PETER HITCHENS: We show tolerance to 'gays' and get tyranny in return
If I never again had to read or write a word about homosexuals, I would be very happy. I really don't want to know what other people do in their bedrooms. But these days they really, really want us all to know. And, more important, they insist that we approve. No longer are we allowed to keep our thoughts to ourselves, while being polite and kind.
We are forced to say that we think homosexuality is a good thing, that homosexual couples are equal in all ways to heterosexual married couples. Most emphatically, we are compelled to agree that homosexual couples are just as good at bringing up children as the children's own grandparents. Better, in fact.
Many people who believe nothing of the kind now know that their careers in politics, the media, the Armed Services, the police or schools will be ruined if they ever let their true opinions show. I am sure that many of them regularly lie about their views, to avoid such trouble.
We cringe to the new Thought Police, like the subjects of some insane, sex-obsessed Stalinist state, compelled to wave our little rainbow flags as the 'Gay Pride' parade passes by.
And that's another thing. We can't even call homosexuals 'homosexuals' any more. This neutral word is not considered enthusiastic enough. We have to say 'gay'. Which is exactly why I don't, apart from in inverted commas.
You think I exaggerate the power and fury of these forces? The totalitarian rage on this subject is quite astonishing. I have had several brushes with it, and been called rude names by its militants.
Well, I can live with that. It's my job. But what about a powerless pair of grandparents in Edinburgh, their grandchildren's lives shipwrecked by the multiple horrors of our 'liberated' society?
First, their daughter ends up as a drug abuser, like so many others in a country which permits the endless promotion of drug use by rock stars and refuses to punish the possession of narcotics, the only measure that would work.
Then, when they seek to look after her children, they are first insultingly informed that they are too old, and that their minor illnesses disqualify them from the task. Heaven help any employer who dared 'discriminate' in this fashion. But the new Thought Police are oddly exempt from their own rules.
Next, the grandparents are informed that the children are to be put into the care of a homosexual couple. And - this is the crucial moment - they are warned in the most terrifying terms that if they object to this arrangement they will never see their grandchildren again.
Leave aside the rest of it. It is this demand, that they mouth approval of the new regime like the defendants at some show trial, which is the bit that ought to make your flesh creep.
This is the action of a tyranny in operation, especially the use of children to blackmail their parents and grandparents. People who can do this can do anything.
Isn't it amazing to reflect that this campaign began in the name of tolerance?
conscience
The callousness of fatherless, comprehensive-educated, Godless, TV-entertained, computer game-desensitised, cannabis-crazed and lagered-up Britain is perfectly demonstrated in the pictures of Johnathan Robinson, a pub landlord whose robbers dragged him from his car, ran him over, broke his leg and then stamped on his face for fun (since he was, by then, helpless).
Man without conscience is wilder and more dangerous than any beast.
We have bred a generation of concentration camp guards, and if as a society we later turn to mass murder, nobody will need to wonder much why and how it happened.
I am told the footprint on his face may help to identify the attacker who, if convicted, will not suffer anything resembling punishment.
It certainly helps to identify this country as a moral slum.
We'd never guess Doris was your bag, Samantha
Should we believe what is written about celebrities, especially when they are still on the upward path? Take the aristocratic leather goods businesswoman Samantha Cameron, lovely wife of David.
In the current Vogue she is described as a voracious reader and as a 'big Doris Lessing fan'.
Doris Lessing? Doris's Nobel Prize citation called her 'that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny'.
This is surely a strange choice for the woman who brought us the Nancy Bag and the Bubblegum Pink Calfskin Bible.
I asked the Tory Party which was Samantha's favourite Doris novel --the wordy Communist memoirs, or the many volumes of dense science fiction? Answer came there none.
Price is paid for surrender to evil
Those who now complain about the planned pay-outs to IRA bombers killed by their own bombs should grasp that this kind of disgrace is what invariably follows craven surrender to evil.
If you supported the Good Friday agreement, this is what you asked for. Don't whinge about it now.
You had your chance to oppose it when it might have mattered, and didn't take it. Worse, you sneered at people like me who tried to tell you. You deserve to have this money taken out of your taxes. I don't.
* Does this country deserve the courage and patience of its Armed Forces? No. Wealden District Council refused permission for a specially adapted bungalow for Marine Joe Townsend, terribly wounded in Afghanistan. No doubt they went by the book. And that is the problem. They had no idea how stupid and mean they would look, because they live in a fat, easy world where 'sacrifice' means having to take a bus home instead of a taxi. So do we all. We aren't entitled to the services of people such as Joe Townsend. And we are so frivolous and lazy that we have never protested against the stupid, futile war in which these brave men are being asked to risk all. Shame on us.
* Do you sense real political peril in the air? I do. The strikes in protest at the hiring of cheap foreign labour, in preference to local men, are the first sign that Labour's once-reliable old working-class base have grasped that their party is now run by wealthy London leftists who have no interest in them at all. A proper Conservative Party would long ago have addressed their concerns in a civilised way, proposing to leave the EU and regain control of our borders. But - because they, too, are run by liberal elitists - nasty, dangerous and disreputable forces will move into the vacuum. I did try to warn you.
* Actually, it is still not too late to bring back the Hereditary Peers, decent incorruptible old coves who have Britain in their bones and blood. Why do we believe that 'democracy' is the answer to everything when it so frequently elevates idiots and crooks to power?
