CENSORING THE AIDS DEBATE
The press:
Paul Johnson on discrimination
against homosexuals
NOW let us turn to a genuine case of would-be censorship, this time by the Press Council. I lost faith in this confused body when it decided to join Fleet Street in a jolly roll in the gutter of the subject of bank-tapping. Since the Council was cre- ated, the conduct of Fleet Street, far from improving, has become worse than ever. Never, I would say, has Fleet Street been held in such contempt by the public, and justly so. The Council seems unwilling or unable to do anything effective to curb the overwhelming evils of press intrusion, harassment and invention. Instead its judg- ments, or so it seems to me, are straying increasingly into the realm of political opinion, where it has no business whatever to be.
On 19 July it upheld a complaint by one Brian Palmer against the Sun, which had run an editorial applauding the decision of Rugby Council to scrap a guarantee it would not discriminate against homosex- uals seeking jobs. Palmer had argued that it was 'improper and extremely offensive for the newspaper to advocate in an editor- ial discrimination against homosexual peo- ple'. The Council's verdict was that it was, indeed, 'improper' for the Sun to have `endorsed policies permitting general job discrimination against homosexuals'. In- ured as I am to the Press Council's intellec- tual muddles, this particular decision sur- prised me because it seems, on the face of it, a direct invasion of the freedom of editorial opinion. You may or may not agree with what the Sun said, but it was a plain, almost a classic, case of 'fair com- ment on a matter of public interest'.
To begin with, what is the significance of the word 'general'? Does this mean that the Council thinks it proper to advocate discrimination against homosexuals in par- ticular cases or in particular categories of jobs? If so, what are these particular cases and categories? Ought the Council not to define them for the guidance of journal- ists? The mere fact that it exposes itself to these questions demonstrates its unwisdom in straying into this difficult area of opin- ion. Again, it is an open question whether there is such a category as 'homosexual people', at any rate in the same sense as there are women or blacks. All that can truthfully be said is that there are people who engage in homosexual practices. Such practices have always been unacceptable to the vast majority of people in most societies, and usually punished with great ferocity. In 1967, following long and vigor- ous controversy, Parliament decided it was no longer in the public interest to punish as criminal acts of buggery or gross indecency between one male and another, provided such acts are performed in private, be- tween two males of 21 or over, and both consent. In other circumstances such acts continue to be criminal, so the law itself discriminates against homosexuals. Is the Press Council saying that it is 'improper' to advocate discrimination against homosex- uals who continue to engage in unlawful acts or merely against those who stick within the letter of the law? The point is not a niggling one, for it is hard to see how any public authority, or any newspaper for that matter, can be criticised for discrimi- nating between law-abiding citizens and those who habitually defy the law or remain ambivalent towards it.
Moreover in 1967 Parliament did not say buggery or other homosexual acts between consenting adults in private were ethical or acceptable or even tolerable. It merely decided it was not desirable that they be treated as illegal. It did not give people who commit such acts any rights or status whatever. Parliament is always, and right- ly, most reluctant to inhibit the citizen's right to discriminate, since it is one of the most valued of his freedoms, and an essential element in any civilisation, the OED defining discrimination as 'the power of observing distinctions accurately or of making exact distinctions'.
Then again, it is by no means certain that the 1967 Act will be Parliament's last word on the subject. Homosexual behaviour is still a matter of acute and legitimate public controversy. The great majority of Christ- ians and Jews, for example, continue to regard it as evil and many believe the criminal sanctions should be restored. Much has happened since 1967 to streng- then these views. Most reasonable people believed in 1967, no doubt foolishly, that the passing of the relief measure would end the `homosexual problem': homosexual activities would continue, the police would stop bothering, and that would be it. Instead, some homosexuals have engaged in increasingly strident and aggressive cam- paigns to establish collective rights and privileges, to proselytise, to obtain public subsidies and to secure further changes in the law to widen the scope of their sexual activities. Others attack heterosexuality as `artificial'. Homosexual activists now form powerful pressure-groups in local govern- ment, and are widely believed to be in- creasingly influential in dispensing patron- age and exercising discrimination them- selves.
Attitudes to homosexuals have inevit- ably changed as a result of the appearance and spread of the Aids virus, since its rapidly growing incidence appears to be the direct result of the relaxation of crimin- al sanctions in Western countries, particu- larly in the United States, and the conse- quent extraordinary promiscuity of men who practise buggery. Since some of these men also resort to female prostitutes the virus is now beginning to circulate among heterosexuals. Despite intense investiga- tion, the medical profession still knows very little about the virus. But what little is known inspires great concern. The incuba- tion period can be six years or even more, so many more people may be infected and be helping to transmit the disease than we can possibly compute. Men who engage, or have engaged, in homosexual practices are not the only carriers but they are by far the most likely ones.
The Aids problem is a particularly diffi- cult topic for the press to tackle because it must both avoid panicking readers on the one hand, and playing down the threat on the other. Aids is undoubtedly frightening. Dr William Heseltine, of the Harvard School of Public Health, writes in the current issue of the medical journal Cell that the Aids virus has a genetic-control mechanism, or trans-activator, enabling it to reproduce 1,000 times faster than other viruses. A British specialist, John Searle, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, argues that the virus has been misunderstood on 'a monumental scale' because, he says, if present evidence is correct it could 'produce a lethal pandemic throughout the crowded cities and villages of the Third World of a magnitude unparalleled in human history'. Some ex- perts believe that Britain is heading straight towards a national Aids epidemic. Many want urgent action.
It is clear, then, that the Aids outbreak, and other consequences of homosexual promiscuity, are matters which the press must explore and discuss, distasteful, diffi- cult and contentious though they are. All kinds of precautions, including the reim- position of the criminal sanctions abolished in 1967, stricter regulation of prostitutes, and various forms of quarantine, are legiti- mate areas of debate and opinion. For the Press Council to seek to limit this discus- sion by vetoing the expression of lawful views is an unfortunate error of judgment, to put it mildly. Newspaper editors should, and I believe will, ignore the ruling.
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