Homophobic Laws?

It would appear that David Laws has finally bowed to the inevitable and resigned. On a personal level, this is sad for him, and for his boyfriend. But we are being asked to believe, at least in some quarters, that this is a result of homophobia from the Left. I for one would be horrified if this was the case. But is it?
There are a lot of people wondering why Laws wanted to keep his sexuality a secret ‘in this day and age’. I am not one of them. Firstly, Laws did not start out his career in ‘this day and age’. I am nearly the same age as Laws. I grew up at a time when sexual freedom seemed to be increasing for gay men, but two things set this back. The first was the advent of AIDS & the hideous press reaction. The second was a Tory government that seemed to wish to persecute gay people & had a good go at this through Section 28 (29 of the Local Government Act); this only repealed by a Labour government. Secondly, Laws went into a very ‘straight’ environment, the city. I had friends who did similar; one who worked at a large and well known financial consulting company used to go into work ‘straight’ and come home to her girlfriend, & a bottle of expensive Scotch each night to keep her going. Do I have sympathy for this? Yes I do. But I have admiration for my other friends who were in lesser paid jobs and were out and proud. Do I have sympathy for a city millionaire and MP who wants to keep his private life private? Well, yes I do. But I have much more sympathy and great admiration for those who put their careers on the line, people like Chris Smith and Stephen Twigg who stood up for who they were, and therefore for all of us who are honest about who we are, and have allowed openness and freedom for the people who come after them.
Those people who say ‘in this day and age’ should be circumspect. People continue to be discriminated against ‘in this day and age’ for being black, for being gay, for being poor, for being working class, for being disabled, for being transgender – this list is not exhausive. Being gay is no tea dance. People are still being attacked, people are still being murdered for being gay. In our own country. And in my city. All of this is homophobia. What’s happening in Malawi, ‘pardon’ not withstanding, is homophobia. But an MP being forced to resign because he chose to lie about expenses which he did not need to claim – that is not homophobia. And it undermines the real struggles of gay people everywhere to suggest it is.

One Laws For Them

I have been reading defences today of David Laws’ actions in continuing to claim rent for a room in his partner’s house. Others’ defences are more inventive than his “he wasn’t exactly my partner” defence (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”, anyone?). My favourite centres on him being in a terrible bind; if he did suddenly stop claiming after it became against the rules to claim rent and pay it to a partner, his hitherto secret/private life would be revealed. It even asks for our sympathies to lie with Laws.
This is surely nonsense. Laws could have stopped claiming when the rules changed. There was little scrutiny of expenses claims at the time (hence the problem that the the Telegraph later exposed), and it’s a bit of a leap to think ‘someone’ would have concluded he was gay because he no longer claimed – especially as we’re told MPs etc were generally aware he was gay already. He managed to stop claiming in September last year. I wonder why that was? Did anyone conclude he was gay? Apparently not. This defence just doesn’t stack up. And actually the issue is much worse than this. Laws knew what he was doing, he knew it had become against the rules, he carried on doing it until there was a danger it would be revealed. And all the while he pointed the finger at others. And this week has stood up and talked of belt tightening for the rest of us while he, a millionaire, claimed for years what he did not need. ‘Within the rules’ or not, let’s not forget that; a millionaire public servant claimed nearly a thousand pounds a month from the public purse ON TOP OF his salary. Hey, there are adverts asking us to shop POOR people who do this. Legal or not, at the very least it’s immoral; our sympathies should not lie with Laws.

Catholic Church shouldn’t cast stones

Over time I have noticed some literature and many plays referencing the paedophilic Catholic priest. I always assumed this to be a cliche; the singular, terrible instance through repetition in fiction becoming universal. The events, press stories and eventual apologies of recent years say otherwise – this was not singular; it was perhaps almost universal. Children in parishes in Ireland and throughout the Catholic diaspora were in fact being abused, by priests. The frightening figure of the abusing priest was not a cliche. It was and is a truth.
I remember one of the victims and survivors of this truth standing in front of the Irish parliament and accusing it of betraying him and the many other victims of this cruelty. He spoke with great dignity and even more amazing candour about the repeated rape he suffered as a child, and the terror that gave him. Heartbreakingly he spoke about the nightmares he still has, despite now being an old man.
Compounding these crimes has been the Catholic Church’s attitude to those who have come forward. Children who were brave enough to speak of sexual matters at all, never mind to accuse a respected representative of God of such a heinous, unspeakable, unspoken and unimaginable crime were at best ignored. In many cases the priest was ‘re-educated’ and shipped to another parish, where of course he was free to abuse again. Horrible. But I can almost understand the sweeping under the carpet, the hoping it would go away, the just not knowing what to do with this terrible information. Maybe even the deliberate cover up. But that was not all. Children were brought in front of large groups of men, representatives of the Church just like their abusers, and made to swear secrecy, were told it had never happened, that they had lied and they were wrong, that God would punish them for what they said. Some say there were even abused as a punishment for speaking of their abuse and to prevent them speaking of it again.
So far so very, very bad.
This week we have the Catholic Adoption Agency pursuing their case against lesbians and gay men adopting children. Why do I mind? Well I wonder what possible moral right the Catholic establishment thinks it has to pontificate on who is fit to bring up children. I am not aware of a lesbian or gay organisation which has systematically abused children in its care, nor attempted to cover this up, nor compounded the crime by ordering children’s silence. I and others would be stupid and would rightly be seen as bigots if we suggested that Catholics should not be able to adopt because of what some powerful Catholic men have done or because of what the Catholic Church did as an institution. So why is the Catholic Church pursuing its own bigotry? It just doesn’t seem very Christian to me. I won’t dare to suggest what Jesus might say. But as a Catholic, I strongly remember this phrase: “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”.