The Public Life Of A Militant Homosexual

I remember, a few years ago turning round to some friends and explaining that I was really getting too old to head out onto the streets and protest. Yet a number of events have made me think again about this. Tomorrow I will join people in Trafalgar Square to light a candle and stand silently to register my solidarity with victims of homophobia in an event I never thought I'd see again - some on the streets gay rights activism.

Since the changes in laws of the past decade, there has been a shift in tone by a great number of voices in the gay community. Having gained some significant victories in the drive for equality a significant number of people seemed to feel that the battle was won. We could put away our banners and leave all the angry stuff to Peter Tatchell. It was all a bit too militant for those stuffing themselves full of cake and champagne at whoever's civil partnership ceremony they were attending that weekend. Taking to the streets has never been something the majority of people want to do, and gays and lesbians are no exception. Especially when can walk through Old Compton Street and the rest of Central London hand in hand with your partner, boyfriend/girlfriend, significant other, or whatever other term you use to describe the person you are currently stepping out with.

Yet the reality for a great many people isn't quite like that. There are still many who consider the mere fact of this as an act of militant homosexuality - something that they will not tolerate in public. Those were the views of Nick Griffin, although they are not confined to the BNP. A great many other people, fundamentally opposed to the far right, openly share those views. Earlier this year I was heading home after a night out with someone, and when we stopped to kiss a car with a group of mouthy young boys stopped their car to hurl abuse at us. Instead of just walking away, we stood our ground and shouted back. Eventually they drove off. I remember at the time feeling quite exhilarated at the fact that it was now possible to do this. We were in Central London, just around the corner from Trafalgar Square.

A few months after that, at the end of September, Ian Baynham did pretty much the same thing to a group of people. He was violently assaulted by two women and a man and on 13th October he died from his injuries. James Parkes a 22 year-old trainee police officer was violently attacked by a group of youths aged between 13 and 16 last Sunday in Liverpool. These are just two of the high profile victims of homophobia. In an age of perceived equality these things are still happening. Usually it's thought that it's the people living in small towns who suffer in silence facing abuse and worse if they publicly declare their sexuality. Yet these two high profile attacks happened in places where seeing gays and lesbians publicly displaying their affections has been more commonplace.

It's against this backdrop that there will be candlelit vigils this weekend organised by people at grassroots level. The one in London, tomorrow was arranged a few weeks ago but seems to have suddenly caught itself in the zeitgeist. It's been arranged by a group set up to fight both racism, homophobia, and intolerance in remembrance of the people killed and injured in the nail bombing campaign which took place in Brick Lane, Brixton, and Soho ten years ago. The Liverpool one is much the same kind of response, ordinary people deciding to stand up and do something. This kind of grassroots activism is welcome, joined as it is by the East London Homophobia group - set up to monitor levels of homophobia and raise awareness of the issue in East London. It's a welcome antidote to Stonewall's increasing cosy work.

Their "some people are gay, get over it!" campaign has their trademark soft centred tone of self satisfaction. It seems we've won equality so let's all sit down and be nice to each other, having all the sincerity and unity of one of those Benetton ads from the 80's. Well I'm gay and I'm not getting over it, I'm glad to say. It's not an illness I can recover from (whatever some might believe). The Stonewall website seems almost blissfully ignorant of this demonstration, and there is no sign of any encouragement from them to join those in Trafalgar Square tomorrow. The website's only listed event is their own awards ceremony (which should read, are taking place, and not is, as you've pluralised awards). I will write something more on my thoughts about this organisation in another piece, as this isn't even the tip of the iceberg on my thoughts about this organisation...

Still, there are many who think the victories of recent legistlation have handed equality to gays and lesbians on a plate which is cloud cuckoo land thinking. When equality is won in law, it needs preserving, the fight to maintain it is just as hard. Look at the number of women MP's there aren't, or top female executives, black or Asian MP's, the fact that the Metropolitan Police was discirbed as institutionally racist 26 years after the Race Relations Act was passed, that women still struggle to receive equal pay in the workplace almost 40 years since the Equal Pay Act. These are just some of facts that sum up the reality that the battles for equality are never over.

I've been verbally abused, threatened, and intimidated largely by people who thought I was gay on a number of occasions in my life, but consider myself lucky that I've only been actually assaulted once. I remember going to my first Gay Pride in 1990 and looking at the faces of the people there and noticing how many of them had little scars on their faces, clearly some had been as result of being gay. I grew up in a small town and I faced homophobia all the time. It isn't nice and it needs to stop, but that will take time. I'm not a radical, I'm not a militant homosexual but I will stand up and be counted. I believe I have a right to be respected for who I am (which is many, many different things) and I have the right to be treated as equal who happens to be gay. Tomorrow I light a candle to stand up and add my voice to the people want to say enough, I light a candle to say I am not afraid, I light a candle for all the people who can't be there.

