Gays at arms
From Air Chief Marshal Sir Michael Armitage (Rtd) Sir: The otherwise splendid article by Bruce Anderson (Politics, 15 January) is simply too late, at least as far as homosexuals in the armed forces are concerned. The human-rights activists sitting on the side- lines of the real world have won, and so has a handful of perverts (the word, by the way, is Peter Tatchell's own in his highly illus- trated manual on 'how to do it' for homo- sexuals — and, no, I am not going to publi- cise the title here!).
Meanwhile, those of us who have been banging the drum about the penalties of allowing overt homosexuals into the services must now shut up for fear of making even more difficult the task of the long-suffering armed forces in imposing the new policy.
All the same, it is pretty dismaying that the anti-lobby lost the argument despite the overwhelming support of expert opinion — the 90 per cent plus of service folk who, when asked, replied that they preferred not to serve alongside homosexuals. The French avoided the trap into which we have fallen by specifically excluding the services from the provisions of the European Human Rights Acts. Their evasions over E1J matters may well irritate us, yet one could sometimes wish that we shared their legislative dexterity.
But this is not the end of the story. Before long we shall see homosexual part- nerships in this country recognised as the equivalent of marriage. That will be fol- lowed by service homosexuals demanding married quarters on the same basis as mar- ried couples, and, of course, demanding pension rights for their 'widows'. Lest this seems fanciful, I can tell your readers that these provisions already exist in the armed forces of Holland. How they might go down in the CPOs' and sergeants' messes of our own services does not bear thinking about.
Michael Armitage
Bath, Somerset
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