Far-right loses the plot on gay equality

Nick Griffin and the British National Party, ever attempting to make themselves more popular, have come out (if you'll excuse the expression) against homosexuality, albeit in a fairly half-hearted way. Not averse to stating that homosexuality is, in its opinion, wrong, the BNP's monumental hypocrisy also allows it to take the line of least resistance and ignore the fact that it exists as long as any homosexual activity takes place behind closed doors and doesn't frighten the horses.

Griffin, famously embroiled in a homosexual relationship with Martin Webster back in his old National Front days, has recently taken a hypocritically firm stance against gays both in and out of the party but has taken great care to ignore what goes on immediately around him, that it suits him to ignore. Richard 'Dickie' Barnbrook, leader of the BNP contingent at Barking and Dagenham, must have caused him a few problems then with the extensive publicity over his ghastly gay porn film HMS Discovery.

Griffin isn't the only one who is ready to jump on any available perceived anti-gay bandwagon. Unsteady Eddy Morrison, 'National Political Advisor' to the miniscule British People's Party, has also taken a public stance against homosexuality, though in Morrison's case, he is at least prepared to state where the party stands unequivocally;

'The British People’s Party opposes homosexuality as a perversion of nature. We do not allow homosexual and lesbians into membership. If the BPP find any have joined they will expelled immediately!'

Eddy Morrison would be pretty funny if he wasn't a nazi. The most recent Nationalist Week, an online magazine that he writes when he's only half-pissed, has this to say about the perceived modern misuse of the word 'gay';

'The BPP does not use the word "gay" to describe these obnoxious people. Gay is an old English word that means "to be happy and contented". True to form, the politically correct Pink Mafia has hijacked the word. To us in the BPP, they are queers...'

As indeed, they often are to other queers, many of whom have discarded the word 'gay' and happily (indeed gaily) reclaimed the word 'queer'. Many of us will remember the same drivel about the word 'gay' being said thirty or forty years ago, showing that Morrison really hasn't moved with the times at all. Poor old Eddy can be discarded as a simple and narrow-minded buffoon, especially after one digests the following line from Nationalist Week;

'You can find members of the Pink Mafia everywhere, like maggots infesting a rotting piece of wood.'

Do maggots infest rotting wood? Not that I go around checking dead wood on every possible occasion, but I rather thought one would be more likely to find woodlice.

Griffin and Morrison's respective political parties (if either of them have a right to the description) are both trying desperately to popularise themselves - the BNP rather more than the BPP - and Griffin in particular believes that a public expression of disgust and contempt for homosexuals is going to earn him kudos with the voting public. He may however, find his attacks backfiring on him because a very recent YouGov poll for Stonewall finds 90% of the British population support the ban on discrimination against gays and lesbians.

Nor is Griffin's attempted hijack of Christianity likely to help him. Despite the protestations of some church leaders, as many as 85% specifically back the sexual orientation regulations, which make discrimination against gays and lesbians in the provision of goods and services an offence. The survey shows that 'people of faith' were as likely to support gay equality as members of the wider population. In fact the poll depicts a society predominantly at ease with one of the key social changes of the past twenty years.

One of the BNP's anti-gay themes revolves around gay members of staff in schools but even here the party has got it wrong because three out of four said they would be comfortable if their child's teacher was gay. Even more said they would happily be treated by a gay doctor.

Football, the great leveller which has done so much to oppose racism simply by having great players of all colours working together on the same team, won't help Griffin out over this issue either. 92% said they would have no complaints if it emerged that a footballer in a team they supported was gay, while 80% said a gay member of the royal family would not cause a problem either. Even nearer to Griffin's particular knuckle, 89% said they would back laws making it illegal to incite hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation, thus giving the anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim and now anti-gay Griffin even more opportunities to appear in court.

'I'm delighted we now have hard evidence that people don't want to live in a society that allows prejudice against any group of people, including lesbians and gay men, to fester,' said Ben Summerskill, Stonewall's chief executive. 'Britain is a tolerant country with a widespread acceptance that prejudice has no proper place in civil society'.

Nick Griffin may have a late-developing problem with homosexuality but it's pretty obvious that hardly anybody else has.