Ronan McCrea starts his Telegraph article with a glimpse into the past.
Three and a half decades ago, Henri Leconte, then one of the world’s biggest tennis stars, swept up in the adulation of the crowd, mocked a gay-looking ball boy on the centre court of a Wimbledon warm-up tournament. Pointing at the boy, he swung his wrist limply, while laughing, and encouraging the crowd to join in the fun.
And everybody thought it was a hoot. Everybody except one.
The ballboy was me, aged 13, and I still vividly remember the horror and total isolation I felt at the time. The fact, however, that such a scene would be unimaginable today shows the extent to which society has changed its approach to gay people.
Yes. If I were not hearing about this incident from the person with most cause to remember to the day when it happened, I would have thought it took place in the 1960s or 70s, not 1990.
But the dramatic shift in society’s approach to homosexuality mustn’t be taken for granted. Indeed, I fear it could all too easily return: it takes a striking degree of complacency to think that after centuries and centuries of repression, a few decades of tolerance could mark an irrevocable change.
Ironically, the unprecedented freedom that we’ve won in the past few decades is now under threat from within our own ranks – not least the approach of gay rights groups like Stonewall.
I’m among many gay people who believe that hanging on to what we have would be a good long-term result.
Mr McCrea then describes the almost Stakhanovite pressure on companies and their employees to do ever more to prove their “allyship”:
Getting a good score on the [Workplace Equality] index requires a dizzying range of active steps from verifying that suppliers are “committed to LGBT inclusion” and community engagement work. In the US, the main gay rights group, the Human Rights Campaign, went even further, recommending a kind of gay tithe (as or they put “cash or in-kind donation to at least one LGBTQ+ specific organisation”) along with a “standard of demonstrating at least five efforts of public commitment to the LGBTQ+ community”.
I suspect any private sense of “commitment to the LGBTQ+ community” that the managers and employees of these companies might once have had was neutralised by the third public demonstration of commitment and sent well into reverse by the fifth.
He continues,
This approach not only risks alienating people who are happy to live and let live but don’t like being subjected to propaganda at work. It also undermines the key argument that helped gay rights to advance in recent decades, namely that accepting gay people required simply that approach: live and let live.
He is right. Though I agree with what he has said so far, I doubt that Mr McCrea would agree with what I am about to say: as a libertarian, I believe on principle that there should not be any anti-discrimination laws whatsoever. I think gay people would be more accepted, not less, if coercion was removed from the equation entirely – and even if they weren’t, I would still advocate for it on the grounds of the fundamental right to free association. However, back in the real world, at least the laws against discrimination in employment and so on do not reach that deeply into people’s personal lives. They are nearly always passed after the bulk of the public have already been won over by moral argument. Their main effect is to make people somewhat grumpier and more cynical about doing what they were going to do anyway. A terrible wrong turning was made when gay activists, having got about as far as was logically possible in terms of forbidding workplace discrimination, started trying to compel speech, as in the cases of Lee v Ashers Baking Company Ltd and others in the UK and Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission in the US.
Note that in the British case at least, the plaintiff was not shocked to discover that the bakers would not bake a cake with his required slogan on it. Gareth Lee deliberately sought out bakers who would object. He wanted to set the legal precedent that they could be compelled to promote a message antithetical to their beliefs. If the decision had gone the other way, I have sometimes wondered what Mr Lee’s position would have been regarding slogans offensive to his deepest beliefs.
Although both the Ashers and the Masterpiece cases were eventually decided in favour of the right of the defendants to free speech (which includes the right not to be forced to speak), the years-long attempts to force people to write words which they thought were morally wrong made a mockery of “live and let live”. Legal cases such as these, and the increasingly onerous demands for displays of support for the LGBTQ+ cause made upon every workplace and institution, have made many people feel – as did the Stakhanovite workers – that every act of compliance merely lays them open to new demands. That breeds enmity, not solidarity. Stop demanding that people feel certain emotions. Let us get back to the humbler, more achievable principle of “live and let live”.
The adult and voluntary sexual practices of other people are none of my business.
Which means I should not interfere with them – and they should not lecture me.
Excellent post Natalie.
I thought I was going to be first responder here but Paul got in first and put it in a nutshell.
I’ll add a bit more…
I am not “homophobic”* at all. I deeply resent the assumption from some quarters that I am, as a heterosexual, by default “phobic” and require constant conditioning like one of Skinner’s pigeons. I am far from alone in this.
