Conned into it ....

On the 3rd April 2008, Stonewall, an organisation dedicated to promoting the gay agenda in Britain, held a fund raising dinner. Their own news release on the occasion included the following sentence:

[Sir Ian McKellen] shared with the 540 guests that he had visited Tony Blair on behalf of Stonewall three months before his election as Prime Minister. 'I reeled off Stonewall's demands, and he nodded, wrote them down and put a tick by them all. Then he said we will do all that.'

So it appears that New Labour's pro-gay agenda was foisted on to them by an unrepresentative interest group. The language of "demands" is quite revealing, too.

My own trade union was conned as well. The first policy paper they adopted on the issue was not written by them at all. It was written by gay activists in another union; it was first brought to my union's executive by a paid member of staff of the union; and, after nearly a year of its being referred from committee to committee, it was finally driven through at a poorly attended meeting. I received a letter from the then President of the union warning me off opposing this policy if I had ambitions to be President at some point (the rumour machine at the time had me lining myself up to stand - all rather hilarious in retrospect, since I resigned from the executive soon after on precisely this issue)... Looking at that policy paper, it contains recognisable Stonewall-speak, so the ultimate origin of its content is not hard to guess. The association continues to be conned by the Stonewall agenda.

The draft agenda for the forthcoming TUC Congress contains a motion that is another example of the Stonewall con. It does not come from any of the affiliated unions; it is proposed by the "TUC Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Conference" - that is, by a caucus of pro-gay activists. The con this time is to re-define the meaning of the word "homophobic" to refer to any expression of a view that disagrees with Stonewall's attempt to have gay behaviour viewed universally as morally right. Draft motion P17 calls on Congress to condemn the appointment of Joel Edwards, present General Director of the Evangelical Alliance, as a commisioner for the Equality and Human Rights Commission on the grounds that he "has made homophobic statements and continues to do so". The examples cited in the motion are essentially statements of orthodox Christian teaching that homosexual practice is morally wrong. Not one example is given of promotion of hatred against gay people - the ordinary understanding of the word "homophobic".

The problem is that it takes, first, a bit of intelligent awareness and then, second, a bit of courage to stand against this con trick. And in a committee meeting or a congress hall, where the "top table" are telling them that this is the thing to do, few will stand against it.

I am tempted to reverse a recent slogan and say: A lot of us are straight; get over it.