Forty Years On

This weekend marks the fortieth anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, the beginning of the movement that defined, and defines, homosexuality as an individual and collective identity economically, socially, culturally and politically. To suggest that it is any such thing is in fact scientifically baseless and historically illiterate. And the true character of that movement may be discerned from an examination of its origins.

From Queer As Folk through Shameless (which in a recent series featured incest between teenage half-brothers as a gigantic joke) to Clapham Junction, sex between men and teenage boys is glorified. We treat as a national treasure Peter Tatchell, a militant campaigner for the age of consent to be lowered to 14, which, had it been in force, would have legalised well over ninety per cent of the offences committed by Catholic priests, the only men who now run the slightest realistic risk of being prosecuted for sex with teenage boys.

But Tatchell is merely a faithful representative of the movement that originated out of those Riots and into the early 1970s, and which originated the idea, which has no prior history whatever and remains unknown in great swathes of the world, that persons, rather than simply acts, are homosexual, and that a predilection for such acts constitutes an identity comparable to class, ethnicity or even sex (which is written into every cell of the body).

That was and is a movement of, by, for and about those who sexually abuse teenage boys. It began several years after our own humane and necessary decriminalisation of male homosexual acts between consenting adults in private. Many of its pioneering figures abused teenage boys to their dying days, and the rest still do so to this very day. Every time that you see one of those rainbow flags, or anything like that, then remember that that is what it represents, aided and abetted by the likes of A C "sex is part of a happy childhood" Grayling, of the old legal advisor to the old Paedophile Information Exchange who is now Deputy Leader of the governing party, and all the rest of them.

Yet that is now the by far the richest and most powerful lobby group in several countries, including this one, where it absolutely may not be gainsaid on any issue. I know. I am already preparing myself for the unprintable comments on this post.