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[/audioplayer]As inexorably as night follows day and push comes to shove, so the words ‘Tory’ and ‘scandal’ seem destined to conjoin with ‘Brazilian’ and ‘rent-boy’. Yet the main response to the allegations about Mark Menzies MP last weekend was neither laughter or condemnation, but pity. The tone was similar to that recently adopted by Jeremy Paxman when interviewing the disgraced former Co-op chairman Paul Flowers. How sad, it seemed to sigh, in this day and age. Is there anything we can do?
Well yes, in fact: it has just been done — and among other things it is likely to prove this sighing a phase. Because although there certainly was a time when gay people could be the objects of pity, viewed as tragic individuals weighed down by society’s unjust attitudes, all this has changed. The most recent change is that since last weekend gay men and women are now allowed the right to full and equal civil marriage in Britain.
I was one of those who argued for this and I did so, among other things, because it seems to me not just wrong but actively cruel to condemn people for behaviour for which you deny them the solution.
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