by Iain Dale
GAY SHORTS
IAIN DALE
Contents
Title Page
Introduction
Coming out and why Christmases are difficult
Choosing to be gay
The gay stereotype
I’m just soooo offended!
Gay parents mean gay children, right?
Media coverage of gays has come a long way
Please don’t hit me
Why do gays have such a shit taste in music?
Politics – can you be gay and vote Tory?
Why do people think gays are paedos?
Porn – monkey-spanking has never been cheaper
Gay books – a kick against the pricks
Is there any such thing as bisexuality?
Lesbians – do gay men have it easier?
Prostitution – should it be legalised?
Vanity, vanity, all is vanity
Gays and the gogglebox
Shall we get married?
Proof that politicians aren’t all the same
Why Peter Tatchell is right … and wrong
Gay holidays
Nudity
Style
Bonus: Interview with SoSoGay
Copyright
Introduction
‘Would you like to write a monthly column for us?’ That was the easily answered question put to me by Matthew Todd, editor of the bestselling monthly gay lifestyle magazine Attitude back in early 2013. Since then I have written twenty or so columns on a huge variety of subjects I thought would be of interest to Attitude readers. Matthew explained that he didn’t feel the magazine had enough politics in it, especially from a right-of-centre perspective, and he also wanted to hear from someone ‘older’ than their usual contributors. Thanks, Matthew. You know how to make a boy feel special…
I have strayed well beyond the realms of politics in these columns, as you will read. Some of them have been quite emotional to write, and maybe read, and others have been deliberately sarcastic or humorous.
If you’ve never read Attitude before, do take out a subscription. It’s a fantastic magazine with a growing appeal.
Iain Dale
Norfolk, January 2015
Coming out and why Christmases are difficult
I have been with my partner for eighteen years and yet, until last year, we had never spent a Christmas together. I had always gone to my parents’ in Essex and he to his parents’ in Kent. In later years, he’d make an escape and join me at my parents’ in the evening, but neither of us found it satisfactory.
Why then did we do it? Simple. Because both of us feared that the very year we chose to spend Christmas together would be followed by the death of one of our parents. Irrational, maybe, but one year we would have been right.
This is not something unique to gay couples, of course. Yet, for many gay couples, Christmas can be a time when tricky choices have to be made, especially by those who haven’t come out to their parents. And, even in these enlightened days, there are still many gay people who find that particular conversation difficult to have.
I had that conversation at the ripe old age of forty. My parents had known my partner for five or six years and he often joined me for the weekend at their home. But the penny hadn’t dropped. He was my friend and they liked him very much. But the fact that he was more than that never seemed to click with them. By way of contrast, my partner came out to his parents at the age of sixteen and didn’t like the fact that I wasn’t prepared to rock the parental boat. He was right, of course. I was being a coward.
But when I decided to try to be a Tory MP, I decided that I had to tell my parents I was gay. Everyone in Westminster knew, but I didn’t want the parents reading about it in the Daily Telegraph or one of their friends saying something inopportune. I decided to do it when I reached the second round of a parliamentary selection – possibly not the best or most courageous criterion to use to come out. I remember that drive round the M25 and up the M11 as if it were yesterday. I rehearsed in my mind what I would say, but nothing ever seemed right. Everyone kept saying to me: ‘Don’t worry, it won’t come as a surprise to them. They must know.’ I doubted that very much. After all, I knew my parents, and they didn’t.
My dad is always good in a crisis. He is a man of few words, but I was fairly confident he would be OK. My mother was the sweetest and most kindly woman in the world but I sensed it would be more difficult for her. I won’t go into the details of the conversation but it wasn’t an easy one. There was incomprehension, bemusement and a degree of horror. I explained that John was much more than a friend, that I loved him very deeply and I hoped they could bring themselves to accept that. My dad gave me a hug but my mum just had a far-away look on her face.
