ANOTHER VOICE
I shall shut up about homosexuality now, but I must just say one last thing
MATTHEW PARRIS
To one who has banged on rather a lot about reforming the criminal law on homo- sexuality, it was hardly surprising when recent weeks brought requests for written or spoken thoughts on last Monday's Com- mons debate. One reason for turning these down has been that I never enjoyed dis- cussing the subject; events no longer need my involvement and I'm relieved to take my bow.
Another reason is that I am conscious of having become a crashing bore — and not only to others. As Dylan Thomas once complained, 'Somebody's boring me and I think it's me.' In my trade, a freelancer must be prepared to bore his audience when he is paid to do so, but one draws the line at boring oneself. I have so little left to say, and, anyway, 16 was a long time ago.
There is, it is true, one remaining chal- lenge, and that is to switch sides. I would half like to start my life again as a reac- tionary moral philosopher. Programme edi- tors are desperate for the services of that tiny gang of articulate ethical reactionaries: an overworked band, for the most part mumsy ladies and harmless gentlemen who enjoy thumbing their noses and saying `queer' a lot. There's scope for another voice. Why, one could have one's own col- umn in the Sunday Telegraph, a well-paid contract to outrage readers of the Guardian, a regular engagement on Thought for the Day, and frequent appearances on News- night. With a home computer, a modem, fax machine and studio-quality microphone connected to an ISDN telephone line, one would hardly need leave one's London flat.
This would be fun and perhaps useful. A more challenging case for reactionary morality can be made than our age's com- bined force of bishops, rabbis, Tory MPs, right-wing women and attention-seeking male bigots seem capable of assembling. As Monday's Commons debate proved, con- servative British jurisprudence is almost dead. Charles Moore could revive it, but he is too nice and too busy.
If one wants an intelligent debate with an ethical conservative in England these days one usually has to argue with oneself. Thoughtful moral conservatism (as opposed to stupid bourgeois triumphalism) has hit lean times. The public argument has become polluted with personal hatred, rob- bing it of force; while those few who can avoid sounding choleric lean too heavily on God for their authority. No modern moral reactionary will get far by resting his case on a divine Because. To the possibility of a mid-life switch I have therefore given seri- ous thought: a creed which is severe but unvindictive — commanding but ex some- thing more than cathedra — awaits articula- tion. But no. Anything offering comfort to the Daily Telegraph must be eschewed. I threw my lot in with the woolly liberals years ago and it's too late to cross the floor. I am reduced to reciting bad arguments in good causes.
Or silence. For the gay activists' crusade now moves on to demanding positive rights for homosexuals — in jobs, housing, and even in public print. Crusaders want to make discrimination a criminal offence, whereas I want to remove criminal prohibi- tions, not create new ones. I don't believe in positive rights or special protection for any group: not•for women, public schools, blacks, the elderly, married couples, gay men, Christianity, the disabled, the Nation- al Trust, charities, aristocrats, lesbians or the royal family.
There are far too many positive rights and special protections in Britain already: an escalating bidding war in which I do not wish to be involved, even on behalf of my own tribe. I do not see why an employer who hates homosexuals should be forced by law to employ me, or why a misogynist should be forced to employ women, a racist to employ blacks or an anti-Semite to employ Jews. Developing this logic one is conscious of shedding potential recruits rather fast; and I revert to silence.
Perhaps, though, there is a last word worth tendering now that an equal age of consent has been won. I cannot forget, though most of the crowd celebrating last Monday around the Palace of Westminster do forget, the bravery of all those people in the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies who worked in their different ways for greater respect for homosexuals: those who stood up for themselves or others before it was fashionable to do so. Some (people like Anthony Grey, the late Martin Stevens, Leo Abse, Noel Annan, the late Ian Har- vey) were, in one way or another, cam- paigners. They made the argument, or the tea, encouraged the troops, wrote to news- papers, bored or disgusted their contempo- raries, gave speeches, went to meetings. They argued for half a loaf: something less than equality, less even than respect mere toleration — would have been an advance in their day, and it took more courage to ask for that then than it does to ask for the moon now. Only those who remember how, once, the cause felt almost dirty can know how hard it was for them, and what they risked. Such men form bridges between eras; they look timid now, but it is by their efforts that we have been brought to a place from which, looking back, we dare call them timid. It wasn't timid then but brave.
There is a second group for whom I have an unfashionable regard. These are the famous men who were gay, never quite said so, may never have joined the early cam- paigns, but lived and worked as openly as they dared: Noel Coward, Dirk Bogarde, (in America Liberace, in another age Oscar Wilde). Some (not all) of these would look upon homosexuality as a cause with horror. But they served the cause by an inner hon- esty, a disposition to be themselves, which is greater than the honesty of words. These men were braver than I will ever be.
Some time ago a gay writer visited for the weekend with a friend we had in common. He said he was writing a book about gay life in provincial England. I did not quite understand that he would be writing about my friends and me. The book has now been serialised in the Sunday versions of the Express and Independent. I make no com- plaint: he was good enough, at my request, to change all the names but mine. But then I don't need to care. I wish he had been ruder about me but less sneering about my friends. Among those he laughs at are a council employee who dressed flamboyant- ly; a man from a mining village who put himself through A-levels, working after hours as a clerk, and has gone on now to a university to study music; and a middle- aged couple who work apart but stay together at weekends, neither proclaiming nor hiding their relationship.
What this metropolitan writer does not realise is that Derbyshire is not yet London, and all these people are braver than he or I will ever be. So here's to that Commons vote last Monday. I shall pipe down a little now, saluting, as I do, the valiant unsung upon whose shoulders all activists stand.
Matthew Parris is parliamentary sketchwriter and a columnist of the Times.
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