Another week passes, another lozenge of barely congealed crud emerges from the mind of Melanie Philips, traditionalist extraordinaire and enemy of social progress. When I think of her spiteful missives arriving at Daily Mail HQ, I think of the beginning of Jurassic Park, when the velociraptor is delivered to the compound and a poor hard-hat wearing sap gets eviscerated as Bob Peck shouts, “Shoot her! Shoot her!”
This time, she’s attacking the perfectly reasonable demand that gay people (or anyone sitting further along the Kinsey scale than Jude Law and Ron Jeremy) be allowed to marry in a Church. By attempting to offer gay people the same options as straight people, David Cameron is – according to MP – “signing up instead to the wilder extremes of political correctness.” That this is poisonous drivel spawned by religious bigotry is plain to see, and not worth mentioning; what is worth mentioning is that MP believes that treating homosexuals fairly is both “wild” and “extreme”.
It is not wild, nor is it extreme, to be fair. Nor is it wild, or extreme, to dismantle prejudice wherever you find it (and if you look in the Bible, you’ll find it often enough). MP argues, unsuccessfully as is her wont, that the government is pandering to “a politically motivated faction within a tiny minority of the population”. She is so staggeringly thick that she actually believes that the only people opposed to homophobia are Peter Tatchell, Graham Norton and Alan Carr. In fact, a vast majority of straight people are in favour of gay marriage, because thankfully most people in Britain are reasonable and benevolent. The “politically motivated faction within a tiny minority of the population” is in the fact the pathetic cabal of primitivists MP stands for.
After all, it is possible to be male and support sexual equality and feminism; it is possible to be white and oppose racism against black people. So why should it not be possible to be straight, or as near as dammit, and support gay rights?
MP’s vision of marriage is quite quaint. To her, it is nothing more – absolutely nothing more – than a means to increase the likelihood of procreation. It is not about love. It is “a unique institution because it involves the process by which humanity reproduces itself — which is only through the union of male and female”. Marriage is “vital for the healthy nurture of the next generation.” Since I was raised by a single mother, I feel a special anger at the insinuation that I was not ‘healthily nurtured’ because my father was, as circumstances decreed, largely absent (but always loving, always a friend) during my childhood. Then there are the unmarried couples who raise fine children. Then there is MP herself; if she is the product of husband and wife, then she is an argument against the institution of marriage, surely?
The starkest moment of idiocy is here: “children need to be brought up by the two people who created them.” Yes; people like Josef Fritzl. Or any of those inept or cruel people who tyrannise their
children so much that Supernanny intervenes, or Social Services. Or, in the case of Baby P, the coroner. The very idea that the only people suitable to bring up a child are the natural parents insinuates the barking mad notion that every man capable of ejaculation and every woman capable of being ejaculated into are automatically suitable for the role of parenting. Does MP even read the papers?
children so much that Supernanny intervenes, or Social Services. Or, in the case of Baby P, the coroner. The very idea that the only people suitable to bring up a child are the natural parents insinuates the barking mad notion that every man capable of ejaculation and every woman capable of being ejaculated into are automatically suitable for the role of parenting. Does MP even read the papers?
She then continues to compare homosexuality to bestiality. It would be ludicrous to offer the option of marriage to zoophiles, she argues, therefore it is ludicrous to offer it to homosexuals. “I’m not suggesting gays are on a moral par with zoophiles”, she writes, a paragraph or so after doing just that.
MP is horrifed to discover that “a Conservative Prime Minister effectively endorsing the idea that upholding Biblical morality and the bedrock values of Western civilisation is bigotry”. Of course, this zealot mentality is familiar to all critics of religion – the concept that the Bible (or some other holy book) is the root of all good. That the human race did nothing but rape, steal and murder until Christ said stop. Indeed, there is much evidence to the contrary; how many holy wars have there been, how many murders in the name of some fantasy father-figure? How many maniacs have used religion to justify their abominable behaviour? True, not all atheists are humanitarians, but they have less in their library to use to explain away their evils. MP would be wise to get her head around the fact that kindness, decency, compassion, courage and morality existed before the patriarchs compiled the Bible. She would also be wise, being a bigot herself, not to pretend that she is anything but.
Criticise Cameron of many things. He is a buffoon and a cultural vandal. He has appeased the banks (more than half the funding for his bid for power came from the City) and plunged the very poor into despair. He has masterminded a culling of libraries and disability care. But supporting the idea of gay marriage is not another error; it is one of the few right things he has done. MP believes that morality requires injustice and prejudice. She is wrong. It requires the opposites of those deplorable elements. It requires things that she does not possess.
“The so-called ‘culture war’ now raging between those determined to destroy Western moral codes and those struggling to defend them is simply the most urgent domestic issue we face.” MP is right in part. There is a ‘culture war’ raging, but it is not between permissive libertarians and courageous traditionalists. It is between compassionate and fair-minded liberals and mean, dogmatic primitivists. It is between the latest pinnacle of human evolution and the previous kind of ape. It is a war between good and evil, wisdom and ignorance, light and darkness. It is a war between compassionate, ethical, moral human beings and base, crude animals. It is a war that must be won, and perhaps much of MP’s zeal is borne of the fact that her side is losing, inexorably, and will one day be a half-remembered myth: once upon a time, people got their truth from an old book of savage legends, and they judged people based on their gender or their sexuality. They thought they were right, even in moments of callousness and cruelty. They thought they were good, even in moments of profound wickedness. They thought they were wise, even when they ignored common sense and evidence.
It takes a lifetime to recognise one’s friends. It takes but a moment to identify an enemy. MP closes her repugnant tirade by referring to the heroic campaigners of fairness and justice as “bullies”:
“those cultural ‘lifestyle choice’ bullies will stamp their boots ever more brutally on the faces of everyone else in a pitiless war of all against all”
Hypocrisy is an ugly thing. That a homophobe should have the brass neck to label gay rights campaigners as “bullies” is disgraceful enough. That she, as a zealot who wants to divide people by sexuality, claims that it is her opponents setting “all against all” is simply twisted. So illogical, so willfully perverse is her logic, that I wonder if she has some sort of psychological problem. If she does, it is unfortunate for her; if she does not – if this poisonous nonsense is the product of lucid graft – then it is unfortunate for the readers of Daily Mail, and unfortunate for our society.
