Over the past week there’s been a scrap going on between the political parties as to who is the gay-friendlier. Interesting to gays probably, very boring for everyone else. But there is one aspect to all of this which still goes largely ignored - for reasons, no doubt, of “cultural sensitivity” - and that is the effect that the long march of multiculturalism has had on this whole issue. Basically it comes down to this question: how do you celebrate and respect cultures and religions which think you are an abomination?
It’s a tricky one for the bien pensants and their political spokesman. I had the chance to find out quite how tricky when I went to a political event last week organised by the gay networking group Jake at the National Portrait Gallery, held to mark the opening of its Gay Icons exhibition (an odd collection, this. Madonna sure. But Nelson Mandela?). Nicholas Boles and Nick Herbert for the Tories and Ben Bradshaw and Chris Bryant for Labour (plus some anonymous bloke from the Lib Dems) vied with each other for the votes of an audience of 150 or so gay men.
When question time came around, I made the point to the panel that a recent survey by Policy Exchange had showed that 72 per cent of young Muslim men thought that homosexuality should be recriminalised. As the Channel 4 Dispatches programme on Mosques showed last year, there are some pretty disturbing things being said by some Imans about what is best for gays, ie death. Given the rapidly increasing proportion of the population which is Muslim, did they not think that there might be some possible problem in the future?
Needless to say this was neatly side-stepped. Or should I say, not really answered at all. Nick Herbert made the point that we should be careful not to generalise about the whole Muslim population (72 per cent seems pretty general to me). Immediately the issue was turned into something else, in a way we’re all too familiar with, which is how important it is not to demonise Islam.
There are major double standards going on here. I’m not remotely religious, but I can see how it’s considered perfectly legitimate to demonise the whole of the Catholic Church, say, or even Christianity in general. But when it comes to Islam, everybody gets very tongue-tied.
The reason is clear: the old liberal narrative insisted that all minorities had things in common. They were all united in a rainbow coalition in opposition to what the Americans call “The Man”. They were all victims. Multiculturalism has exposed this as a bit of a lie. But it will take a long time for the liberal elites to admit to it. Hence the disgraceful silence of Western feminists on the treatment of women in Islamic countries. And hence the depressing mealy-mouthedness at the Portrait Gallery last week.