Hugs and kisses

For as long as I can remember, I've been very physically demon-strative. I love hugging and kissing and holding hands, to me it's friendly and it's fun and it makes me feel closer to someone.

I think it's partly a reaction to my parents, who weren't very keen on physical affection. My father avoided it completely, while my mother stopped hugging and kissing me after she heard it might turn me into a homosexual (I know, it's hard to believe people actually thought that way).

So I'm happy to kiss and hug anyone who fancies a bit of kissing and hugging. Like me, some people enjoy it and can't get enough. Others recoil from it, seeing it as something affected and unnecessary, strictly the province of celebrities and chat-show hosts. I certainly wouldn't force a hug on someone who seemed unwilling.

I'm not ruling out men. I know affectionate physical gestures between heterosexual men are generally seen as a bit peculiar and even threatening, but I've never felt that. Why shouldn't men get the same pleasure from a kiss or a hug as women?

It may come as a shock to some (or it may not) that I've kissed hundreds of men. The explanation is simple. When I supported the Gay Liberation Front in the early 1970s it was the custom at meetings to greet your friends with a kiss. Not wanting to appear unfriendly or staid or homophobic, I followed suit and merrily kissed every man I met, even casual acquaintances. It was greatly enjoyable.

But for most men, shaking hands is all they can manage. My brother in law is strictly a hand-shaker, and clearly very suspicious of anything more affectionate. He doesn't know what he's missing.

Letting rip

I'm baffled by people who get some sort of kick out of criticising total strangers - people they've never met, maybe never heard of up till now, people they know nothing whatever about, people who have nothing to do with their own lives.

They don't care how insulting or hurtful or ignorant their criticism might be. They don't care what effect they're having on the people concerned. They don't care if what they're saying is a complete fabrication. They think it's perfectly okay to put the boot in whenever they feel like it.

I try to avoid such gratuitous attacks on people. I'm no fan of the royal family, but I don't lay into them at every opportunity*. I just ignore them. Naturally I'm aware of all the scandals involving public figures, but I don't promptly add my vitriolic comments to the usual social media pile-on. I mind my own business.

My mother was fond of making disparaging remarks about homosexuals. I used to ask her why she was so obsessed with a group of people totally unconnected with her own life, whom she'd never met, who didn't affect her life in any way, but she wouldn't listen.

There are plenty of people whose views I disagree with, whose personal behaviour appals me, whose mad ambitions alarm me, but I don't feel the need to publicly hurl abuse at them or tear them to bits. I have much more interesting things to do.

It's now routine for public figures, especially women, to get torrents of unrelenting hatred day in and day out. Why should anyone have to live with this kind of permanent denigration? I'm certainly not going to add to it.

*the racist and misogynistic abuse heaped on Meghan Markle is quite shocking.

Straight talking

It's absurd that David Laws, the Cabinet Minister who has just resigned after 18 days in the job, felt he still had to conceal his homosexuality at the age of 44.

He resigned over expenses-fiddling, but in the process he was outed as gay and having a quasi-secret relationship with another man.

We don't know exactly why he was so defensive about his sexuality. Presumably from fear of other people's reactions - his parents, his friends, his work colleagues, the media, the public. Who knows?

But it's extraordinary, and sad, that a middle-aged man, a successful, well-connected, well-heeled millionaire, should feel it necessary to hide a major aspect of his personal life and go to such lengths to fabricate a heterosexual facade that falsified his real self.

Asked about his domestic situation a week ago, he declared himself to be "single". Asked whether he was paying rent to a sexual partner, he implied the relationship was not sexual but purely platonic. The constant wriggling and evasiveness must have been an agonising ordeal, yet he had been doing it for decades.

I should imagine that after he has got over the initial shock and dismay of being unexpectedly outed, he will be relieved that the truth has finally emerged and he can freely admit his sexuality and drop the endless, excruciating pretence.

It's ridiculous that so many years after homosexuality was decriminalised, when so many gay men and lesbians have no reservations about revealing their sexuality to the world, there are still many people like David Laws who feel compelled for one reason or another to keep their gayness under wraps like some tawdry, squalid obsession.

Will this sense of shame never disappear?

Pic: David Laws

In the closet

Gays may now be well accepted in many big cities but here in Belfast - and Northern Ireland generally - they still struggle against engrained prejudice.

It's extremely rare for anyone to be openly gay, while gay-bashing of one sort or another is still alarmingly common - physical violence, arson attacks, hostile politicians.

I don't know of a single 'out' public figure, although there are constant rumours about a number of them. And nobody dares dress in an overtly gay manner, though you can sometimes guess from a person's behaviour or way of speaking.

