Gay Bashing

Here’s a tricky one – a piece on homosexuals: the LGBTQIA+ (I had to look up the complicated acronym on Google, and got the answer, refreshed with a jolly graphic of rainbow flags and confetti). As usual, the opposite doesn’t enjoy the same service. See, I had also looked up: ‘Manly fellow drinks a beer and cleans his Harley while scratching his balls’ and found it wasn’t bedecked by the American search engine with a frolic of whistles and belles.

Those who belong to or sympathise with the Gay movement must eternally be aware of the hatred, disdain and the politics of those who wish them ill, broadly increasing as one heads towards the right end of the political spectrum, and culminating in a headline regarding Vox, which is ‘concerned about the "alarming increase" of homosexuals and transsexuals in Spain’. This from a group which, it would be safe to say, is not partial to the gay lifestyle at all. They are in little doubt: the Government must be putting something funny in our tap water.  

It is said, mind you, that those who are most vocal in their anti-gay rhetoric are sometimes the same ones who would stay in the closet, or who get caught in some deeply embarrassing and melodramatic, er, misunderstanding – like the Hungarian far-right and anti-gay MEP József Szájer who had to abruptly leave a homosexual orgy back in 2020 through a window, naked, as the police came through the front door.

Life goes on. Those of us who think of ourselves as ‘normal’ might look down on the antics of our gay friends, but there’s probably a bit of jealousy mixed in as well: the jolly mixture of theatre, camp and adventures (contrasted with the insults, vexations and sometime violence received).

They say that it’s one in ten of us, about the same as the number of left-handers (who used to be known as sinister). Perhaps we just need some patience; but meanwhile, the silent majority rules.

Encouraged by Vox (and the Republicans, the Iranians, Meloni’s Italy, the Opus Dei, apparently the Ugandans and a number of other totalitarian governments and organisations), the messages and comments of LGBTIfóbia in the social media have increased in the last few years, at the same time as the democratic governments have been working hard to remove the traditional opprobrium (particularly in a macho society like Spain) against the gays.

One isolated news-item – a mixture of a student rag and an ill-judged attack on the gays during Gay Pride Day (June 28th) has a leaflet over at the university students’ residence in Málaga calling for a small reward of twenty euros to be paid for anyone reported as suffering from the homosexual epidemic in a ‘Gay Hunting Month’ (this in English). Serious or just some silly prank? I don’t know, but it’s not quite the same as being beaten up for holding hands with one’s boyfriend.