Here we go again. Back in the 1960s and 1970s most people, bless them, took the view that the words ‘homosexual’ and ‘paedophile’ were more or less interchangeable. If your predilection were of the male on male variety you didn’t particularly differentiate between men and boys. That viewpoint is still shamefully held by many, especially if they write on this subject for the Daily Mail or belong to some sort of religious fundamentalist group.
I remember a time, not so long ago, when I was involved in a discussion with a senior Tory MP about gay adoption. His line of argument was based around the apparently harmless notion that we must always “think of the children”. I got rather angry. “What you’re effectively saying is that gay men are more likely to abuse a child than straight men.” He started blustering, but that was exactly what he meant. He also came out with the old canard that gay parents would inevitably turn their children gay, even if they didn’t mean to. Nice. Despite what feminist writer Julie Bindel might say in her new book ‘Straight Expectations’, if you’re gay you’re born gay. I don’t know any gay parents whose kids have grown up to be gay, although by the law of averages some no doubt do.
It is, of course, nonsense to suggest that gay men have any greater predilection for underage sex than straight men. Or women come to that matter. I’d no more want to have sex with an underage boy than my own grandmother, and she’s been dead for 35 years. Of course there are paedophiles among gay men, just as there are among straight men, yet from the way the issue is still covered in some newspapers you’d think the proportion was 90-10. For some reason newspapers seem titillated (if that’s the right word) by priests or politicians who get caught with young boys. They cover these stories with a sexual prurience which you just don’t find in stories about a builder abusing his 12 year old daughter. The truth is that most abuse occurs in the home or between family members, regardless if it is between family members of the same sex or otherwise.
For some years there have been rumours that MPs and other politicians, as well as entertainers were involved in some sort of child sex ring in the 1970s and 1980s. Various names have been the subject of rumour and gossip for years. And that’s the point; it is all so far rumour and gossip. But a national newspaper – the Sunday Mirror – felt it was justified in publishing all sorts of lurid allegations about various Thatcher government ministers who were supposed to have been present at party conference parties where rent boys were allegedly procured for party goers.
On the basis of a single source, The Mirror saw fit to name various ministers who are now dead and can’t answer back, yet the newspaper shied away from naming anyone who was still alive, using the phrase “The Mirror has chosen not to name him”. So they are quite happy to make dirty insinuations and allegations against the dead, and thereby sully their reputations, yet shy away from doing the same to someone who can answer back. Cowards.
I make no argument against the setting up of inquiries into historic sexual abuse by powerful people. Indeed, I welcome them. All abuse needs to be exposed as publicly as possible and the guilty need to be punished with the full force of the law.
However, I fear we are about to enter a dark period for gay people. Just when we thought we had achieved some sort of quality under the law and in the eyes of society in general, we’re going to have to endure yet more poisonous journalism from people who should know better. I wrote in a previous column about how most of us lead normal, ordinary, blameless lives, way divorced from the debauchery some journalists and religious fundamentalists seem to imagine.
So much has been done since the 1960s to gradually weaken these previously deeply held stereotypes and it is up to every decent gay man or woman to ensure that they do not take hold again.
This article first appeared in the September issue of Attitude Magazine
