In 1998, as MP for Havant, David Willetts voted against lowering the homosexual age of consent. In 2002 he voted several times against allowing gay couples to adopt. In 2003 he voted to delay the repeal of Clause 28, which prohibited the teaching of homosexuality in schools. And at significant votes to establish civil partnerships and later same-sex marriage, the now Lord Willetts was strangely absent.
This voting record puzzles me. As a trustee of the Booker Prize Foundation, Lord Willetts this week signed a statement stripping Baroness Nicholson of Winterbourne, 78, of her honorary vice-presidency of the prize she founded with her late husband, the businessman Sir Michael Caine. Her principal crime was to have opposed equal marriage seven years ago. The gay author Damian Barr, who led the pitchfork pile-on against her, tweeted his fear that she’d “take the wedding ring off my finger”.
The hypocrisy and gall of Lord Willetts in signing that letter, when his voting record suggests he must share her views, is staggering.
Says it all, doesn't it.
This lobby don't care about gay people, or their rights. Just look at what they've done to Allison Bailey, for daring to suggest that gay people should have an advocacy group of their own. Especially pertinent given the whistleblowing from the Tavistock around homophobia, and the rising insistence that lesbians who won't consider dating 'a woman with a penis' are bigots - see the Guardian sending a lesbian on a date with a trans woman without asking her, or even telling her, first.
The trans community have their own advocacy groups, and indeed have multiple. Yet that lobby simultaneously howls that gay and lesbian people, having a group that represents their own interests, is hateful and unacceptable.
Of course trans people should have orgs that represent their interests. But they're declaring that women's groups, and LGB groups, are hateful. It's not hate to advocate for your own interests - if it were, the trans lobby would be in serious fucking trouble. Come to think of it, why is erasing women's sex-based oppression, and the right of gay people to be same-sex attracted only, not regarded as hateful? I'm yet to see any women's group or LGB group argue that trans people don't have an absolute right to live as they please and present as feels most authentic. The sole demand is that the Equality Act protected rights - to same-sex orientation, and to single-sex provision where justified, is important and must remain, and that the creeping and unlawful erosion of those people's rights be rolled back. Where's the respect from the trans lobby for other people's rights and needs? You do not have, as a male person, the 'right' to access unclothed or otherwise vulnerable women without their consent. You do not have the 'right' to insist that same-sex attracted people consider gender instead of sex when considering their dating pool. Those are incursions on the rights of others, and not rights in themselves! yet anyone who points that out is cancelled.
In 2020, feminism can't centre women, and gay liberation can't centre gay people, without being deemed hateful. We're going backwards.