A young teacher in a north of England state school told me that his school had decided to celebrate LGBT issues. School teachers all wear name badges nowadays. One of the activities was selling rainbow lanyards so that staff could show their solidarity. It was not long before all but one member of staff were sporting the lanyards and the teacher involved, when asked if he would like to buy one, simply declined politely.
But you can imagine the pressure. Every teacher who wanted promotion had to be seen to support the head’s LGBT initiative. Fail to buy a lanyard and you are a marked man. The teacher involved had a Jewish grandparent and a good understanding of family history. He referred to his grandfather’s tales of walking around Berlin on Kristallnacht, knowing that home was unsafe and the streets only slightly less so. By then he had become used to wearing a Star of David, that preliminary device to convert real people into Unmenschen, non-people who warranted any amount of mistreatment.
Breitbart London is a news site that often covers issues that the mainstream media find too shocking for the tender eyes of the masses. It tells us that Conservative Ministers are ‘delighted to fly the LGBT flag over government buildings’. Of course they are! If there is anything that will confirm your allegiance to the regime it is by being an out-and-out, unqualified promoter of things gay. Nicky Morgan voted against gay marriage but needed to toe the line if she wanted the Education job. Outspoken MP Aidan Burley said to me that God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. But he voted for gay marriage nonetheless. Cameron himself, when he saw the wind blowing one way, supported Section 28, only to have a complete volte-face in the last parliament.
One of the characteristics of British Values is the right to reasonable and moderate dissent. This government does not believe that. It is on the path to demonise those who disagree with the party line. In that way we are becoming more like a totalitarian state in which we are told what to think and marked when we disagree.
Solzhenitsyn tells about the atmosphere in Stalinist Russia in which no-one dared stop clapping after a speech supporting Stalin. If you were a Conservative Minister, whatever you thought, would you dare not fly the LGBT flag?