I started secondary school in 1985 (when a rainbow symbol was synonomous with my ZX Spectrum). My Comp had c.1100 kids and not one was openly gay. Looking back that is truly remarkable. Kids that were presumed to be “botters” were treated appallingly. It was a known and absolute “fact”** that one lad had beaten a small child unconscious with a house brick and buggered him in a specific abandoned local public convenience which came to be known as “Kiki’s Bog”.
A lot has changed in forty years. And a war has been won. We have an equal age of consent, gay marriage and adoption rights and well I bet they fly the Rainbow flag over the Brandenburg Gate during Berlin Pride. I’d call that victory, wouldn’t you?
Not if you an activist. Activism is not like being a soldier in a war where when it’s all over you go back to doing something else. Being an activist is not a job, it’s a vocation and even after the guns have fallen silent and there is jubilation in the streets there always has to be one more battle because the struggle is eternal. In the case of the queer activist this is becoming absurd (though taken very seriously and indeed, in every sense, of the word with bugger all “gaiety”) because being an activist isn’t a task, it’s an identity. The whole trans lunacy of recent years is a symptom of activists seeking more Worlds to conquer (a bit like Alexander at the Ganges***). When the battle is won (and it has been) and you continue fighting (because you have to fight the good fight because that is what you are, it is all you are) you have to conjure new demons to fight and you wind-up fighting things that don’t exist which, paradoxically, means fighting reality itself.
Yes, reality itself. We have biological males who identify as lesbians. And this must be respected and not ridiculed.
…I guess that was a lot more. But it’s good to get things off one’s chest (or breast) or, like, whatever…
*The “scare” quotes are because the LGBTQIA2S++ have so, err, queered the pitch that nobody really knows what that means anymore anyway. Could that have been deliberate?
**The “scare” quotes are for a different reason because this was totally untrue. He was just ungainly, badly dressed (dirt poor) and socially awkward and lurid tales can travel through schools at a speed that defies the Theory of Relativity and become “FACT”. Poor kid. We (yes, that includes me) all turned our backs to the wall when he walked down the corridors in case he glimpsed our (clothed) arses. That is just the worst example and I am absolutely ashamed I just went along with the mob. But if I hadn’t what would others have thought I was? And, yes, kids were viciously bullied before smartphones.
***And he was in love with his horse! Equiphila Rights Now!
Alphabet activists endlessly seeking control over all aspects of everyone’s lives through DEI regulations remind me of those who have made a lucrative career out of pressing for reparations (positive discrimination being inadequate small beer).
In both cases the historical wrongs are undeniable. In both cases the claims are utterly unachievable (STFU Sir Lenworth Henry CBE) and counter-productive. More seriously in both cases while initially only a small number of grifters (Patricia “Buying Large Mansions” Cullors et al) were getting rich now a whole grievance industry has acquired its own considerable momentum.
President Trump and his foot soldiers are at least trying to turn the tide, will anyone else follow his example?
With the “failure” of the working class to rise up and destroy “capitalism” – Marxists of the Frankfurt School (now called “Critical Theory” Marxists) looked around for other “victim groups” who they could indoctrinate and USE.
Racial and religious groups, women (feminism – especially “Third Wave” feminists), homosexuals….. it does not matter to the “Critical Theory” Marxists – they will indoctrinate (“you are exploited and oppressed”) and USE these human beings against “capitalism”.
And when and if they managed to destroy what is left of “capitalism”? Well then they, the Marxists, would, most likely, send Gay people to death-camps. It is a great mistake to think that the Critical Theory Marxists actually care about these human beings in “victim groups” racial, religious, gender, whatever – they do not, and they never have.
The biggest mistake that people dealing with the “Woke”, Critical Theory Marxist agenda can make is to assume that those who control these campaigns actually care about the people they pretend to care about – they do not and they never have.
As Saul Alinsky (a “Fellow Traveler” rather than a formal Marxist) put it – “the issue is never the issue” – they (including Mr Alinsky himself) do not give a damn about “the poor”, or any other group of human beings – they care about one thing only – destroying “capitalism” (i.e. what is left of a free society) and placing total and absolute power in their own hands.
Lastly – those corporations and rich individuals who fund all this – who, directly and indirectly, give vast sums of money to the Marxist campaigns of destruction.
You are funding your future executioners – they will not let you have some Henri Saint-Simon style Technocracy form of Collectivism (which would NOT work anyway) with you in charge. They will destroy you.
And as you, rich Corporate types, fund them (by your own free will choice) perhaps you DESERVE what they will do to you.