But all was well that ended well. They continued to welcome John into their home, came to treat him as a son-in-law and both came to our civil partnership in 2008. However, the subject of my gayness was never spoken of again. My mother died last June. I loved her with all my heart but, in my soul, I know how much I hurt her. But, in the end, we can’t live our lives for other people, no matter how much we love them. We have to be true to ourselves. That’s not being selfish, it’s being honest.
I suspect Christmas is a time when lots of gay people come out to their parents. Is it the best time to do it? Probably not, but for many people there is never a good time and the longer you leave it, the more difficult it can get. Attitudes have changed over the generations, but, for some people, it will never be easy.
Last year was the first year I spent a full Christmas Day with John, but I spent most of it in bed with flu. This year we’ll be in our new home in Norfolk with only the dogs for company. And a Christmas tree. Happy Christmas!
Choosing to be gay
I’ve always known I was gay. Well, when I say ‘always’, I mean I knew I was different to other boys almost from the age of seven or eight. I have absolutely no doubt that I was born gay, yet I find it bizarre that some find that difficult to accept. There are still misguided souls who believe that people choose to be gay.
Well, perhaps we gayers play up to that a little nowadays. After all, legend has it we have the best music, we’re better looking (I exclude myself!), we have the best fashion and we have better skin (I don’t exclude myself from that one). But it wasn’t always like that.
People who believe we all choose to be gay should think back to when I was growing up in the 1970s. Homosexuality wasn’t illegal, but it might as well have been. Being raised in a small village in Essex meant conformity to a relatively conservative rural lifestyle. I loved my childhood and wouldn’t change it for a minute, but it did mean hiding a part of who I was, even from those closest to me. To have come out would have been unthinkable.
To most people, homosexuality came in the form of John Inman and Larry Grayson. It meant camp cries of ‘shut that door’ or ‘I’m free’. It meant furtive fumbles in public toilets. In short, it was seen as a perversion, which few were willing to even try to understand or empathise with. Why you would have chosen to be a homosexual in those days is anyone’s guess.
Today, it is very different. In some ways, it’s cool to be gay, so, for some of our more bigoted members of society, you can sort of understand why they really believe it is a lifestyle choice.
Believe me, I am very comfortable in my own skin – as I am sure most Attitude readers are. Were I now given the choice of being straight, I wouldn’t take it. But I suspect most of us, if we really examined ourselves deeply, might have given a different answer at the age of fifteen.
Because life is undeniably easier if you’re straight.
In some jobs being gay is still a big no-no. Gay people still suffer from discrimination, especially outside metropolitan areas. Being gay in
some religions can lead to excommunication and total exclusion from one’s family. From a personal viewpoint, I have absolutely no doubt I would now be a Member of Parliament were it not for the fact that I was/am gay, and didn’t mind who knew it.
On my LBC show, I had a caller recently who told me she detested the ‘gay act’ and it was terrible that people should choose this lifestyle. She clearly hadn’t got a clue, poor love, who she was talking to. So, in my usual loving, caring way I gently pointed out to take it from one who knows, that being gay wasn’t a choice. You were born like it. She still didn’t click.
‘I knew I was gay at the age of seven,’ I then said. There followed an awkward two-second silence, which, on the radio, sounds like two minutes. Whether I provoked her to examine her own prejudices I have no idea.
And then, on Eurovision night, it all started again – this time on Twitter. A fellow West Ham fan called Brian – someone who clearly believed it’s not possible to be gay and shout ‘Come On You Irons’ every fortnight – told me that ‘nature, history and religion are against you … it is nurture and environment and perverse thinking’. Thanks for that. He continued: ‘Our minds are malleable and can be turned.’ Speak for yourself, mate. And, finally, came this little gem: ‘We are all born heterosexual and get influenced to be gay in our twisted minds.’ When I asked him if, as a straight man, he could be turned, strangely, I didn’t get an answer.
