Tired of the bigots, tired of the anti-bigots, my moral certitude faltered

Over the Easter weekend I experienced something rare among columnists: asked for an opinion, I couldn’t think of one. I didn’t know what to think. Ghastly hiatus. Let’s hope this doesn’t happen again soon.

Sky News telephoned. There were reports that the Conservative home affairs spokesman, Chris Grayling, had been ‘recorded’ (their word) expressing the opinion that Christian proprietors of bed & breakfast establishments might be permitted to refuse admittance to gay couples who wanted to share a bed. What did I think?

Assuming it was true, how should I respond? Sky wanted to send a broadcasting van to our house in Derbyshire to record an interview. I wondered if I should ask my partner to prance across camera shot wearing a pinny and waving a feather duster. Within eight hours, BBC News Channel, Channel 4, BBC Radio 5 Live and BBC Radio Ulster all telephoned with similar requests for an interview.

I looked out of my window. It was a lovely, cold, breezy sunny morning. The llamas were grazing in the field. Two goldfinches were snacking on sunflower seed kernels from the bird-feeder. I tried to work up a head of indignation about some elderly couple somewhere, running a little B&B business, not wanting two gay men to share a bed in their house… and… oh, I don’t know, I just couldn’t get angry about it.

There was also something unpleasantly Orwellian in the lip-smacking way in which my informants were telling me how Mr Grayling had been recorded — caught — expressing his opinion. That Nineteen Eighty-Four feeling was reflected, too, in the un-self-aware failure of irony with which an Observer journalist referred to the view that Britain should not ‘tolerate’ (his word) intolerance. Burn the bigots! To the tumbrels with zealots! Crack down on narrow-mindedness! No to the naysayers!