Stop calling us ‘the gay community’ – it doesn’t exist

It’s summer, which means Pimm’s, cricket and to some people, Pride. In London or San Francisco this means a party with face paint, lots of booze and waving brightly coloured flags.

Gay marriage is being legalised all over the world and gay rights are finally having their day in the sun.

The gay community, then, is as relevant as ever? Unfortunately not.

In London, the gay wing of UKIP were banned from pride because the organisers said they were “anti gay”, despite the fact the very existence of an LGBT wing of a party is hardly a homophic move. An excuse was made that their safety couldn’t be guaranteed, but the real motive was clear when the “gay rights” activist Peter Tatchell went on live TV to smear them as anti gay, despite the fact that the anti-EU party’s LGBT wing is long established and the party was represented by Britain’s first ever trans MEP. The Lib Dems weren’t banned, even though their candidate in a 1983 by-election promoted himself as the “straight choice” when up against an openly gay Labour candidate. Even the Tories were welcomed, despite their rocky history and the horde of their own MPs that voted against gay marriage.

We’re not all the same

The world of university is supposed to be a haven for gays. Everyone from a small town knows at least one gay guy who ran away to Manchester or London to join the uni theatre and or do a drama degree. But unless you follow all the lefty ramblings of everyone in LGBT soc, you’re not welcome.

In some ways they’re good, for many naive freshers they offer an almost unique environment of tolerance and acceptance after the torture of secondary school and a provincial family that doesn’t understand the gay thing. But many universities, including my own, Nottingham, have LGBT societies in which hard line activists host official  events advertised as “white males not welcome”. This is supposedly to create a “safe space”, but members, having paid their society membership fee, are discriminated against on grounds of both race and gender.   

This discrimination is the end point of this stupid trend of putting everyone into little boxes. Human beings are unique and will never fit into neat groups such as “LGBT”. The truth is that the gay community has declined for two reasons. The first is that the acceptance of non-straight lifestyles in mainstream society has killed off the need for a “gay identity”. The second, sadder factor, is that the die-hard thought police, scouring twitter for politically incorrect slip ups from public figures to harangue into submission have created a toxic atmosphere for all gays, transgenders, bisexuals and their allies in which its simply easier not to engage with the issues and risk being smeared across twitter as a Nazi or homophobe. It’s the same on campuses all over the country, people are being shut out of the gay world if they don’t believe in absolutely everything the committee holds dear.

The gay community is like the Islamic State, the majority of who’s victims are Muslims, the very people the gay community was set up to protect are more often than not the target of its attacks.

From being called out for having a different view to the hive mind to being ostracised because you’re right wing, the gay community isn’t one block, it’s a whole range of people with different backgrounds, different political beliefs.

Stop thinking we’re all the same.