Tories and the gays

[Sheilbh]

Gay pride
JERRY HAYES
Now that the Tory party is about to embark on an unedifying internal spat over gay marriage, I would commend students of political history to read Michael McManus's beautifully written and well-researched book Tory Pride and Prejudice: the Conservative Party and Homosexual Reform.

Readers may be surprised to learn that supporters of the decriminalisation of homosexual acts in private included Enoch Powell, Margaret Thatcher, Patrick Jenkin and Ian Mcleod. They were lonely figures in those early days.

The paradox that the Conservative party faced is best summed up by Guy (now Lord) Black: 'It was one of those phenomena that, when the Conservative party appeared nationally to be at its most homophobic, at the very heart of the organisation were all these influential gay men. Although everybody knew what was going on, nobody made it very obvious.'

The case that captured the imagination of the 1950s was the imprisonment, for incitement, of Peter Wildeblood, the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Mail, Michael Pitt Rivers and Lord Montagu. To the surprise of the authorities and the defendants, the crowds cheered them on their way to prison.

Public opinion was on the turn, and David Maxwell Fife, not the most liberal of home secretaries, appointed an obscure academic, Lord Wolfenden, to investigate. The Home Secretary did not appreciate that Wolfenden's son, Jeremy, was actively gay.

Not surprisingly, most politicians were out of step with the public mood for reform. Lord Winterton introduced a debate on homosexual crime, '... This nauseating subject ... fornication and adultery are evils ... [nothing does] more evil nor do[es] more harm than the filthy, disgusting, unnatural vice of homosexuality.' Immediately beforehand, peers had passed the Wankie Colliery Bill.

In the Commons, William Shepherd MP had this to say: 'Incest is a much more natural act than homosexuality.' This was followed by James Dance's classic, '... It was the condoning of this sort of offence which led to the downfall of the Roman Empire. I feel that it was the condoning of these offences which led to the fall of Nazi Germany [laughter].' 

Sir Cyril Osborne added a degree of academic rigour to the debate: 'The sponsors of this bill [claim] that there are about one million "homos" in this country ... I do not believe that our country is as rotten as that. It is an awful slur on the good name of the country.' And then, to much laughter, he said this: 'I have never come across a "homo" in this House.'

Eventually, after a protracted and often bitter struggle, the law allowing decriminalisation was passed.

The next row was in the 1970s, when the unusual alliance of Malcolm Rifkind and Robin Cook campaigned to bring Scottish law into line with English. They were defeated. The law didn't change until the next Labour government.

In 1980, MPs tried again to move the law a little beyond Wolfenden. Many Tories were horrified. John MacKay MP said, 'I want my children to watch television and to go down Victoria Street on a Saturday afternoon without having such matters thrust down their throats.' Reform was defeated, but with Ken Clarke, Nigel Lawson and John Major voting in favour.

Michael McManus skilfully leads us through the horrors of the 1980s, when homosexuality had just become a stick to beat the loony left on spending. Clause 28 became a focal point of division, insult and misery. In 1985, a speaker at conference was cheered when he crowed, 'If you want a queer for your neighbour, vote Labour!' 

On the floor of the house, Tony Banks asked employment minister Alan Clarke what work was being done to combat discrimination against lesbians and gays in employment. The answer was, 'None.' Those were shameful days for the Conservative Party.

This book is a testament to thorough research and good writing. McManus deftly chronicles the long road from hostility, to prejudice, to tolerance and now equality. He shows how imposing a three-line whip on matters of conscience can destroy a leader, as it did Iain Duncan Smith over gay adoptions.

It is cheering to think that we have come such a long way from 1985, with Cameron being cheered at conference for saying what the vast majority of the public instinctively feel:

'There's something special about marriage. It's not about religion. It's not about morality. It's about commitment. When you stand up there, in front of your friends and family, in front of the world, what you're doing really means something brave and important. You are publicly saying: it's not about "me, me, me, me" anymore. It's about "we": together, the two of us, through thick and thin. That really matters. And, by the way, it means something whether you're a man and a woman, a woman and a woman or a man and another man. That's why we were right to support civil partnerships, and I'm proud of that.'

But, rather than end on that spirit of hope and optimism, McManus sounds a note of warning. He quotes Tory MEP Roger Helmer: 'Homophobia is merely a propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions, which have been held by most people through most of recorded history.'

Eighteen months later, Helmer tweeted, 'Why is it ok for a surgeon to perform sex change operation but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to 'turn' a consenting homosexual?' 

