Wedding hells

In the good old days of the gay liberation movement, in the 1970s and early 1980s, the excitement of challenging the orthodoxy attracted even the shy and apolitical to its cause. To those of us around at the time, it felt like a cultural insurgency: a rejection of compulsory heterosexuality and the lifestyle that accompanied it. But now battle, such as it is, has changed utterly. It seems to involve people like David Cameron inviting gay people to conform to what he rightly calls the profoundly conservative institution of -marriage.

These new, well-spoken and self-appointed leaders of the gay rights movement want to rebel by conforming. To them, homosexuality is not really something to be proud of. Being tolerated, to them, is enough — and fighting wider battles against homophobia is too much like hard work. These men may not actually vote Tory, but their attitude seems utterly conservative. If they were to do anything as déclassé as go on protest marches, their banners would proclaim: ‘Don’t upset the applecart.’ They seem to want nothing more than to marry, and have little interest in anything resembling a wider cause.

These privileged gay men, for whom the battle has largely been won, have money, social standing, cosy domestic arrangements and move in circles where they are protected from the worst excesses of anti-gay bigotry. They show little interest about gay rights more broadly, or care that (for example) homosexuality remains criminal in 80 countries. They have now walked into the open arms of a Tory leadership, which sees in the gay marriage issue a chance to launder the party’s reputation for nastiness.

The Prime Minister has hardened his position and says he wants gay marriage in churches. He is fond of claiming this is now a Tory cause: that he wants it not ‘in spite of being a Conservative but because I am a Conservative’.