NickM writes,
That dynamic is horribly common. The members of the mob dare not hang back from tormenting the victim, lest the mob turn on them next. I am haunted by the way that the Palestinian mob whooped and cheered as the half-naked corpse of Shani Louk was paraded before them like a hunting trophy. I have no doubt whatsoever that some members of that mob cheered in order to avoid sharing her fate. Behaviour governed by that incentive was the norm throughout most of human history, and still is the norm in many places in the world today – and in terms of the structure of the interaction, a less murderous version still operates in schools all over the world. And another horrible thing is that I suspect it always will do.
Edit: And, yes, I too joined with the bullies for fear of the bullies during my schooldays.
I’m not buying the story of ridicule with which the quoted narrative begins.
A star tennis player just arbitrarily looked at a ball boy, determined that he was gay and made fun of him for it? In the 1990’s?
Here’s my suspicion…ever heard the term “throws like a girl”? Many girls and women struggle with the mechanics of overhand throwing. I don’t know why this is, but it is a fact. A few men also suffer from this malady…hence the derogatory phrase “he throws like a girl”. BTW, this isn’t restricted to only gay boys and men, I’ve known several straight men who suffer from it as well, it’s not a valid indicator of sexual orientation.
This is what I suspect occurred in this instance. The author of the narrative suffers from the “throws like a girl” malady which he likely demonstrated as a ball boy, throwing tennis balls to line judges or players. I further opine that the taunt received by the star tennis player had absolutely nothing to do with sexual orientation but simply a signaling of the old “throws like a girl” taunt.
Someone who is self-conscious about a perceived fault or “deviance from the norm” is often on high alert for slights against them based on that perceived fault and tend to assume anything that could possibly be one, is one.
That’s what I would bet happened in the story in question.
I’m not saying that it’s right to make light of another for any reason, even if they throw like a girl. I’m just saying that assuming it’s about sexual orientation says as much about the author’s insecurities as about the taunter’s cruelty.
While I completely agree with the narrative author’s overall point, I found that story a little hard to accept at face value…especially because its entire purpose was to evoke an emotional response in the reader. I’m not a fan of attempts to emotionally manipulate me to convince me to agree with you.
Sailorcurt, you may be correct to say that the reason Leconte mocked the 13 year-old McCrea in the first place was that he threw like a girl. A tennis player is far more likely to notice and object to balls being thrown to him badly than to notice what the thrower looks like. But at least some people thought at the time that McCrea’s perceived effeminacy was the target of the mockery. Here are the next few paragraphs of McCrea’s article after the words “join the fun”:
I am not in a position to check the quoted paragraph beginning “The showman in Leconte” against the archives of the Irish Times, but I doubt McCrea made it up from whole cloth. And no, I don’t know why he or the Telegraph sub-editors ended the quote mid-sentence.
Natalie – yes some people do join with bullies out of fear of being bullied themselves.
I was never given that option, I was too hated at school for that ever to be an option for me – but, had that option been offered to me, I might well have fallen for that temptation myself.
There is a film (the title escapes me) about a man who is sent to prison (due to a car accident he kills someone – and he is in an American State that sends people to prison for that, especially if they have had a drunk – even if the drink had nothing to do with the cause of the accident) – to survive he joins a prison gang and does dreadful things.
He had an alternative – torment and death. But it is hard to embrace such an alternative.
Natalie,
If there were many in that crowd with the basic humanity to resist feelings of joy at seeing the naked body of a young woman, or from their perspective a deadly enemy, being paraded before them I would be surprised when the only meaning their lives hold is a blind and all-encompassing hatred of Jews. What else have they ever been taught?
On a similar note allegedly 500,000 people paraded through London yet again today. None of them were celebrating the ceasefire and the lives potentially saved, instead they were doubling down on their demands for the eradication of Israel with all that it entails. Many of them would undoubtedly have cheered at the sight of the corpse of Shani Louk.
When the activists of Stonewall had won every battle they could for gays and lesbians, they just took up the trans cause, as their new fight. Homosexual equality is a reasonable position, trans equality, especially now that trans has expanded into so many new identities and “genders” , just is not.
Many of the absurdities of trans activism, eg male rapists in female prisons & hulking males in female sport, come from applying the gay rights mentality to something very different.
Apart from anything else, trans is not a neat category or pair of categories. In the days of people like April Ashley, we were dealing with very small numbers of serious transexuals, who had always behaved in a way more typical of the other sex and really knew what they wanted. There were also, of course, some discreet crossdressers. Now we have a much larger body of people, many of whom are actually on the autistic spectrum rather than plausibly trans at all.
Also, the attraction of pushing trans rights for Frankfurt School Marxists is its capacity for undermining society and even truth. (If I claim to be a woman, then I am one.)
