IRRESISTIBLE FORCE MEETS IMMOVABLE OBJECT

Brains not included (Rod Liddle, The Spectator, February 4th, 2006)

You cannot force people to be infinitely ‘inclusive’. If Sir Iqbal — and adherents of the Muslim faith in general — believe homosexuality to be repugnant, then that is their view and it is not the business of the government, or the police or OutRage! to divest them of it. But the Old Bill are scurrying around to Sir Iqbal’s house with a view to prosecuting him for merely articulating one of the fundamental tenets of a religion whose strictures will soon be protected by law. This is, quite literally, madness. The two laws — one proposed and one already on the statute books — are in direct, unequivocal opposition. One day we will surely see the prosecution of a gay person for suggesting that Islam is ludicrous and, by dint of its opposition to homosexuality, illegal. And where will we be then?

According to ‘progressive’ thinking, with which I have no grounds for dispute, one is born with a genetic disposition towards homosexuality. One is not, however, born a Muslim; it is a system of thought which one later acquires, or is enjoined to acquire. I would suggest the following to gay people, without wishing to seem presumptuous: you can’t have it both ways. You are either a gay or you are a Muslim. One precludes the other. Make your choice and be quick about it. And when senior Muslims insist that you are the spawn of Satan, let them have their say, no matter how fatuous.

Recently the Birmingham University Christian Union found itself in all kinds of trouble because it was seen as being insufficiently inclusive. The CU is an Christian group which has been going for 76 years but now finds that its bank account has been frozen by the university student authorities. The reason boils down to this: it wishes to admit to its membership only people who are, um, Christian. Also, in its publicity, it made the mistake of advertising its existence to ‘men and women’, which, according to the same authorities, discriminated against ‘transsexual or trans-gendered people’.

Reading this utter rot you sort of sigh and close your eyes and shake your head and wonder when it was that the lunatics were given control of the reins. A Christian society closed down because it wishes only Christians to sign up as members and didn’t make explicit mention in its literature of the valuable service it might perform for — to use pejorative terminology — sexual weirdos. You really couldn’t make it up, etc., etc.

We have got ourselves in a terrible muddle over this inclusivity business. We wish to be sure that people can believe what they want and say what they want, according to our democratic impulse, but at the same time we don’t want anybody else offended or feeling that they have been ‘excluded’ by the things we say or the things we do. It is a colossal paradox.

And, in the absence of strong common social conventions that define the boundaries of decency and civility, one that can only be resolved by the state ensuring everyone thinks the same way.