Coming Out For the Count
September 1999
Michael Portillo's record on gay rights is both appalling
and hypocritical. His 'confession' suggests this may not change.
This story will not go away. Ask Ron Davies, Peter Mandelson, or even
Bill Clinton. We voters have a lively interest in the sex lives of our
politicians, simply because they are famous. We gleefully pick up a used
copy of the Sun for the latest dirt, even as we condemn the intrusion —
just as we would for a celebrated entertainer or footballer. Anything to
share in the humanity of those whose lives would otherwise seem remote from
our own.
But in the case of Michael Portillo our concern is more righteous. He
is returning to politics — brave man — and as a public servant once more
he can be expected to answer for what he has put on public record. This now
includes the stumbling words with which he emerged from whatever closet it
was in Thursday's Times. That same evening, but with sterner jaw (a great
part for Martin Shaw or Colin Firth) he twice "flatly" denied any
indiscretion with Peter Lilley.
A cardboard illusion shattered! I had always thought they would have
made a lovely pair, in some homely nook, plotting their fascist bed-games.
Such has been the sly caricature of the gay press and its readers. For while
both of them had power, serving under General Thatcher, following her lead
they voted against the gay population unerringly.
They were against equalising the age of consent. They declined to lift
the ban on gays serving in the British armed forces. They voted for Section
28, the nasty little law which meddles, among other things, in what a local
authority school can,, or cannot, teach about homosexuality the "red
meat thrown to our right-wing wolves", as Tristan Garel-Jones described
it to me at the time.
Their public stance meant that they could not, surely, be gay
themselves, for that would mean they were voting to say: "What has been
good enough for me is too good for the rest of you." Yet still the
rumours persisted, to the embarrassment of them both. We now know that they
even discussed going to court to tackle the rumours, but then didn't.
I know how annoying all this must have been for them. For 49 years,
until I said otherwise, people invariably assumed that I was straight. I
hope that Mr Portillo is feeling as relieved as I was to proclaim publicly a
truth that was previously shared only with friends. The Press Association
called it a "confession", though Mr Portillo hoped we wouldn't be
much interested. We shall see.
The news was broadcast in large headlines by broadsheets and tabloids
alike, and the latter will play Hunt Polly's-Old-Flames until they run their
prey to ground.
Further revelations should there be anything left to reveal would
significantly alter the political dynamic. But for now it seems likely that
the Kensington and Chelsea selection committee may well be attracted to a
candidate with a racy past to replace Alan Clark, a man who in a somewhat
bolder manner was happy to parade his sexual escapades to an admiring
public. (Incidentally, Mr Clark's views on homosexuality were changing of
late, under pressure from his gay constituents. Their influence may yet
prove Mr Portillo's stumbling-block.)
But there are wider issues than the predilections of the local party.
Tory apologists in the media have tried to minimise the situation by talking
of their man's "youthful indiscretions". Interestingly that is not
a term Mr Portillo has himself used. Nor has he talked of
"experimentation". Rather he has, in effect, defined himself as
bisexual, without using the word. Are the Tories ready for their first
openly bisexual party leader?
The truth is that such a man may well choose to restrict his sexual
activity to one gender, to one partner, or to be celibate. But his basic
sexuality does not change. Which perhaps explains the nervous tone of Mr
Portillo's original announcement. Often people who come out as gay or
bisexual haven't talked to others enough about it before. They handle it as
though it is a uniquely personal problem which nobody else has ever
experienced. They fail to relate to their fellow citizens who share their
sexuality. That, regrettably, seems to be the case with Michael Portillo.
Party stalwarts have spoken of his honesty and courage and yet those
look pretty meagre compared with Stephen Twigg, who took Portillo's seat at
the last election and who was open about his homosexuality before first
standing for public office. Twigg is not alone; there are a number of
elected politicians in European, national and local politics who are openly
gay and some of them are Tories. By contrast with their stance, Mr Portillo's
own tentative announcement reads as old-fashioned, as if he were caught on
the hop by a clever journalist, rather than a declaration of personal
identity.
But how to explain his voting record? Perhaps the poor youth had a
miserable sex life with other men and it's on that basis that he thought an
equal age of consent for gay sex should be denied to others. On the other
hand, he did say on Thursday that he had no regrets about his past. Let's
hope he truly is at ease with his bisexuality and his happy marriage. But
let's also hope part of that happiness is the memory of those affairs or
whatever went on at Cambridge.
Yet the fact is that whether the undergraduate sex was
one-night stands or longer relationships it was, in those days, all illegal
if Mr Portillo was under 21 at the time. So if illicit gay sex did no harm
to Mr Portillo why does his voting record assume that others will be harmed
by it? Also, if he is fit to serve his constituents in parliament, why
should other gay men and women be unfit to serve in the nation's military?
Mr Portillo's muddled thinking is out of touch with our times. The
United Kingdom is in a period of flux. There is, particularly in our big
cities, an increasingly open culture, at ease with homosexuality. Today we
live in a world where the Secretary of State for Culture, Chris Smith, is
welcome to take his male partner to official receptions at Buckingham
Palace, where there are popular gay characters in soap operas, where there
is an openly gay area in the heart of London which Prince Charles thought it
appropriate to visit after an anti-gay bomb exploded at the Admiral Duncan
pub.
There is change in the air and the favourable comment last week showed
that Michael Portillo is a beneficiary of it. It may not be likely that the
Conservative peers who voted down an equal age of consent for gays will be
less fearful of homosexuality now that they can see that Mr Portillo's
character and maturity have not been endangered one jot by his youthful gay
experiences. But certainly Mr Portillo has the chance to be in the vanguard
of changing attitudes by applying his personal experience to his political
stance, by recanting and taking his supporters with him. The charge of
hypocrisy is what he has most to fear. And the remedy for that is in his own
hands.
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