"More sinned against than sinning"

It's been a while, I've decided to revamp this and vent my spleen on the world and its failings. There is no better place to begin...

There is something fundamentally disingenuous about Nick Griffin, the racist fascist leader of ultra right-wing party the BNP. Since his election to the European Parliament we are expected to believe that the BNP are a credible party in British politics. The fact that they have exploited the same classic fears of countless fascist organisations by portraying of a country being "swamped" (Margaret Thatcher's term in 1978) by immigrants. A cheap way to legitimise their existence, which is based on hatred and discrimination. The other benefit was that they faced an electorate who took apathy to a new level. The upshot was that the BNP got fewer votes than in the previous European Elections but still ended up with 2 MEPs. So the upshot is we're stuck with them for a while longer.

Last Thursday Griffin got his grinning facade onto Question Time, the political discussion programme on the BBC. His performance was muddled, foolish, and predictable. There were the usual bashing of Islam as he tried to portray every follower of that faith who resides in the UK as a dedicated follower of Sharia law. I'm not fan of any religion, but this is his usual approach. In the process he alluded to being a friend of feminism by siting their views on adultery, conveniently forgetting that The Bible treats adulterous women no better. There were also the rather hilarious attempts to claim he didn't say things he's been filmed saying, or people he's shared platforms with being not quite as nasty as we think they are. Then there was his disputing of the figures of the Holocaust - stopping short of a flat denial - but still the words of a fascist fantasist. Listening to him I was reminded of the people who say, Hitler was a vegetarian, who liked children and animals. I should point out he was also a genocidal monster but that truth, like so many in the life of Nick Griffin, is a little too much to admit.

Watching his performances in the media I'm always reminded King Lear who, upon being thrown out by his two treacherous daughters Goneril and Regan, rages at the storm shouting "I am more sinned against than sinning". That is Nick Griffin's approach in a nutshell. He complains that the ordinary British working people are under threat by masses of immigrants who are either not white or don't speak English, that the liberal elite are undermining our morals, that he doesn't get a fair hearing on Question Time, the list of simpering goes on and on. If we are to believe him, then the poor chap really is as hard done by as the people he misrepresents.

The truths are somewhat different. The population of this country is still not exactly overrun by people who are not indigenous to this country. According to the Institute of Race Relations website:

• The 2001 census figures to show that out of just under 60 million people living in this country there are just over 54 million white people.


• The white population is attaining the third highest number of A* to C grades at GCSE in 2004 out of a list of 9 defined racial categories.


• The Cabinet Office concluded that, of the 44 most deprived local authority areas contain proportionally four times as many people from ethnic minority groups as other areas


• The English Housing Survey revealed that ethnic minority households are three times more likely than white households to live in a poor neighbourhood.


• The unemployment rate for ethnic minority groups has traditionally been twice that of whites.
  

Whilst no one is denying that some white people live in bad neighbourhoods, face difficulties in the education system, and with opportunities for employment in the current recession hit employment market, it is a myth to say that they are doing worse than anyone else. It is ridiculous of the BNP to insinuate that white working class people are becoming a persecuted minority. There are simply to many of them to make that claim seem even remotely credible. Gaining a voice by aligning with the far right isn't the way to bring about the changes needed, it merely reduces the amount of credibility to the majority of who people view those demands, however legitimate they are. It brings us back to the Lear quote.

There are many who feel that Nick Griffin should be silenced, that he has no place in mainstream politics, and should not have been asked onto Question Time. I sympathise with this view. I suspect that Griffin and the BNP view their opponents with utter contempt. The same kind of contempt that Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pinochet, Saadam Hussien, Pol Pot, and countless other despots viewed legitimate opposition. If they were elected to govern they would silence the free press, round up and imprison, deport, and probably murder their vocal opponents. Yet we live in a democracy, and so I have to let them have their say. In return they have to let me have mine, for what it is worth. That's the function of a democracy.

The telling moment last Thursday was the man who stood up from the audience and proclaimed that he was proud to be born and bred in Britain. He had brown skin, I'm not sure where he was from. He asked Mr Griffin what he would do with him and got no reply. The next day Nick Griffin claimed that London was no longer British, and I think the man in the audience probably got his answer there. I misread the headline on the paper stand and thought Nick Griffin was no longer British - which would do us all a favour if he and his vile sycophants departed these shores for some Caucasian utopia.

These are people who consider multi-cultural societies as something to be feared. They forget that we live on island which is full of people from all over Europe who came here and conquered. It's all in our DNA. We, and our wonderful culture, are a product of this if the BNP think that white people have been here in this pure unadulterated form then he is gravely mistaken. I long to live in a society where I can use another of my favourite Shakespeare quotes to describe the BNP, "it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing".