polarising issue of whether there should be same-sex marriages came to the fore with the self-serving clarion calls of the propagandists echoing from both sides. On the one hand you had Bill O’ Reilly feature the issue at least once on every edition of the Factor for a fortnight decrying what he saw as a gross threat to law and order. On the other you had the various paid mouths of the gay metropolitan elite mouthing modernity and chic obsessed platitudes about how this was the 21st Century and it was time for everyone to get with the times.
What I as a bi-sexual watching this crisis unfold across the Atlantic in a small, rural British village made of this crisis was to say the least mixed. Obviously, I support the idea of gay-marriage; the idea that homosexual love is not as valid, meaningful and worthy of public expression and celebration is hurtful and oppressive nonsense. To me marriage isn’t about God or religion, as an atheist I see all marriage as an expression between two people of their willingness to spend their lives together and to love one another. Plus I’ve always harboured a hope that the extending of marriage rights to same-sex couples will help push the numerous stable and long-lasting same-sex relationships into the open and encourage more lesbians, gays and bi-sexuals to follow suit. There’s no reason why in a secular society like America that marriage cannot be extended to gay and lesbian relationships. Also when you see people delighted at finally being able to have their special day you cannot help but be happy for them and for the progress that appears to have been made
However, as I watched the crisis unfold through the likes of the BBC and above all Fox News I began to get more apprehensive about the progress of the marriages. The marriages marked a rattling of the straight cage by a gay minority when we are most only 10% of the population (I figure widely held to be inflated) and that isn’t increased much with dedicated straight supporters. At a time when the religious and moral right in America was flexing its muscles like never before with the nearing release of their movie The Passion, the leaders of the American gay rights lobby was literally daring them to stop them, daring them to clamp them.
This was when I got angry.
The gay rights lobby’s leaders; a mixture of patrician straights and rich, out of the loop gays was using ordinary gays’ hopes, dreams and loves as a political tactic. They never expected to win in court but they hoped that they would provoke the conservative forces in America to crush the very shoots they claimed to be planting and then they would howl with rage at homophobia and bigotry in the hope that this would lay the seeds for further gains. It’s a disgusting, dangerous tactic that not only uses ordinary LGB people as pawns on a chess board but is incredibly risky because lets face there’s no certainty that homophobia and anti-gay prejudice is a vote loser in America, is there? Incredibly it seemed that they were going to be denied their martyrs with Schwarzenegger and Bush seemingly hesitant to act decisively against the gay marriages to the fury of the likes of Bill O’Reilly (I dread to think what talk radio was like) hounding the two of them as weak and appeasers of the liberal establishment. Finally Bush cracked announcing that he would be supporting a proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage.
Cue predictable and prearranged howls of outrage from the gay rights lobby, yet in all honestly Bush had saved them from bearing the full brunt of their crass tactical blunder. His espousal of the amendment was a good way of kicking the story into the long grass, as the amendment would take years to enact yet it was a serious enough gesture to get the likes of O’Reilly off his back. In addition, his espousal coupled with Schwarzenegger launching legal proceedings against the Mayor of San Francisco killed the story and helped the American public separate the question of gay marriage from the question of backing a constitutional amendment to ban it. Whereas before those opposing gay marriage and for the amendment were claiming overwhelming support soon poll after poll were showing implacable opposition to any amendment banning gay marriage. This thankfully stopped the momentum that had been building for said amendment, which if passed or even put to a referendum would have probably have made impossible gay marriage in America for all of our live times.
That did not alter the predictable fact that the gay-marriage controversy had badly damaged the cause of gay-rights in America with Bush toying with using us as a whipping figure to appease a base annoyed with his frivolous spending and lax immigration policy whilst Kerry was back-peddling from a life-long support for gay rights to announce his opposition against gay marriage. But to be honest what did they expect when you have an election that is likely to be primarily fought in the Mid-West and the church-going Black and Hispanic middle class? This mess was a direct result of the leaders of the gay rights lobby having lost their way. They were and are more focused on grandstanding, on gaining the public spotlight for themselves and on using gay issues as a means to attack their conservative enemies. Due to this they were no longer thinking of let alone serving the interests of the ordinary lesbian, gay man or bi-sexual.
Take the issue of gay marriage; if we’re truly honest it’s neither essential nor desperate for same-sex couples to achieve legal recognition of their relationship as a marriage, after all the function of celebrating and announcing their love and life-long partnership can just as easily be done with an unrecognised marriage as a recognised one. No, what was important however was securing the rights that go with marriage for same-sex couples i.e. next of kin rights, property rights, place in the will, etc. These could all be achieved with Civil Unions and although I can understand why in the aftermath of segregation the idea of a “separate but equal†form of union for same-sex couples fills many with horror they really should be looking at the bigger picture and recognise Civil Unions as a workable compromise. Just look at my country where (admittedly flawed) Civil Unions have been proposed with a minimum of fuss and now only the inventive opposition of the Conservative Party and our secondary, Upper House of Parliament stand in its way.
