Should Homosexuality Be Illegal?

AH! Now that got your juices rising didn’t it? Rampart!? How dare you! and so forth. Pardonnez moi but I don’t think it should be. I’ll rephrase that, I know it shouldn’t be quite simply because it isn’t a crime. It’s a natural physical and emotional feeling just like I have towards women – well, half way decent looking women anyway and I think I’ll go no further there before I get lynched. I became aware of homosexuality quite a bit earlier than many of my contemporaries quite by chance. A couple of my pals from my teenage years were clearly gay and, in the 1970’s, that was not a very good ‘place to be’ if anyone found out. Often, your pals would beat you up and cease to be your pals, your parents would disown you and you would be considered a pervert of the highest order and mentally subnormal on a good day.

Fortunately for my gay pals, the entire ‘group’ of us – numbering about 20 plus boys and girls with a good turn out – were quite comfortable with the sexuality of our two pals and even, on occasion, lent them our girlfriends in order to gain access to a club without anything unseemly occurring with the security doormen or ‘bouncers’ who, we had learned by experience or, more accurately, watching them at work, seemed to have an infallible radar for ‘queers’ and invariably not only denied them access to said night club but usually gave them a ‘good slapping’ too.

So, whilst many of my contemporaries enjoyed the shouting of insults such as ‘puff’ or ‘queer’ or ‘shirt lifter’ to anyone thought of as gay – even if they weren’t, I and my more immediate ‘crew’ were made of more enlightened stuff due entirely by chance to having two ‘queers’ amongst us and valuing their friendship thereby negating any untoward thoughts or intentions towards gay people.

One of my old gay pals was extremely successful in the fashion industry until he lost his partner tragically, turned to drink and, well, frankly, fell apart. We do what we can for him although it is with extreme regret that I must say his family disowned him on discovering that he was gay.

One of my driving students is a gay Muslim – and you don’t get many of those to the pound eh? – and he is a very likeable chap albeit far too money orientated but we all have our vices don’t we. I find it quite amazing and alarming that many would consider his homosexuality a vice rather than his love of money. After all, this is the 21st Century is it not and haven’t we ‘moved on’ from the dark times of the past when homosexuals were criminals?

Now, of course, age is an issue here. People in their latter years, brought up to believe homosexuality was a ‘sin’ and, during their youthful days, a crime, understandably struggle to see that it is neither. It is merely a man or a woman who, through no plan or design of their own, are attracted to members of their own sex.

At the age of 14 or so my parents had me psychoanalysed due to my complete adoration of David Bowie in his Ziggy Stardust days. I had my hair cut spiky and died orange at the front and blond at the back – this went down well at my school as you can imagine. Really well with the students but the Head Master suspended me much to my delight. My parents concerns were, quite simply, that they, on adopting me at several months old, had inadvertently acquired a gay son. As it happened, quite by chance, the girls loved my hair and, as a result, I lost my virginity way before I would have without my ‘Ziggy’ appearance.

I thought it unwise to advise my mother of this so she continued believing me to be gay for several years. Evidence such as girlfriends not with standing.

My point?

There are today, in the 21st Century, still people who regard gay people as ‘perverts’ and ‘sinners’ and many other things that are negative. Is it not astonishing that, in a world where humankind often brings us to the brink of destruction that there are still human beings out there who believe that a gay man or woman is an abomination?

Clearly people of a religious persuasion may have difficulties with gay people. Actually they clearly have as a rule. Islam doesn’t seem very open about acceptance, Catholicism has a problem given certain priests actions regarding choir boys and the like – although it must be said that Catholic priests and choir boys have nothing to do with gay people and there, perhaps, is the rub. Many of a religious persuasion regard homosexuality as a perversion primarily because those within their faith caught ‘doing’ choir boys’ etc are perverts and paedophiles. They are not gay men.

There is, has always been and will always be, a clear distinction between perversion and gay. Religious folk tend to be unaware or in denial of this.

I can almost picture many religious people chanting in a way akin to George Orwell’s magnificent ‘Animal Farm’

“Four legs good two legs bad! Four legs good two legs bad!”

“Straight men good gay men bad!”

Well, let’s plug away shall we chaps and chappesses? I’m sure, sooner or later, we’ll get there. We’ll arrive in a fair world where a man or a woman can be judged on their innate ‘goodness’ or, unfortunately, ‘badness’ and not on their sexual preference. A preference they never actually made. We are born as we are and always will be.

A gay student who passed his driving test on the first attempt actually kissed me on the lips. I looked, I suspect, quite startled. He said “Oh! I’m so sorry. I just got carried away in the moment!”

My response?

“I’d sooner you bought me a beer mate. Oh, and by the way, if you’re going to do that again shave your upper lip will you?”

No tongues!!!!! 😉

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