Mick Hartley

Patrick West in the Spectator on the tyranny of Pride – now, since Gay Lib won its battle against institutional homophobia, almost exclusively taken over by trans activists.

While homophobia has never gone away, and like most prejudices, never will, it is nothing compared to what it was in most of our lifetimes. The imprisonment this week of two brothers for murdering a civil servant in London in 1984 is a reminder of how common ‘queer bashing’ used to be, when it wasn’t remotely fashionable to be ‘out’. There is no need to campaign for gay visibility today, in an age when the majority of people find homosexuality neither remarkable nor objectionable.

That was also a time before campaigns for gay equality, or organisations such as Stonewall established for that purpose, had become movements orientated towards pushing a trans agenda. This is why many gays regard the rainbow flag in its modern incarnation as a hostile symbol. To them it represents an ideology seemingly happy to see youths castrated or endure mastectomies – because we must believe their confused pleas that they were born in the wrong body.

Most people who dutifully put up the Progress Pride Flags and the attendant paraphernalia every year probably don’t realise this, believing they are merely doing the nice, caring thing…. Because putting up these symbols is deemed an obvious sign of compassion, it must logically follow that not doing so signifies bigotry and intolerance. That’s the main reason for the ubiquitous presence of these flags every summer: people, especially businesses, are terrified of not flying them. They are scared of the accusations which might ensue…

The trans lobby understands this fear well. This is why they have been able to push their agenda to such extraordinary lengths and with such bizarre outcomes. London’s Regent Street has in recent years come to resemble a kind of trans version of North Korea, what with its menacing panoply of more than 300 LGBTQI+ flags fluttering for weeks on end, an overbearing reminder to everyone of ‘the cause’.

The events surrounding the jailing of Henry Nowak’s killer have been a lesson in how hyperliberal ideology has managed to seduce so many. In that particular case, the ideology of ‘anti-racism’ was slavishly adopted because many thought it well-intentioned in its desire to eradicate prejudice. Yet it was also an ideology taken up thoughtlessly because everyone feared being tarnished as bigots, because everyone else was complying, because everyone was terrified of not doing so.

With so many of these well-meaning initiatives, the sclerosis in our institutions means that they cling on long after their time has passed. Institutional racism was, it seems to me, quite a reasonable conclusion for the Macpherson report into the Stephen Lawrence killing to come to at the time, but it just became a shibboleth that had to be clung to long after times had changed. And so with Pride. It’s way past it sell-by date, but no one dares stick a stake in its heart for fear of the accusations of bigotry. And of course the trans grifters saw their chance to make their claim on our nice liberal sympathy.

There’s also the appeal of that old subversive vibe attached to “queer”. I was in the bookshop downstairs at the Photographers’ Gallery at the weekend, and there was a whole table display of “queer” books. Maybe it was part of Pride month, but it wasn’t that unusual anyway, as “queer” still looms large in the art world – it still carries that edgy transgressive feel of outsiders defying conventional norms and sticking a finger up to straight society, or likes to think it does. The idea of a gay couple – chartered accountants, perhaps, or estate agents – quite happily living in a semi in Surbiton and just getting on with their lives, must come as such a disappointment to all the young culture warriors and artists searching for a touch of the old rebel spirit.