ANOTHER VOICE
Time to take up a position against all groups everywhere
AUBERON WAUGH
A demonstration, mounted by Slag (Socialist Lesbians and Gays) outside the offices, attracted representatives of other factions and groups in the homosexual movement: Act Up; Outrage; Stonewall; Lesbian and Gay Pride; Lesbian and Gay Press Association and Capital Gay. About 40 people turned up, all making their demands. As Peter Preston, the Editor, put it: 'It's a very confusing scene. I don't know of all the organisations. They have made a large variety of points'.
One of them was that Guardian writers should be sent to gay and lesbian awareness workshops. Preston did not rule out that suggestion, nor did he accept it. He was plainly worried that his homosexual readers were moving in droves to the Independent: `I am not saying I am responding or not responding to that suggestion. I am not in favour of them, and I don't think it will happen, but such suggestions are symbols of hurt feelings.'
Many will think it an excellent idea, as well as a very funny one, that Guardian writers should be sent to gay and lesbian workshops to be instructed in correct atti- tudes to gay people and correct handling of information about homosexuality. Hurt feelings are obviously things to be avoided, and the extent to which information should be suppressed in this cause may be seen as a worthy subject for discussion wherever bores congregate.
But a little reflection might convince us it is not a good idea, nor is it even very funny. More than most forms of homosexual activ- ity, it is an abomination. Why should hon- est journalists consider for a moment accepting what is a denial of everything their profession stands for? One reason, I would suggest, is a terror of those single- issue pressure groups which frighten people into agreeing with them. Thus, if you do not accept that information inconvenient to homosexual activists should be suppressed, then you must be what they call a 'homo- phobe'.
I do not think I am a homophobe, although I strongly believe that we should all look askance at any single-issue pressure group which does not represent our own special interest. It is one thing to resist the persecution of homosexuals, another to load them with privileges, one thing to give them a hearing, another to silence the opposition or suppress any information which is inconvenient to them.
This attitude, frequently enough expressed over the years, was sufficient to qualify me for a television programme on homosexuality, prepared for the BBC by some woman's group or other, as token homophobe. I was to submit to half an hour's questioning by Beatrix Campbell, the left-wing feminist with disturbingly beautiful eyes. If I was not a homophobe, why did I refer to homosexuals as nancy- boys, bum boys? she asked me last week. I did not think I ever had, unless jocularly, in some context or other. Why did I write about hairy lesbians? If ever I saw a lesbian who was hairy, I would call her a hairy les- bian, I said defiantly.
It was no good. However witty or clever my answers, they would all be edited down. Half an hour of interrogation was going to be reduced to five minutes by a young edi- tor called Nicolette Something-or-other, whose listless expression proclaimed the intellectual and moral superiority of those with closed minds. It was a waste of time to protest that I could well understand the anti-virile urge in women, thought lesbian- ism might be rather fun, could see no harm in most forms of male homo-eroticism and could even understand the terror of female sexuality which might inspire it. I was cast as a homophobe and it was my job to act the part. So I launched into a fine, mad speech against anal intercourse which I had composed that morning on the under- ground and now delivered into the beauti- ful, unblinking eyes of Bea Campbell: The anus was designed for the retention and expulsion of faecal matter, wasn't it, Bea, not for the reception of foreign organs, however lovingly placed there. I can well understand that many people might like to experiment with anal inter- course, you know, Bea, to see what it is like, and a few, surely only a very few, may find that their preferences settle there, but surely it is not something to be encouraged. Quite apart from the ever-present danger of multiple infections, the sphincter muscle is not designed to accommodate such intru- sions.
`These unfortunate people will be wear- ing nappies again before they are 60 in many cases. And even if a few people have always preferred anal intercourse, this offers no explanation for the enormous expansion of this preference in recent years, nor the militancy and aggression of those with the anal tendency. We are in the presence, if not of a social psychosis, at least of a behaviour disorder which is crying out for sympathetic treatment and cure, certainly not for encouragement.'
Bea of the beautiful eyes agreed that het- erosexual anal intercourse was yet another means of oppressing women, but seemed at a loss to relate this to the male experience. She struck me as being a great deal more intelligent than the near-zombie of a pro- ducer-editor, but had similarly allowed herr self to be caught up in the cause. That is what group membership does to a person.
In the same way I note that Cardinal Jozef Glemp, Primate of Poland, is being chased from pillar to post around the Unit- ed Nations by Jewish activists denouncing him as an anti-Semite for having defended a Foundation of Carmelite nuns near the site of Auschwitz.
When Jewish militants occupied the con- vent, Glemp was goaded to remark that while anti-Semitism was evil, Jews held undue influence in the world's media, and that furthermore they had been historically responsible for supplying Polish peasants with drink.
I do not know whether Jews were histori- cally responsible for supplying Polish peas- ants with drink. If so, it seems to have been one of the better things they have done. My point is that once again the activists have created a whole new range of antagonisms. It would be nice to think that nobody really hates Catholics, or Jews, or homosexuals — just the leaders and self-appointed spokes- men of every group. It is time for a great anti-spokesman movement.
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