John, half a MILLION sadists marching in London today? No one is forced to go on these marches – it is a voluntary expression of support for evil, for evil in its most terrible forms.
God help us – and I mean that literally.
The movie is Shot Caller!
I watched it in a theater, pre-covid; but i was too sleepy that evening, so i did not get everything.
I watched it again on TV, years later; I got more out of it, but not everything: it’s harder on TV.
Maybe i’ll watch again, but first i need Netflix.
Still, there are 3 things missing from Paul’s account:
* The main character might or might not have been drunk, but he was seriously at fault for turning to look at the passengers in the back seats. That is a cardinal sin which i myself never committed. Once i had a friend riding shotgun, long distance, who was convinced that i was falling asleep, because i had my eyes glued to the road, refusing to look at him.
* The main character is not just protecting himself, but also (mainly) his wife and son — without expecting anything from them in return.
* The main character does “dreadful things” but on the balance, his impact on society is probably positive, by destroying his gang from within.
Excellent point Paul.
I was forgetting that unlike the Gazans, who despite my cynicism may only have acted in fear of reprisal, these “mostly peaceful” demonstrators are and have always been on the streets entirely of their own volition.
John, Paul,
I wonder. Support for “Gaza” (essntially support for Hamas in a less blood-soaked keffiyeh) is now the cause du jour*. Beyond all rationality (“Queers for Paalestine”?) and the expected narrative one must follow or be socially outcast. It is rebellious cosplay. Cosplay because it isn’t even rebellious anymore but it still has an “edgy” feel however fake that is. The whole thing has a distinctly “Life of Brian” feel.
*Even St Greta of Thunberg has switched avatars from being “Climate Doom Goblin” to “Saviour of Gaza” and is now channeling some sort of Poundland Jeanne d’Arc vibe.
Ironically, the unprecedented freedom that we’ve won in the past few decades is now under threat from within our own ranks – not least the approach of gay rights groups like Stonewall.
McCrea has a point there. There is a fundamental difference between the campaigning of gay rights groups such as Stonewall UK, at least in its formative years, and the trans rights movement. The gay rights movement was about equal access to the society that straights had built. It was a call for a level playing field.
The trans rights movement, however, sees that society as oppressive. It wants to tear it down and rebuild it according to their own ideas of what society should be.
The problem with, for instance, Stonewall UK is that, with the introduction of same-sex marriage, they had achieved everything they wanted. Unfortunately for Stonewall, their chief executive at the time was Ruth Hunt. It was she who re-directed Stonewall campaigning efforts toward trans rights. That move wasn’t without criticism from fellow gay rights campaigners. Per Wikipedia:
It’s that tacking on of the trans rights agenda to the gay rights campaign that has done and is doing the most damage.
John – yes, what the marchers in British and other Western cities are doing is terrible, and (as you know) they started doing it at once after October 7th 2023.
They were not protesting against anything Israel was doing – as Israel did not do anything for some days, it acted like a duck that had been hit over the head.
The “protesters” (both Islamic and Marxist – a weird alliance indeed) in Western cities were really celebrators – they were celebrating the mass rape, mutilation and murder of October 7th 2023.
And they still are.
NickM
There are two groups of people involved – in alliance, but not the same (indeed very different).
There are the followers of Islam supporting the advance of Islam and the destruction of non Muslims – all understandable (14 centuries of experience should mean that people should not be shocked by this).
But there are also the left, the Critical Theory “Woke” Marxists.
They do not really care about Muslims any than more they really care about Gay people or Trans people – remember “the issue is never the issue” (from the Fellow Traveler Saul Alinsky) – all they care about is destroying Western “capitalist” society.
Everything else is a means-to-this-end for the left.
In short they are just USING the followers of Islam – just as the followers of Islam are USING the left.
If what is left of Western society is destroyed – then these two groups will turn on each other.
Throws like a girl, that was me and I’m a straight male. I was pretty hopeless at any sport that involved a ball, which was all of them at school back in the day. It was only after I left school and discovered non ball based sports activities that I found out that I wasn’t shit at sport after all.
then these two groups will turn on each other.
Amusingly and with far less fanfare than the original bust-up I read that Jezza and Zarah are besties again. It’s as if a little voice whispered in Ms Sultana’s ear “not yet comrade”.
To save Natalie from having to check Companies House I can confirm that although Jezza is still currently listed as a director he is not a person with significant control (as recent events have clearly shown!).
Stonyground – me to Sir! Indeed I am “dyspraxic” – a fancy word meaning clumsy. I am also “dyslexic” – a fancy word meaning I am bad at spelling and so on.
John – quit so Sir, and well put.