You may think it bizarre, but I don’t regard people like my LBC caller and Brian as homophobic. I just think they’re scared because they think that we’ve all chosen to become gay, they think we could persuade their kids to turn gay too. You might think it laughable, and it is, but it’s up to us to show that being gay is nothing for them to fear. As the brilliant E4 sitcom says: it’s The New Normal.
The gay stereotype
I don’t know about you, but I find it incredibly frustrating that the old gay stereotypes still remain, and, from what I can work out, they probably always will. We’re all incredibly camp, have lots of facial and stomach hair, and probably sleep with any other male that shows a vague interest. Oh, and we’re all incapable of being in a relationship without sleeping with other men, we have an unhealthy interest in Shirley Bassey, we all boogie away in nightclubs with our shirts off and white powder up our noses, and we spend our evenings engaging in orgies or feasting our eyes on gay porn.
Even today, many people who haven’t had the good fortune to get to know gay people, or gay couples, continue to believe that this is the way we lead our lives. I wrote a couple of issues ago about the way we are portrayed on television and the media, and, even though some of the stereotypes have disappeared, many, unfortunately, still remain.
The truth is that most of us live very ordinary lives and consider ourselves normal, law-abiding members of society. We do the same things other people do. We live in perfectly ordinary houses without a sex dungeon (actually, I did know someone who had one of those, but it ruins my thesis). We drive the same cars – because, believe it or not, we don’t all like the open-top Jeeps the bloke in Queer as Folk drove. With the notable exception of Attitude, we buy normal people’s magazines. For goodness sake, I even have subscriptions to Stuff, FourFourTwo and GQ. How manly can you get?!
Society likes to box us into little homogenous groups and, in a media-driven age, it suits a lot of agendas to pretend that somehow we are all the same. But we’re not. We’re individuals who each lead totally different lives with different tastes, habits and proclivities.
In many ways, the internet age ought to have liberated us all from the stranglehold of stereotype, but, in some ways, the opposite has happened. Mainstream media narratives still dominate. Tories are still rich toffs. UKIP supporters are racist Little Englanders. Liberal Democrats are basket-weaving sandal-wearers. Labour voters wear flat caps and own whippets. If a black man drives a BMW he has probably stolen it. Anyone wearing a hoodie is likely to mug you. Gay men will shag anything with a penis. You get the picture.
It is clear to me that one of the things driving the promulgation of stereotypes is often fear of the unknown. Often, it is a perfectly understandable fear. Animals fear what they don’t know, so why shouldn’t humans? Let me give you two examples. I took a call on my radio programme the other day during a discussion on street crime. An elderly white lady phoned in to tell me how she feared being mugged by the various groups of hooded kids on her estate. One day, she was walking home and saw a group of them looking menacing on a street corner. She panicked and dropped a bag of shopping. Immediately, one of the hoodies came over and, instead of nicking the shopping, helped her put it back in her bag and even carried it home for her. She said she felt thoroughly ashamed for thinking the worst was about to happen. Another barrier broken down.
We bought a house in Norfolk recently. I suspect we’re the only gays in the village. I have to say that everyone has been incredibly friendly, but I had to laugh recently when one of the neighbours blurted out: ‘You’re both very normal, aren’t you?’
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Normal for Norfolk, as the saying goes.
Virtually every gay couple I know I consider to be ‘normal’. OK, one or two may be slightly more exotic than others, but that’s the same in the world of straightery too. Perhaps we are too defensive about gay stereotypes and, instead of fighting them, we shouldn’t give two hoots about them. Because, in the end, we know who we are. We don’t need to be told by society.
I’m just soooo offended!
From the way many people act nowadays, you’d think it was illegal to cause offence. And people seem to get offended by the most innocuous things – nowhere more so than in the world of politics. Essentially, if you are a politician and can take offence rather easily, it guarantees you a headline. Many of us in the so-called ‘gay community’ are just as guilty of this as the red-top tabloids. We jump upon any mild criticism of us as a flagrant example of how rife homophobia is in our society and appear to think this is the way to win friends and influence people. It isn’t. It just shows we are just as chippy as the rest of society.
