The Village People

This blog likes Michael Martin. A proper Labourite, motivated by economic views forged in experience. A good Catholic in every way. Solidly Leftish while having not a Marxist bone in his body. Doubtless unsympathetic towards European federalism in one direction and the break-up of the United Kingdom in the other. And an annoyance to all the right people.

And this blog is, to put it politely, rather more sceptical about Harriet Harman, with whom Mr Speaker Martin is about to enter into a battle royal. Harman demands that the Speaker’s Conference come out, so to speak, for a target of 39 “gay” and “lesbian” MPs. Martin rightly sees this as an outrageous intrusion into MPs’ private lives.

The whole thing is based on the latest made-up figure (because they always are and always will be) of how many people are “lesbian” or “gay”. But what do those terms mean? Active participation in homosexual activity? An inclination towards such activity? Such an inclination greater than any towards heterosexual activity? No heterosexual inclination whatever? No heterosexual experience whatever (extremely rare, even among self-defining “gays” and “lesbians”)? What, exactly? And why, exactly?

The idea that such activity or inclination constitutes any basis for individual or collective economic, social, cultural or political identity is not yet forty years old, and was invented (several years after our own humane and necessary decriminalisation of male homosexual acts between consenting adults in private) by those whose main or only sexual interest was in teenage boys, an interest which they pursued, and pursue, rapaciously.

I was an undergraduate, hardly the day before yesterday now, when I first knowing encountered those who engaged in homosexual acts or who were inclined to do so. The idea of such acts or inclinations as an identity was already on the way out even then, and increasingly seemed to be confined to certain rather separatist ecclesiastical circles. I vividly recall, in my first term, a dear friend coming back from a meeting of “the LGB”. He exclaimed, not only that “the L stands for Lumberjack”, but also that “they only have one thing in common”, and that he pitied anyone about whom that was the most interesting thing. It is certainly not the most interesting thing about him.

Furthermore, here in the North East, everyone knows about at least three homosexually inclined MPs whose names never appear on any apparently official list compiled by Peter Tatchell or whoever. There must be plenty more around the country. Perhaps it is only in the Westminster Village that no one has cottoned on. What are very unsophisticated lot they must be in the Westminster Village.