Just Shut Up And Vote The Way We Tell You!

Gary Younge (is it me, or does his picture on that by-line look a lot like deceased actor Gary Coleman?) on those bloody gays and their refusal to recognise the real enemy:

In a brilliant exposé the Guardian reported how a lone man held up a pink triangle at a demonstration of the English Defence League – one of the most openly anti-immigrant and Islamophobic organisations in the country. When the reporter asked him what it was for he replied nervously: "This is the symbol gay people were made to wear under Hitler. Islam poses the same threat and we are here to express our opposition to that."

Given fascism's history of violent and outspoken homophobia, the news that the EDL would have a 115-strong lesbian, gay and transgender wing would appear, at the very least, incongruous.

Yes, indeed, it’s a puzzle. Why would a group opposed to the creep of Islamification attract people worried about the potential drawbacks of that?

But surely Gary must be able to find a way in which this is actually the fault of the west?

Ah. He can:

But in fact it just the most glaring example of the misguided and ill-informed shift in our nationalist discourse that has moved the emphasis from creed to culture and race to religion in a bid to erect a moral rampart between the a mythological modern, enlightened, progressive west and the demonised medieval, backward, bigoted south.

There’s nothing good about our society, folks. We’re just fooling ourselves. We’re just the same as any remote, primitive tribe, really...

Far from being a contradiction confined to the far right, these issues have taken on totemic significance in the mainstream in the broadside against both multiculturalism in general and non-European immigration in particular as though they were inimicable (Ed: sic) with the principles of social equality.

By which Gary means ‘Damn! They aren’t supposed to be the ones on the side of justice!’.

At the end of an otherwise reasonable editorial on immigration in early April the Financial Times argued: "A strong emphasis on cultural assimilation is also justified" including a "robust defence of western values, such as women's and gay rights".

Well, who could possibly argue against that?

But Gary gives it the old college try:

The problem with this particular line in the sand is that it is quickly washed away by reality. For something to qualify as a "western value" it must possess at least two qualities. First, it must be a "value" that is exclusive to the west. Second, it must be a belief that has been long-held, broadly consented to and deeply entrenched.

Since when did we let Guardian columnists and race hustlers define our terms for us?

Gay rights can boast neither of these attributes. Many basic rights were only granted to gays in the west relatively recently.

Indeed, but we stopped imprisoning and killing them a hell of a lot longer than that…

Moreover, far from cementing a consensus, these legal advances remain controversial and highly contested. In the 31 American states where gay marriage has been put to a popular vote it has been defeated.

We’re really no better than the people who push walls over onto gay couples, are we?

The west has also proved quite adept at exporting homophobia. More than half of the countries that criminalise homosexuality do so with laws left over from British colonialism.

Which ended last Thursday, right?

Not many, many years ago, leaving such laws in the hands of the native peoples, to repeal as they saw fit?

The greatest threat to gay rights comes not from Islam and the left, but the Christian right.

Really? So a strongly worded letter to the ‘Church Times’ equates to the death penalty? But this paragraph tells you why Gary has a bee in his bonnet about this:

This is why we cannot allow an issue as important as gay rights to be snatched by the right as a stick with which to beat Islam, immigration and the left.

Islam, immigration, the left = good.

Everything else = bad.

No matter what reality says….