The return of gay shame - spiked

Contents:

• IS BRENDAN O'NEILL GAY?
• THE RETURN OF GAY SHAME
• DO STONEWALL THK I’M THE WRONG KD OF GAY?
• GAY MARRIAGE IS NOT A LIBERAL E
• BRENDAN O'NEILL ON GAY MARRIAGE
• GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

IS BRENDAN O'NEILL GAY?

Sure, Yiannopoulos did a relig fashn – he was recently rced to sellg Virg Mary figur on a Christian YouTube channel – while Bergdorf has done wh impecble rrect-speak, gabbg about embracg ‘sexual fluidy’ over the bary ia that there is ‘[nothg] else other than straight or gay’. ) And yet one nnot jt let sli the fact that, here, we have a memoir by a man who wr at length about his ‘ternalised shame’ over his homosexualy, his abily to unrstand how ‘anyone uld be proud to be gay’, who then disvers that, mercifully, there is somethg beyond gay – transwomanhood; the reorrg of the body so that might better acrd wh one’s ner feelgs. Its embrace of the regrsive, post-tth ia that sex is a spectm, and that people wh penis n be lbians, and that a woman who giv birth should have the right to be registered as her children’s father, grat agast the very foundatn of gay rights – namely that this is a same-sex attractn, and that the people who experience this attractn ought to enjoy full eedom society.

THE RETURN OF GAY SHAME

They’ve given a b of PC sp and polish, sure, but is unqutnable now that their irratnal csa agast the realy of sex is generatg a culture of hatred agast those who believe that sex is important – whether that’s women who want sex-based rights or homosexual activists whose mpaigns for liberatn were based on the belief that same-sex attractn is normal and should not be punished or viewed wh shame.

I have heard people say thgs like, “I know David Cameron is behd the drive for gaymarriage, and I know he’s an arse and not very liberal, but that don’t matter bee the end rult will still be a more equal, more pleasant society” other words, the polil circumstanc which somethg occurs, the polil motivatns drivg a certa kd of actn, n simply be ignored if they nfe or make unfortable.

This is really polil wardice, a sire to avoid explorg the and nsequenc of polil actn favour of stickg your fgers your ears and sayg “Let gays get married, let gays get married” is polil acquicence disguised as liberalism, an uncril acceptance of what ernments do drsed up as a crilly engaged mand for gay then other people get the ntext of gay marriage wrong. The first amework, which is only que important, is what we might ll a crisis of homosexual love, a crisis of romance, where gay upl creasgly feel the urge to seek external validatn of their liftyl and their the send amework, which is enormoly important, is the sire of the state to terfere the stutn of marriage, and fay life more broadly, orr to more closely ern and police our terpersonal relatnships.

DO STONEWALL THK I’M THE WRONG KD OF GAY?

This trend has been on the rise for many years now, and the gay-marriage issue, which will offer the state unprecented powers to refe private, munal relatnships, is very clearly a part of is this ntext, the ntext of a rather regretful fensivens amongst gays and a rather thorarian stct amongst the polil ele, that I thk we should oppose the thg lled gay marriage that is currently beg phed through.

It seems pretty clear to me that the thg that is motorg gay activists’ mand for marriage rights is fensivens rather than nfince, a feelg that one’s liftyle mt receive the blsg of the state orr for to have any other words, the real driver of the stggle for gay marriage is not the polics of liberty but the polics of IDENTITY – not a sire to be more ee and equal but a sire for state regnn of one’s personal inty and livg recent s, there has been a really signifint shift amongst gay-rights activists. Bee where the treatment of homosexualy as a sexual orientatn volved tellg the state to get lost – on the basis that had no right to terme what kd of relatnships people uld have – the treatment of homosexualy as an inty volv vg the state to get more volved gay people’s liv, to nstantly assert that gayns is nice and good and polics of inty is an satiable beast. They both sprg om a wherg of the old ials of tonomy and the eedom to choose how to live – which were very posive ials – and their replacement by a kd of cloyg, annoyg polics of gay inty which mt nstantly be fed praise and told that is old ternal nvictn that gays had a right to live tonomoly, however they liked, regardls of what the state thought about , has been replaced by a lack of nfince the homosexual muny and a rrpondg clamour for state approval and social is fundamentally what is behd gay activists’ mand for gay marriage: fensivens and uncertaty.

