baldysblog.co.uk

Last weekend was the Gay Pride March in London and as a result, there have been a fair number of articles in the media about ‘gay issues’, Cameron apologising about past Tory attitudes towards gay issues, silly gay Labour politicians trying to smear the Tories as anti-gay and so on. On Sunday Peter Tatchell wrote an article in the Independent challenging David Cameron if he became PM to deliver on a number of “outstanding issues”.

During the late 1980′s whilst retraining, I supported myself by working evenings as a doorman at a London Gay West End pub. Despite my being straight it was not a problem for me nor, once the customers understood the way I worked, for them either. At the time and quite unfairly I thought having some gay friends so that I was ‘aware’ of it, the age of “consent” for gay men was still 21 although the age of majority had been reduced to 18 sometime earlier.

Peter Tatchell

I met Peter Tatchell during this time and liked him despite my Boss who was also gay, holding the view that he was the Devil incarnate. In fact I found that he was and I am sure still is, a decent and intelligent man with whom you could have a good conversation. I can remember Peter being pleasantly surprised that a straight man saw the injustice of the situation and he posed another question to me: “What about 16 ?” I explained that as my youngest son was 15, it was not an idea I was comfortable with, he had the good manners not to pursue the point.

Interestingly and somewhat later for other reasons more to do with a fair and balanced civil society, my view became less to do with a specific age and more that the State has limited rights to legislate in these areas. If society accepts that a person has the right to have an active sex life at say age 14, 15, 16 or 18 – whatever, it does not have the right to further specify whether it is straight or gay sex.

I later looked up the story behind his aborted attempt to get elected as the MP for Bermondsay in South East London, the actions of his opponents were disgraceful and yet it does not seem to have made him bitter. Although he is seen mainly as a “Gay Rights Activist” best known for shouting at Bishops, he would prefer to see himself as a Human Rights Activist and I thought he was quite brave in wanting to ‘arrest’ Mugabe.

However, there are a couple of thoughts that come to mind reading his article and the various others written obviously against the background of Gay Pride this weekend.

Rights of Passage

I do not think that there is any reasonable way in which schools could be included in equality legislation, it is unrealistic, there are “rights of passage” that can never be avoided whatever it is concerned with, sexual identity, gender etc.

The reason I write this is based upon my own experiences in a very busy bar which was really the closest you could get to a singles bar in the UK, I always described it as a “Meet and Greet Business. Quite often young men meeting up with a friend or ‘date’, found it more neutral to be seen chatting to the straight doorman whilst they waited and I had many interesting and often amusing conversations.

I have no interest whether people are born Gay or become Gay in due course but a fairly common theme repeated by many was of them at school becoming aware that they were “different” and from starting out by hiding it before they moved on to deal with it until finally they “came out” but often by moving away from home and the area they grew up in.

It was odd hearing this because I remember my own quite happy childhood well. By the time we were finishing at primary school, the entire focus of conversation among us boys concerned the size of the girls breasts, a topic that increased in importance at the all boys grammar school I next attended. To be a lad who was not  interested in this and yet had to feign an interest would be very difficult for him I would imagine.

Whether I am expressing it well of not, my point is that for all of us and on many different issues, we have to deal with this or that as we grow up and decide just who we are – it could be about facing down the playground bully and all these things are beyond legislation and neither should legislation be attempted, this is where the individual must lift their own ‘weights’, not the State on their behalf.

Mainstream is Boring

The second thing that struck me is about the ‘list’ Peter wrote was that little on it seemed that crucial as in a burning issue compared with those of the past. At the time I was a doorman, there were only three openly gay bars in London’s West End and perhaps a couple more that were but rather discreet.

An older gay man was telling me then about the days (late 60/70s ?), when there were none and the gay community lived in the “West End Village” via illegal drinking clubs and cruised from one to the other all evening.

Obviously the Police knew all about them and once in a while would raid one. The man who was telling me this said quite genuinely, that it was “All so much more fun then !” I might have quietly thought to myself that perhaps he was missing being younger but there is another point too in that when things become mainstream and accepted, they also become rather boring too…

Round the Horne with Jules and Sandy was hilarious, in comparison Graham Norton is a bit of a yawn, one should be careful what one wishes for !