Sadly, Helmer isn't alone. Before the 2010 election, 32 new MPs signed and 38 were judged supportive of the Westminster Declaration, which defines marriage as:

'The lifelong covental union of one man and one woman as husband and wife ... divinely ordained and the only context for sexual intercourse.' It refuses to, 'submit to any edict forcing us to equate any other form of sexual partnership with marriage.'

It appears that intolerance is still alive and well among some backbenchers.

I only posted this to share that detail about the Wankie Colliery Bill :embarass:

[Josquius]

Sometimes I do wonder given the generally homophobic nature of older generations how public opinion was there to get through such reforms.

The paradox that the Conservative party faced is best summed up by Guy (now Lord) Black: 'It was one of those phenomena that, when the Conservative party appeared nationally to be at its most homophobic, at the very heart of the organisation were all these influential gay men.'

Meh, this is quite the well observed phenomena. See also:  The Republican Party.

Lord Wolfenden,

Best. Name. Ever.
Seriously, sounds like something a sub-par fantasy writer would come up with.

[Richard Hakluyt]

"...........the imprisonment, for incitement, of Peter Wildeblood, the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Mail, Michael Pitt Rivers and Lord Montagu....." 

Those names could have been obtained from a random gay name generator 

I'm really not sure that the mainstream in England was ever particularly horrified about homosexuality. My grandparents, born at the close of the Victorian age, would talk about "confirmed batchelors" or "he is a dutiful son and devoted to his mother". I think the possibility of lesbians may never have entered their minds  . The important thing for them was that the proprieties were observed.

Of course there was always that proportion of the population that hate others for being different. But they will always be with us, I'm unsure as to the extent that we should term their bigotry as "racism" or "homophobia" or whatever..........I had several fights in rough pubs in county Durham in my youth, for talking about historical topics in a southern accent..........a heinous crime in some circles it would seem. They are simple xenophobes, no doubt i would have been spared their attentions if a more "different" target had been present.

[Sheilbh]

"...........the imprisonment, for incitement, of Peter Wildeblood, the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Mail, Michael Pitt Rivers and Lord Montagu....." 

Those names could have been obtained from a random gay name generator 

Michael Pitt-Rivers is only how he was known to his friends.  His full name was Michael Ausgustus Lane-Fox Pitt-Rivers

Lord Montagu had a triple barrelled name, but when you're Baron of Beaulieu I think that's inevitable.

[Martinus]

"...........the imprisonment, for incitement, of Peter Wildeblood, the diplomatic correspondent of the Daily Mail, Michael Pitt Rivers and Lord Montagu....." 

Those names could have been obtained from a random gay name generator 

I'm really not sure that the mainstream in England was ever particularly horrified about homosexuality. My grandparents, born at the close of the Victorian age, would talk about "confirmed batchelors" or "he is a dutiful son and devoted to his mother". I think the possibility of lesbians may never have entered their minds  . The important thing for them was that the proprieties were observed.

Of course there was always that proportion of the population that hate others for being different. But they will always be with us, I'm unsure as to the extent that we should term their bigotry as "racism" or "homophobia" or whatever..........I had several fights in rough pubs in county Durham in my youth, for talking about historical topics in a southern accent..........a heinous crime in some circles it would seem. They are simple xenophobes, no doubt i would have been spared their attentions if a more "different" target had been present.

Yeah, recently I have been coming around to this type of thinking, too, myself. There is right now a campaign in Poland to include homosexuality among the categories of people it is a crime to "incite hatred" against (right now it is religion, ethnicity, race, nationality etc.) I think this is a wrong direction. If someone is actually inciting people to murder, lynching, violence etc. then it should be a crime no matter who the target is - murdering hipsters is as bad as murdering Asians. But "hatred" is not something you can legislate one way or another.

I remember a few years ago there was a big story here in Poland when a young Orthodox Jew went to a small town in Poland to visit graves of his ancestors or something like that. While there he was roughed up a bit (nothing serious) by the local hoodlums. When the mayor of the town, a salt-of-the-earth type of guy, was asked by the press about it he said, quite matter-of-factly "Oh these people are not antisemitic. They would treat him the same if he had a different skin color or spoke in a funny way, too."

[Richard Hakluyt]

Yes, the sentencing tariff for murdering a disabled or transgender person here in the UK has recently doubled :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16089715

Needless to say that I do not approve of the murder of disabled or transgender people. But I am somewhat peeved that my life would appear to be only half as valuable 

I think these changes may well be counter-productive and offend people's sense of fairness; and it is that sense of fairness that has led to acceptance of different lifestyles.............so it is foolish to undermine it.