Officials never stop ettg about what go on behd closed doors, the apparently vlent, crazy fai set up by stupid would seem to me to be far more sensible to see the state’s current cheerleadg of gay marriage as a part of this terferg, thorarian stct, rather than believg that Brish officials have magilly turned to Rosa Parks the state lov about gay marriage is that, unr the guise of liberty and equaly, grants them extraordary power to refe marriage and even fay relatnships.

GAY MARRIAGE IS NOT A LIBERAL E

Now, I am not sayg that gays should never, ever be able to get married, or that there isn’t some time or some way which homosexuals might engage what they nsir to be a homosexual this thg currently beg phed through, this manipulatn of the gay issue by an ele termed to lonise more and more areas of our private liv, this should be rejected, by anyone who nsir himself progrsive and above is a transcript of a talk I gave London on 26 June 2012. My openg ments are published are many reasons to be sceptil of the mpaign for gay marriage, this movement that picts self as the rernatn of Mart Luther Kg yet is only effively backed by such superbly unradil people as David Cameron, The Tim and Goldman there’s one reason to be sceptil that don’t get nearly enough verage or nsiratn my view. And that is the fact that gay marriage will be bad for gay seems pretty clear to me that this mpaign is at least partly born of a very sad and very profound sense of fensivens the morn gay speaks to a sire among gay rights activists to w external approval for their lov and liftyl, pecially the approval of the state and the moral majory, which they were never terted wng the gay marriage is fundamentally a n, I thk.

BRENDAN O'NEILL ON GAY MARRIAGE

Some twentieth-century moralists talked about a “gay germ” gay radils argued agast such blogil termism, claimg stead that their sexual pursus were a liftyle not a ndn, and one which they had every moral right to choose and, sadly, gay activists are rehabilatg the old anti-gay lobby’s blogil termism - though they talk of a “gay gene” rather than a “gay germ”.

The mpaign for gay marriage shows there has been a huge turnaround here, the past, gay radils wanted to wriggle ee om social stutns, particularly om the sistence that everyone should enter to marriage and live nuclear Gay Liberatn Front that emerged om the Stonewall rt wanted to smash “all existg social stutns”, cludg marriage.

GAY MOSW MOSW CY GUI

Early gay maniftos the 1970s railed agast marriage and the fay, scribg them as “prisons” and “opprsive” mand was for the right to life outsi of such stutns; for the liberty to fashn new ways of livg that did not require the blsg of the state or the approval of the moral, a total turnaround, through the gay marriage mpaign gay activists are pleadg for state regnn of their liv and you look at the reasons mpaigners give for why they want marriage, is very tertg - they talk about feelg unrvalued, about not feelg plete, about wantg to be weled to the “fay of state-sanctned human relatnships”, as one wrer puts . This is clearly driven by a feelg of a lack of legimacy, by a nigglg, almost existential doubt and disfort, rather than by any 1960s-style nfince to mand, where gay activists once rejected scientific explanatns for homosexualy, and clared that they didn’t need a state licence for their liv, now they embrace blogil termism and crave state once gays and gay activists rived their moral thory simply om their sire to be ee, to live how they wanted to live, now they seek to prop up their liftyl wh the thory of science and the thory of the state. It is not the gay rights movement’s sire to be mastream and bland that is alarmg; most polil activists are mastream and bland, the alarmg thg is how they are makg homosexualy reliant upon the expertise of scientists and the favour of the state; ’s the needs for third-party validatn that is worryg, not the nformy.

