Laws that constrain free speech bring out the childish bigot in me
It is a long time since I have incited homophobic hatred against anyone; I think I was about nine years old the last time it occurred. My mother had patiently explained to me that homosexuals were like vampire bats, passing on disease and filth through their ghastly and peculiar sexual practices. Her colourful image stayed with me for a year or so and I would level the term ‘poof’ or ‘bumboy’ at anyone who got on my nerves. I don’t know if the people at whom I levelled this abuse were, or would become in later life, homosexuals, so I don’t know if my behaviour would have fallen foul of Jack’s legislation.
Whatever the case, I don’t do it any more.
My children may do, though. Quite recently my oldest son asked me about Auschwitz, because he’d heard of the place from somewhere or other. I told him that it was a concentration camp, where Hitler sanctioned the murder — through the use of gas chambers — of hundreds of thousands of people: Jews, gypsies, homosexuals, communists. He looked suitably shaken at this and then said, ‘That’s awful.
Except for the homosexuals.’ We had to have another little talk. ‘Gay’ is used pejoratively and universally in his school just as its earlier incarnation, ‘poof’, was used in mine. I don’t know where it comes from, this animus. Nor is it exclusive to junior schools in Wiltshire. According to a friend of mine, a school in south London recently attempted to counter incipient homophobia among its students by instituting severe penalties for anyone heard using the word ‘gay’ in a derogatory manner. So the kids stopped screaming ‘gay’ at one another.
Now they shout out ‘Jew’ instead.
I have a lot of respect for the gay rights organisations who have driven the government towards this legislation (and for whom the legislation is presumably intended as a sop of some kind). For example, I cannot, offhand, think of a single British citizen whom I admire more than Peter Tatchell of Outrage for his bravery and his principle. But nonetheless we will soon be in the bizarre position whereby two recent pieces of legislation designed to prevent ‘hate crimes’ taking place actually contradict one another. Under the Religious Hatred legislation, Islam must be afforded our respect as a valid and noble belief system. And yet at the same time, a Muslim who espouses one of its fundamental tenets — that homosexuality is wicked and a sin — might find himself banged up by the old bill for inciting homophobic hatred. And if I were then to say what I believe — that, partly because of its attitude towards gay people, Islam is a vindictive, bigoted and repressive ideology — then I might be banged up, too. This is surely ludicrous.
The excellent Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, has said look, don’t worry, this new legislation will not apply if opposition to gay lifestyles or sexual practices are rendered in a polite and mildly expressed form.
Trouble is, I don’t think Ben is wholly au fait with Mohammed’s hadiths on homosexuality. ‘Kill the one who is doing it and the one to whom it is being done’ strikes me as being singularly impolite. Indeed, if you were to construct a sentence designed precisely to fall foul of Jack Straw’s legislation, that would be it. Not that the Christian Bible is much more lenient on the matter. Leviticus xx 13 and the proclamation ‘They shall surely be put to death’ also lacks something in terms of mildness and has the whiff of the impolite about it.
So now we are in a position where simply quoting from the Bible, or one of Islam’s hadiths, is technically against the law.
But then, it has been for some time.
Author: Liddle, Rod
