Laws that constrain free speech bring out the childish bigot in me
Rod Liddle is baffled by the contradictions in Jack Straw's proposal to make hatred of homosexuals a crime punishable by a long jail term — and more generally alarmed by the use of laws restricting liberties to please one or other of Labour's client groups There was a strange non sequitur in Jack Straw's latest policy announcement. The Justice Secretary revealed that inciting hatred of homosexuals would soon be a crime punishable by seven years in prison. And justifying the legislation, he said this: 'It is a measure of how far we have come as a society in the last ten years that we are now appalled by hatred and invective directed at people on the basis of their sexuality. It is time for the law to recognise this.'
The logic of this quite defeats me. It seems to be saying that because homosexuals are no longer loathed or despised, it should be against the law to loathe or despise them. Yet if we are now in a position where homosexuals are not discriminated against and subjected to abuse, and they have got to that position without the benefit of such legislation, then such legislation must surely be superfluous.
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 'pool 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, 'poor, 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. Indeed, the rather bigoted Christian evangelist Stephen Green was arrested a year or so ago for having handed out leaflets in Sophia Gardens, Cardiff, with precisely this quote written on the bottom. The stuff from Leviticus was the reason he was arrested. And this brings another salient question: if there was legislation in place one year ago to arrest Stephen Green for allegedly whipping up homophobic hatred, why does Jack Straw feel it necessary to put another law on the statute book now? You will remember, too, that the then boss of the perfectly foul Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, got a visit from the rozzers when he expressed the view — very mildly and with great politeness and understanding — that homosexuality ran counter to the aims and objectives of civil society. No sooner had he said these words, on the BBC PM programme, than the antihate police were on his trail. If they felt able to investigate him then, why is new legislation deemed to be necessary now?
Much the same question was asked when the Racial and Religious Hatred Bill was introduced; that quite aside from being an iniquitous limit on the freedom of speech, the legislation was quite unnecessary. Muslim leaders had been agitating for legislation to plug what they believed was a loophole in the anti-hate business: Muslims, being a group delineated by their religious observance rather than a racial group, were therefore excluded from previous anti-hate legislation, they argued. But this was arrant nonsense. A few months before the legislation was introduced, Nick Griffin, the leader of the British National Party, had been arrested for inflammatory things he is alleged to have said about Islam and Muslims. The police on that occasion did not need the benefit of a new law to bang him up and try him, twice, at enormous expense, for inciting racial hatred. So why introduce the new law? I have never heard a convincing explanation of this from a government minister; the reason, I suspect, is that there simply isn't one.
The suspicion will persist that both of these new pieces of legislation — about the homosexuals and the Muslims — are bones thrown to two of Labour's loyal client groups. Two groups which have traditionally voted Labour, despite misgivings here or there. And two groups which, rather more problematically, loathe one another. The old Rainbow Coalition always contained colours which clashed a little.
As for me, for the first time in nearly 40 years I am gripped by an urge to walk down my local high street and shout `poofterf and `bumboyf at the first people I see. I am aware that this is a childish and petulant response to what is, after all, merely another government attempt to make us love and respect one another and enforce this aspiration through the deployment of ever more police officers. It is not simply the assault upon our freedom of speech — although this freedom seems to diminish with every month that passes. It is the utter pointlessness of it, the continual urge to clog up our over-burdened legislature with more laws, regardless of how futile and contradictory they might seem. And indeed, counterproductive. Nobody really cares that an ever-dwindling minority of evangelical Christians believe homosexuality to be on a par with murder. Most normal people view such beliefs as absurd and vindictive. But beliefs they nonetheless are, and when they come under official assault it is truly difficult to resist forming common cause with the Stephen Greens of this world, and the mad mullahs.
In other words, the legislation creates the very thing it supposedly has been introduced to prevent — a feeling of resentment and anger towards a minority group which, hitherto, had the majority of the population on its side.
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