Take Ken Livingstone (and, believe me, I wish someone would). Ken gives good interviews. He’s bound to say something indiscreet. He’s an interviewer’s equivalent of an orgasm. He’s bound to give satisfaction. And so it proved when Jemima Khan interviewed him a few weeks ago. In a jokey kind of way he said: ‘The Tory Party is riddled with homosexuality.’ Boris’s people were quick to jump on the fact that the word ‘riddled’ is mostly used in conjunction with a disease and made a big thing of it. If Ken had said ‘there’s a lot of it about in the Tory Party’, no one would have blinked an eyelid as it has the benefit of being 100 per cent true!
Using the word ‘riddled’ was certainly an unfortunate phraseology, but did anyone seriously believe that Ken Livingstone was a homophobe? No. So why did it become a big media story? Partly because, if Boris Johnson had said the same thing about the Labour Party, there would have been an even bigger stink. But, more importantly, it became a big story because it is easy for the media to find someone who will take gross offence.
But, you know, it’s our own fault. Because, for instance, we think anyone who expresses a scintilla of opposition to gay marriage must, by definition, be homophobic. So we take offence and denounce them in the strongest possible terms. Whisper it, but it is possible to have reservations about gay marriage without wanting to burn all homosexuals. We love to hate religious leaders who speak out against gay marriage – Dr John Sentamu is the latest one to do so – but we should just chill out and make our case in a calm and reflective manner. Calling people like Sentamu a bigot is playing into the hands of those who really do have an anti-gay agenda.
I host an evening talk show on London’s LBC 97.3. We cover gay issues quite a lot. Well, I would, wouldn’t I? Whenever I do, I am pleasantly surprised by the enlightened view taken by my callers. Most of them, even those on the hard right, can see the case for gay marriage. Why? Because they al
l know someone who is gay. That would not have been the case twenty years ago. People fear the unknown and that’s totally understandable. Nowadays they may have a gay son, daughter, nephew, niece, postman, doctor. They see gay people represented on the media. Gay has become normal in everyday life.
Over the years, gay rights campaigners have understandably had to sound fairly militant and shrill: it was the only way to make our voices heard. Our skins were paper thin. Any mild criticism was greeted with a retort. I think we have come a long way.
We now need to become the voices of sweet reason; to react calmly to criticism of gay rights and take the argument on with minimum anger, angst or shrillness. We shouldn’t take offence from those who seek to argue against us. Many of those who argue against gay marriage used to argue the very same thing about civil partnerships. Today, most of those very same people totally accept the validity of civil partnerships. One day, they will do the same with gay marriage. But it will take longer if all we do is react with offence, anger and dismissiveness. We can win the argument on gay marriage, but we won’t do so by constantly taking offence.
Gay parents mean gay children, right?
Call me a hard-hearted bastard but I have never wanted children. My nieces refer to me as ‘Uncle Herod’ so perhaps it’s just as well. Some of us have the child-rearing gene and others of us don’t. My partner would love to have had children and it’s only recently that I have come to realise what a sacrifice he has made by never pushing the issue with me. It came about like this…
Adoption and fostering are two issues I cover quite a lot on my LBC radio show and, one day, we talked about the challenges facing gay parents. We had dozens of calls but one stuck in my mind. Rob and his partner were in their early thirties and lived in Eltham, I think. He almost had me in tears at one stage as he described the unconditional love they have for their little girl. Even I began to get a little broody and, when I got home, I thought I would investigate what you have to go through to foster or adopt. I wasn’t sure if I really meant to take it any further or not, but one thing that Rob said kept running through my mind. He believes that, if someone is in a position to offer a child a loving home, they have a responsibility to do so. I don’t know if he was trying to make me and my listeners think about our own situations, but I certainly did.