Then there’s the way that many if not most prominent gay rights campaigners (on both sides of the Atlantic) seem to cling to the myth of the “rainbow coalition†of gays, ethnic minorities, the working class and feminists. The rainbow coalition has always been an idea of my enemy’s enemy is my friend but what was in the eighties merely a harmless delusion (I mean really, Northern England miners as supporters of gay rights? I don’t think so) has now become something more dangerous. Most of the apologists for the “rainbow coalition†concept are also fervent supporters of the concept of multiculturalism. This argues that to force ethnic and religious minorities to assimilate on some issues with the majority viewpoint is not just wrong but racist and oppressive. Yet as the late gay Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn noted to allow such sub-cultures to develop in society and with immigration to allow them to grow is to place in jeopardy the very gains that mainstream society in say my country has made in gay rights since homosexual acts between men were finally legalised throughout the country in 1981. Any sensible and clearheaded advocate of gay rights would see the very notion of multiculturalism and the succour it gives to the ideas such faith schools and a greater civic role for openly homophobic faiths like Islam is an impediment to the progress of gay rights into ethnic minority communities and if unchecked will sooner or later prove a threat to gay rights outside the particular ethnic or religious grouping as mainstream parties and organisations mimic their homophobia to gain their favour, just as some far-left fringe parties are doing now in an attempt to bolster their appeal to Muslims unhappy with Labour’s support of the Iraq war.
However, the greatest danger of the idea of the “rainbow coalition†is that it places lesbians, gays and bi-sexuals firmly and exclusively on the left of the political spectrum something that will be a disaster for our hopes of full emancipation. History has shown that such acts of emancipation i.e. the granting of women the vote in Britain in 1918, the 1960s Civil Right Acts in America or the 1967 decriminalisation of homosexuality in England and Wales only happen when there’s sizeable support for such measures on both sides of the political spectrum. The leaders of the gay rights lobby seem stuck in the mindset of twenty years ago when amid the chaos and destruction of Aids there seemed to be a vast homophobic conspiracy on the right that had to be fought to the death for us to prosper. That simply isn’t true now; with the growth of libertarianism in rightist circles and a genuine acknowledgement that there are naturally conservative voters in the gay community there has been a shift in the right to a more constructive approach towards us and the issues that primarily affect us. Whilst Bush has understandably swung away from the open courting of the LGB Vote of 2000 with Mary Cheney in hiding there are encouraging signs from the British Conservative Party of a thawing of attitudes even if their idiotic amendments to the Civil Unions Bill to place non-sexual partnerships such as two spinsters living together on the same footing as a same-sex de facto marriage shows their not there yet.
The fact that there are still problems with the Conservative Party’s policies on gay issues is not a reason not to join but the very opposite. If rightist organisations are to be made gay-friendly they gay people must interact with them in a positive manner and if that means co-existing alongside some homophobic elements then so be it as they’ll be so much easier to defeat if those of us who share basic conservative values on issues such as foreign affairs, national sovereignty, law and order, etc join the party and fight them on the inside. Staying outside and heckling will only result in us being dismissed as no good pinkos and further define gay rights as a liberal issue. And for those who think that gay men and women joining such organisations is the gay version of Uncle Tom well let me point you to what the current Labour British Home (Interior) Secretary David Blunkett is on record as saying that the idea of one man touching another disgusts him. All major political parties have their fair share of undesirables and just because left-wing parties are on the whole more progressive on gay issues doesn’t mean they don’t have their own homophobic wing.
The gay rights movement should move away from partisan politics and play a more constructive and conciliatory role that focuses on long-term goals rather than short-term publicity. Whilst the political battle for civil rights is important the cultural climate that this battle is conducted is even more so, if we can win the cultural war we’ve won the political battle. To win the cultural war we have to be cannier and more patient; focus on championing and advising on the portrayal of gay characters in the mainstream media as Chastity Bono describes herself as doing for a number of shows. We must attempt to push move small c conservative images of gay relationships and people to counteract the gaudy and brash spectacle of gay prides that for most of the people who attend are a million miles away from their regular lives. We must avoid tacking sides in the partisan political debate and realise that we are at most only 10% of the population, we sadly cannot stomp our foot and demand full civil rights today. Instead we’ve got to patiently lobby and cajole the straight community to become more appreciative of our problems and needs. It will take time, but it will succeed.
Finally the gay rights movement must secure its base in maintaining and financing the many LGB Centres that run all across my country and by all accounts America too. These are staffed by many dedicated people many of whom are volunteers who do a fantastic job providing a focal point for gay life in the area offering advice, counselling, safe-sex advice and accessories and a variety of Outreach programs to schools to combat homophobic bulling. The one I use is currently living a hand to mouth existence with fears that its local council grant may be abolished, with it and other charities organising a series of presentations to convince the council not to scrap it along with other youth services. I’m actually one of the performers in our sketch, which I actually wrote and whilst I hope it all goes well I do wonder whether the energy that the more public elements of the gay rights movements devote in political grandstanding (coughpetertatchellcough) could not be devoted to ensuring the survival of the grassroots that help ensure that current and future generations will feel secure enough to live their lives true to themselves.
All Feedback Appreciated
Next Week: FOX News versus BBC News!
