Centrepiece
`I'm sorry
Colin Welch
Iwas appalled to read that Mrs Elizabeth Wilson was appalled by my 'intemperate and shoddy attack on homosexuals' (Cen- trepiece, 10 November; Letters, 17 November). Why? Well, I hadn't really intended an attack at all. Why not? Well, I can't regard the condition of being homosexual as sinful, hateful or wrong. Our inclinations are given. We cannot easily suppress or reverse them, though whether we practise or not is up to us. Many admirable homosexuals, including some of our most inspiring and dedicated teachers, sublimate their urges. Some of the bravest, as well as some of the funniest and kindest, men I have known (I am writing of males throughout) have been homosexual. They behaved with a courage truly gay, laughed and died as if there were no tomorrow. And for them in a sense there was no tomorrow, poor souls: the Prospect of growing old must be for most homosexuals grim indeed. If I wrote with unseemly asperity or levity, it was because of mounting vexation at the way in which homosexual activists have, as I said, advanced boldly, immod- estly, proselytising and demanding ever new 'rights', privileges, ells and so on. Of this advance Mrs Wilson seems happily oblivious: can Thornhill Square, N1, whence she wrote, be a sort of Avilion, where never wind blows loudly? 'I am not aware,' she said, 'of the "ells" they are demanding (such demands as there are usually emanate from politicians for their own ends).' A slight contradiction here, Mrs Wilson? The presumed 'ends' of politi- cians are to win votes; if they champion homosexual demands, it is surely because they see enough homosexuals with de- mands and votes to be worth cultivating. But really, Mrs Wilson: no advances? No ells' demanded?
I don't keep 'gay lib' cuttings, haven't enough space or files. A typical item from the Daily Telegraph last week: `GLC Call For Homosexual Blue Plaques', these to record that the person honoured was a homosexual; names suggested were Keynes, Wilde, Rimbaud, Verlaine, Case- ment, Radclyffe Hall, Joe Orton, Swin- burne (shome mishtake?), Edward Carpenter and Alan Turing. I don't subscribe to Gay News, but ?ought the current issue with shameful furtiveness. The lead story tells how more than 1,000 members of 'the gay commun- ItY converged from all sides on Rugby to protest against the council's refusal to include the words 'sexual orientation' in its equal opportunities law — this is to say, its refusal to include homosexuals (and pre- ,
sumable other deviants) among the cate- gories against which it will be unlawful to discriminate. A 'highly emotional' MP `came out', hugely cheered by crowds `enjoying every minute'; the 'already heat- ed mood' rose to 'fever pitch' on a march straight through the town centre carrying banners forbidden by the police. A sit- down and 18 arrests followed. 'The cam- paign continues . . . up and down the country.'
Well, what is wrong with equal opportu- nities for homosexuals? Nothing at all in practice, I agree, where 'sexual orienta- tion' is irrelevant. But to have them en- shrined in the law, as in America all leading Democrats, including Mondale, promised to do, has foreseeable consequ- ences which may have contributed to Mon- dale's defeat. What it would mean is that `roarers' (a term new to me, but I hope intelligible) would win an unqualified right to join the armed forces, to be promoted and to command, to teach everywhere from nursery schools to universities and to become head teachers, to become proba- tion officers, counsellors, caretakers and social workers, to run youth and play groups and day centres, to become priests and bishops. Of course discreet and subli- mated homosexuals (and some indiscreet) have long done all these things, often with success and distinction. They have not needed legal sanctions to get on, presum- ably would not welcome or use them. Legal sanctions would be of advantage primarily to the manifestly unsuitable, to the flaunters and proselytisers, who could be expected to abuse the 'rights' conferred on them.
Mrs Wilson was certainly unlucky in the timing of her quip about my supposed fear of sandwiches buttered by homosexuals. It appeared when the papers were full of stories about Australian babies and British haemophiliacs who have died after receiv- ing blood or plasma contaminated with Aids. The British and Australian author- ities reacted by banning homosexuals from giving blood, a form of discrimination to haemophiliacs overdue, even to Mrs Wilson perhaps understandable.
She asks me one question which I fancy she thinks a knock-out: 'If gonorrhoea and syphilis were fatal, would Mr Welch con- sider relations between men and women unnatural?' How could I, when they have always been the ordained and till now the only means of reproducing our species? Were veneral disease fatal, what I would consider would be the terrible danger of promiscuity, homosexual and otherwise, and of this danger I would strive to warn the young. Of dangers already threatening 'the gay community' Mrs Wilson seems also happily oblivious. If she is, she may not be greatly to blame. A conspiracy of silence has till recently prevailed.
`You can take away Aids, and you're still looking at a [gay] community that happens to be diseased. I'm sorry. The bulk of your venereal diseases now reside within the gay community. The bulk of enteric [intestinal] diseases is now within the gay community'. This was said not by a raving 'homophobe' but by a homosexual writer for whom the words 'I'm sorry' must have a special sadness. He was quoted in the Washington Post and in a memorable and chilling article in the August American Spectator by Patrick J. Buchanan and Dr J. Gordon Muir. I cited them on 10 November about the diseases, grave or fatal, now epidemic among 'the gay community'. The bushfire spread of these diseases they attribute to a life-style common among active homosex- uals, though often denied: to promiscuity, to random, repeated and anonymous sex, to group sex and to oral-anal contacts which carry 'the almost inevitable risk of transfer of bowel pathogens'. They adduce statistics, which could err (though they are mostly derived from medical sources or `gay' surveys) and apply primarily to active homosexuals in San Francisco and New York, though London and Amsterdam lag not far behind. The average active homosexual has 1,000 sex partners in a lifetime (Kinsey) or 1,600 (Village Voice); an activist claimed 10,000. More than half active homosexuals have group sex at least once a month. Typical Aids victims have five different sex encounters a month. Oral-anal contact is reportedly practised by 70 to 75 per cent. In San Francisco GBS (`gay' bowel syndrome) has increased ten- fold or more. Of active homosexuals sur- veyed in the US, 40 per cent reported known infection with gonorrhoea, 13 per cent with syphilis. Of homosexuals attend- ing saunas in Amsterdam, evidence of old or recent syphilis was found in 34 per cent, half of whom were ignorant of it. There are some 6,000 confirmed cases of Aids in the US; but it is estimated that five or ten times as many have pre-Aids. Twenty-five per cent of San Francisco's 'gay community' are estimated to be in an early but infective stage of a disease which can take four years to incubate, and for which no cure is known: the possibility of self-destruction is there.
One letter to the editor, not published, accused me of 'ignorance' and of seeming to 'delight' in these sicknesses. If I did so seem, through some error of taste or tone, I did myself an injustice. I don't delight at all. As for ignorance, I would rather be proved so a thousand times over than be vindicated by suffering and death. Some see in these diseases nature's revenge on the unnatural or God's punishment of sin. It is also unnatural and sinful to rejoice at others' misfortunes, however incurred. Like the homosexual writer, 'I'm sorry'.
Previous page
