Equality: now gays can be the oppressors too

In the bad old days it was the heterosexuals who tried to make people ashamed to be gay. They never succeeded with me. I always counted it as a blessing, not a curse, that I could see beauty in a man's frame or find comfort in a man's arms. Now however, the societal tables are turned and, yes, finally, they have made me ashamed to be gay.

Only, "they" this time are people who go up to Christians in the street and try to entrap them, as described in this article in the Telegraph: Preacher locked up for hate crime after quoting the Bible to gay teenager. Incredibly, the young man asked the preacher what the Bible said about gays and then made a hate crime accusation to the police. The preacher was frogmarched off on his say-so alone and made to spend a night in the cells.

There's a line where you stop being a victim and start being a fascist, using your "victim" status as a club to bash others over the head. This kind of behaviour is on the far side of that line. At least the boy's friend's behaviour was admirable: in court he said that Mr Larmour hadn't assaulted his friend or called him homophobic names: he had simply answered his question and told him about Adam and Eve and Heaven and Hell.

Iris Robinson's excellent taste in young men

So it turns out that Iris Robinson, previously in the news for her unfortunate remarks regarding homosexuality ["abomination", "sick", "nauseous" and so on] and adultery, spent 2009 having an affair with what can only be described as a toy boy. Robinson, who will have been 59 at the time, started bedding the delightful Kirk McCambley (now 21) when he was only 19.

Really, the closer you look into this one, the worse it gets. Firstly, it seems that Mrs Robinson may have inadvertently left herself open to allegations that she channeled money his way, both from her friends and from the local council on which she sat. Indeed, Mr McCambley claims that she asked him for a "cut". Secondly — and how can one put this most sensitively? — it seems that Mr McCambley first came to Mrs Robinson's attention in 2008, when she promised his dying father (a close friend of hers) that she would "look after" Kirk, his only son!

I do hope she has the dignity not to ask for understanding, since that is precisely the thing she wants denied to us. Indeed if the state has a duty to carry out "God's laws", as she believes it does, then there are plenty of places in the world even now where she would be looking forward to being publicly flogged or even stoned to death.

The BBC News website has a good article detailing the whole sorry mess quite exhaustively. The most striking thing about it is the photograph at the top: the betrayed husband, looking old and grey and, well, betrayed; the virile young lover looking absolutely scrumptious in a clear-eyed, clean-limbed, closely-cropped kind of way [just how I like 'em—GM]; and finally Iris herself, looking for all the world like a white-leaded and rouged restoration whore.