Beware Intolerance

Beware intolerance.

Last week Centre Parcs announced that it would no longer advertise in the Daily Mail and publicly apologised for any offence caused.

What happened?

One of the UK’s premier athletes, Tom Daley, a multiple diving world champion and multiple Olympic medallist, announced in 2013 that he was in a relationship with another man, Dustin Black. He joins many another famous and not so famous individual in preferring relationships with his or her own sex. Composers Ivor Novello (We’ll keep the home fires burning), Samuel Barber (Adagio for strings), Benjamin Britten (Peter Grimes) and writer Somerset Maugham all had lifelong stable relationships with male partners. Stable relationships involving deceased famous women are more difficult to find, but there are plenty of modern examples.  It’s that word “announced” that is recent.

Both Oscar Wilde, one of the finest exponents of both written and spoken English and Alan Turing, mathematician and father of computers fell foul of a law that persecuted homosexuals. That law was mercifully revoked at the end of the 1960s. Much more recently, same sex couples have been able to publicly declare their relationships and register them. This is turn has been followed by regular announcements from some public figures that they are either in a same sex relationship or at least wired in such a way that a future announcement in that vein is imaginable.

We move further.

Messrs Daley and Black recently announced that they were expecting a child. Whatever the mechanics of such an event might be, I very much doubt that either will give birth and the method, if any, by which DNA has been shared has not so far been, well,  shared, either. Let me make it clear at this point that I wish the two gentlemen and their progeny well: in my opinion, being a parent is both a wonderful gift and the most important job any individual will ever do. Obviously they both want that experience and that is a critical ingredient in being successful at it.

Enter Richard Littlejohn, who writes a column twice weekly in the Daily Mail. In his most recent column he commented on the impending arrival of the Black/Daley baby, supporting the idea of gay parenting, but offering his belief that the best option for a child was to be brought up by a couple in which both sexes were represented. The question that Mr. Littlejohn infers, I have been unable to find any research attempting to address.

Storm, outrage and opprobrium in bucket loads were heaped on Mr. Littlejohn and the Daily Mail by, amongst others, Centre Parcs and the South Bank Center. Hey-ho even the Stop Funding Hate pressure group weighed in; aren’t they in the realm of “we’ll kill anyone who’s for the death penalty”. Whatever happened to reasoned debate, not to mention Evelyn Hall’s “I disapprove of what you say, but I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it”?

It is worth remembering that without the ability to have a reasoned debate, in the 1960s, on the role of the state in an individual’s sexual orientation, homosexual men in Britain might still be facing Alan Turing’s fate of choosing between enforced castration or a prison sentence, rather than being able to announce imminent joint parenthood.

This episode should be a red flag. For organisations to punish individuals and other organisations for their beliefs is institutionalised bullying and a very big step on the road to making heresy illegal. And who amongst you will be the ones to define heresy? The Spanish Inquisition, the German Nazi party and Da’esh have tried and the end-game is always the same, the killing of innocents. Nice company you’ve chosen to keep, Centre Parcs.