Now that they are driven by the polics of inty, they ask the state to e to their liv and nfer s blsgs upon polics of inty, beg built upon self-doubt and fensivens, is an satiable beast, requirg nstant regnn om whout one’s own life and rights mpaigners now seek that regnn om the realms of psdoscience and state the gay marriage mpaign is dishont - prents self as darg and edgy, when tth is implicy munitg the msage that is only acceptable to live relatnships that are blogilly logil and state-approved. In grantg the state the thory to refe marriage, effectively to say which human relatnships are good and valid, the morn gay movement is helpg to boost the thory of the state over all timate relatnships and liftyle is helpg to make the state the arber of what is acceptable the arena of love and home and fay is the great tragedy of the morn gay movement - started out challengg the moral thory of the state over people’s timate liv, but has end up helpg to rehabilate and expand the moral thory of the state that arena of human is an eded versn of a speech I gave at Kg’s College London on 26 Febary 2013. One Guardian lumnist, liberally borrowg om the black civil-rights movement, says the ‘breathtakg’ progrs of the gay-marriage issue shows that Mart Luther Kg was right to say ‘the arc of history is long but bends towards jtice’; shows what mpaigners n achieve when they be ‘ialism wh actn’.

If gay MLK-style mpaigners are rponsible for the transformatn of gay marriage ‘om joke to dogma’, then they mt have achieved through osmosis, sce they certaly didn’t do through any kd of mass, msy tth, the extraordary rise of gay marriage speaks, not to a new spir of liberty or equaly on a par wh the civil-rights movements of the 1960s, but rather to the polil and moral nformism of our age; to the weirdly judgmental non-judgmentalism of our PC tim; to the way which, an uncril era such as ours, ias n bee dogma wh alarmg ease and speed; to the difficulty of speakg one’s md or stickg wh one’s beliefs at a time when doubt and disagreement are pathologised.

This is a mpaign that is elist nature, the sense that, direct ntrast to those civil-rights agators of old, me om the top of society down; and is a mpaign which is extremely unfivg of dissent or disagreement, implicly, softly mandg acquicence to s for all the parisons of the gay-marriage movement to the civil-rights movement, fact the most strikg thg about gay marriage is s origs among the ele. In his new book, Michael Klarman scrib how judg, not streetfighthers, spearhead the gay-marriage mpaign; he even bizarrely lls judg a ‘distctive subculture’ of the cultural ele, which ‘tends to be even more liberal than the general public on issu such as genr equaly and gay equaly’.

Another favourable acunt of the rise of gay marriage not how was led by ‘lawyers and profsors’, who unselled agast engagg wh the public sce makg ‘open mands for gay marriage [uld] trigger a backlash’ (1) gay wrer John D’E has criqued gay mpaigners’ reliance on the urts, argug that this ‘nvictn that [the law] is the way to change the world… would have been nsired unual for much of Amerin history’ (2).

’ This was the first stage the great nformism over gay marriage: s transformatn to mon sense through beg adopted and promoted by a legal and polil class keen to monstrate s liberal crentials and to assume an historic, MLK-style posture our otherwise flat, unspirg and illiberal polil era. That is – never md nvcg someone wh reason; jt heavy-handly let them know ’s normal to support gay marriage, and th prumably abnormal to oppose is how nformism is fed and enforced today: el vise an ia or mpaign, far away om what one gay-marriage proponent lls ‘the tyranny of the majory’; that ia or mpaign gets disgenuoly picted as somethg that protters and mpaigners mand and actually put prsure on the el to e up wh; and through a procs of bate-monisatn and pathologisatn of dissent, through the treatment of acceptance as normal and cricism as abnormal, the ia or mpaign is spread more wily through society. It is society’s reluctance to fend tradnal views of mment, and s relativistic refal more broadly to discrimate between different liftyle choic, that has fuelled the peculiar non-judgmental tyranny of the gay-marriage mpaign, which judg harshly those who dare to judge how people live.

Through a batn of the weakns of belief tradnal marriage and the sidns of the mpaign for gay marriage, we have end up wh somethg that reflects brilliantly John Stuart Mill’s scriptn of how cril thkg n ve to the spotism of nformism, so that ‘peculiary of taste, eccentricy of nduct, are shunned equally wh crim, until by dt of not followg their own nature, the [followers of nformism] have no nature to follow’ more of my articl for spiked and other publitns here.

Rather, the more one listens to the key agators for same-sex marriage, the more one mt nclu that this is about proppg up the apparently flaggg self-teem of the gay muny, not epeng their looks creasgly like a mpaign that fantilis rather than that threatens to turn the clock back to when gay people were prumed to be morally secure, mentally disarrayed, need of help.