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.’