[Martinus]

It's funny when you compare the UK legal system and its penalization of homosexuality with Poland which in 1932 decriminalized homosexuality and introduced the same age of consent (15) for both heterosexual and homosexual sex.

In fact the only differentiation in the criminal code of 1932 was that homosexual prostitution was a crime (but only for the prostitute), whereas heterosexual prostitution was not a crime in itself (it was however a crime to be a pimp or run a brothel or rent hotel rooms "by the hour" for prostitution purposes).

It's even funnier when you consider that it was introduced by a decree of our President-Generalissimus who came into semi-authoritarian power after the coup of 1926.

Also, attitudes varied wildly. I'm reading right now a biography of a famous Polish theatre critic (who died in early 2000s) who came from an upper middle class Warsaw family. Just before the war broke out in 1939, he brought to Poland from Lithuania a love of his life, a 10 years younger ballet dancer (they were together for over 60 years, until they died). Apparently as he introduced him to his family, his mother, a stately lady, did not as much as bat an eye and said that she welcomes "a new son in the family."

After the war, the communism government was distrustful of homosexuality and used it to blackmail prominent artists and authors, but did not attempt to recriminalize it.

[Martinus]

Yes, the sentencing tariff for murdering a disabled or transgender person here in the UK has recently doubled :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16089715

Needless to say that I do not approve of the murder of disabled or transgender people. But I am somewhat peeved that my life would appear to be only half as valuable 

I think these changes may well be counter-productive and offend people's sense of fairness; and it is that sense of fairness that has led to acceptance of different lifestyles.............so it is foolish to undermine it.

Yeah. Universalization of law (removal of separate courts for priests, nobles, peasants etc., introducing same penalties for murder, as opposed to old wargeld tariffs etc.) is considered by historians to be one of the most important developments towards the modern legal systems. Measures like this kinda destroy that.

[Ideologue]

Presumably the rationale is that more people are motivated to kill a transgendered person/homosexual/Jew/disabled person, and that more likely acts must be met with greater deterrent force than for other, less likely acts of the same moral reprehensibility.

This assumes that criminal sanctions can achieve linear deterrent effects, which they can't.

[The Brain]

People are morans.

[Ideologue]

There's also the notion that the killing of a minority on the basis of his or her status is a political act, harmful to the state, or society more generally, in a way that your run of the mill murder is not.

[Josquius]

Yes, the sentencing tariff for murdering a disabled or transgender person here in the UK has recently doubled :

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16089715

Needless to say that I do not approve of the murder of disabled or transgender people. But I am somewhat peeved that my life would appear to be only half as valuable 

I wonder how long before we get the "I swear, I thought he was a woman!" defence.

I remember a few years ago there was a big story here in Poland when a young Orthodox Jew went to a small town in Poland to visit graves of his ancestors or something like that. While there he was roughed up a bit (nothing serious) by the local hoodlums. When the mayor of the town, a salt-of-the-earth type of guy, was asked by the press about it he said, quite matter-of-factly "Oh these people are not antisemitic. They would treat him the same if he had a different skin color or spoke in a funny way, too."

Myeh, sounds reasonable to me.
Go walking around a poor Asian neighbourhood in Britain after dark and you may be beaten up...not because they especially hate whites but because white folk obviously don't belong in the area and so are targets.

[Martinus]

I remember a few years ago there was a big story here in Poland when a young Orthodox Jew went to a small town in Poland to visit graves of his ancestors or something like that. While there he was roughed up a bit (nothing serious) by the local hoodlums. When the mayor of the town, a salt-of-the-earth type of guy, was asked by the press about it he said, quite matter-of-factly "Oh these people are not antisemitic. They would treat him the same if he had a different skin color or spoke in a funny way, too."

Myeh, sounds reasonable to me.
Go walking around a poor Asian neighbourhood in Britain after dark and you may be beaten up...not because they especially hate whites but because white folk obviously don't belong in the area and so are targets.

I know. I just find it funny for an elected leader of a community to say "Oh we are not anti-Semites. We just hate everyone who is different."

[Ideologue]

Why you delete post, Marty?

[Martinus]

Why you delete post, Marty?

Which one? I may have deleted it by mistake. Was it about hate crimes? I thought I didn't post it and wanted to modify it. I will repost my thoughts when I get to work.