The Cathedral Quarter is Belfast's established gay district but outside that gays keep a very low profile. The annual Gay Pride festival is mainly enjoyed by gays, and doesn't attract the huge numbers of heterosexuals who take part in other cities.

Religious belief is still very strong here, and many people see homosexuality in very fundamentalist terms as an 'abomination' and an unnatural practice. The obvious counter-arguments - if God made the world, then surely he also made homosexuals? - are flatly ignored.

Supposedly we have some of the strongest equal opportunities laws in the world, but they have little influence against deep-rooted homophobic dogma, often endorsed by the very politicians who should be backing the legal guidelines.

So gays are still very wary of disclosure when so many people might rush to 'turn them in' and jeopardise their jobs, their homes and their partners. They are forced to blend in, pass as straight and watch what they say. In the year 2008, this country's still stuck in the strait-laced sexual culture of fifty years ago.

PS: Definition of homophobia - insecurity about being heterosexual (thanks to Gooner on Gaelick)

Gay cure

You'd think people would have got the message by now that homosexuality is not a disease to be cured but a sexual preference to be enjoyed.

But Northern Ireland Assembly member Iris Robinson* begs to differ. She thinks that with professional help gays can be "turned around" and steered away from "what they are engaged in".

She claims to know a number of people who have changed course and become heterosexuals.

Well, that would be news to many gays who know their preference is just what they are and isn't something that can be changed at will like a set of clothes.

If someone has "become" heterosexual the chances are that's what they were all along and they weren't gay in the first place.

But Mrs Robinson holds stubbornly to the idea that homosexuals have somehow drifted into a thoroughly unsatisfying activity and just need to be shown the error of their ways. With the help of the Good Lord of course.

Her attitude was discredited sometime in the 1950s when gays began to resist the conventional psychiatric dogma that homosexuality was a medical disorder and a mental illness.

Clearly the cultural change of heart has passed Iris by. She only listens to a higher, other-worldly source she regards as more reliable.

David McCartney from Northern Ireland's Rainbow Project says there is no evidence to support gays being "converted" and he was seeking a meeting with Mrs Robinson.

I somehow don't think he'll change her mind. Her opinions are not affected by such mundane considerations as everyday reality.

* Wife of Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson. Represents Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party.

Responses so far

Her remarks have been referred to the police as incitement to hatred by Andrew Muir, gay activist and member of the Alliance Party, and John O'Doherty of the South Belfast District Policing Partnership. The Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) has confirmed it is launching an investigation.

On Tuesday evening Martin McGuinness, Deputy First Minister, said her remarks were "harmful and distressing" to gay people and she should reflect on the impact her comments were having on the gay community.

The Northern Ireland Assembly's Commissioner for Standards has been urged to investigate her comments.

Stephen Scott, who was recently attacked by three gay-bashers, has called her remarks disgusting and said she should resign.

Robert Toner, a gay Belfast man, is planning legal action against Mrs Robinson under the Public Order Act and has asked the Equality Commission to support him.

The online petition to the British Prime Minister protesting at her anti-gay remarks has now closed with 15,670 signatures (Aug 10).

See also: Jenny's take on the Mrs Robinson affair

Ian's gay blinkers

I was pleased to see that other politicians leapt on Northern Ireland government minister Ian Paisley Junior as soon as he described gays as 'repulsive' and said they harmed themselves and harmed society.

Not so long ago they might have taken no notice and accepted his defence that he was entitled to voice his own personal opinion on a matter he felt strongly about.

Today however such vicious abuse is considered not only unacceptable in itself but also hugely damaging to the department he represents, which is responsible for equality issues.

Assembly members are so disgusted they've drawn up a censure motion against him and want an unconditional apology. So far he has refused to apologise and insisted on his right to heap insults on an already much-maligned group of people.

He's quite oblivious to the elephant-sized blunder he has committed. He's stuck in some 1950s gay-bashing time warp and hasn't noticed that public opinion has moved on and left him behind in his Janet and John utopia.

As Danny Kennedy of the Ulster Unionist Party pointed out: 'The reported comments would not be acceptable anywhere in mainstream British political life.'

Unfortunately Ian Paisley Junior thinks he is a law unto himself and can casually disregard equal opportunities provisions.

If anyone is harming society it's people like him pouring further contempt on vulnerable, insecure homosexuals who are already prone to self-doubt, distress and in some cases suicidal tendencies. What they badly need is not condemnation but reassurance, support and human decency.

And how about the harm from those heterosexuals who think nothing of abusing children, committing adultery, beating their wives and mistreating prostitutes? That's more than repulsive, it's deeply sickening. Those who live in glass houses....