Iain Dale's selective denunciation of homophobia

Yesterday, via Twitter, Iain Dale joined the rest of the known universe in condemning Jan Moir - for instance, by RT-ing a post by Total Politics editor Shane Greer, calling the Mail writer a 'bigot of the worst kind.' This follows a recent episode in which Dale was also a victim of homophobia from the Mail. Dale rightly complained to the PCC on that occasion, and I later followed his appeal for others to add their voices, by complaining to Paul Dacre and the writer of the offending column, Peter McKay (it hardly needs saying that, to date, I have had no reply).

But whilst Dale is happy to condemn a newspaper that has a history of targeting him personally, he singularly refuses to criticise anti-gay prejudice closer to home. Indeed, he has not merely failed to speak up against homophobia among Conservatives and their allies: in some cases he has gone out of his way to excuse it.

To take one example: as regular readers will know, recently I uncovered how Valdemar Tomasevski, a Lithuanian MEP who is part of the Tories' coalition in the European Parliament, personally voted for a severely repressive and homophobic law that has been condemned by human rights watchdogs, including Amnesty. Thanks to the considerable help of Sunny from Liberal Conspiracy, that news spread fairly widely around the leftie blogosphere, was picked up by The Observer, and commented on by Lib Dem Shadow Foreign Secretary Ed Davey. Yet Dale refused to be drawn on the subject, even when, on a visit to this blog, he was directly challenged to explain his inconsistent stance on homophobia by another commenter. Instead, he gave a brief, obscuscating answer, and disappeared.

On other occasions, Dale has alligned himself with the anti-gay views of others - for instance in this month's interview with the leader of the Conservatives' Euro alliance, Michal Kaminski. There, astonishingly, Dale sides with Kaminski in attacking both marriage equality and gay adoption.

First, Dale says that, whilst he favours civil partnerships, he objects to gay marriage:

ID: No I understand what you are saying and I agree with you on marriage – I’ve always thought that marriage is a word that symbolises something religious, and in this country you can’t contract civil partnerships in a church, you have to do it in a licensed premises.

Dale has made this nonsensical argument before - it was then, and is now, plainly wrong. Marriage is a state-regulated institution, whether or not it is also, for some, a sacrament. It is the state that decides who may marry, at what age, to how many spouses, and so forth - religion has neither the first nor last word. Dale is playing with fire in allowing opponents of equality to appeal to religion. For how can he now coherently argue against those who say that the legal regulation of sexual conduct is generally an innately religious matter, and therefore that homosexuality ought to be banned outright?

Likewise, Dale's claims about gay adoption do a great disservice to LGBT parents. When Kaminski says that gay couples ought not to be able to adopt, Dale says:

ID: But let’s look at this – I agree with you by the way, I think ideally a child should be raised by a man and a woman – but there are lots of kids nowadays who for whatever reason aren’t able to be raised by a man and a woman. And given the choice between putting a child in a children’s home for his or her entire childhood, or put in a stable home, regardless of whether the parents are of the same sex, surely it’s more important for the child to have a stable loving home?

Unlike Kaminski, Dale does not rule out gay adoption under all circumstances. But nonetheless, by his logic, gay couples ought always to be at the back of the adoption queue, so that they are never given a child if there is a suitable straight couple to hand. Instead, he implies, they should be a last resort, if the child would otherwise be placed in an institution. And yet we are invited to accept that this is not an anti-gay view.

The Kaminski interview is not the first occasion on which Dale has felt compelled to express solidarity with opponents of equality. In August he stood up in support of Roger Helmer, the Tory MEP who, you will remember, drew criticism for claiming that homophobia is just a conspiracy dreamed up by the left, to silence those with 'conventional' views. Dale disputed that claim, but nonetheless decided to entitle his post 'What Unites Roger Helmer & Me', and to write:

The thing about political parties is that they are broad churches or they are nothing. Political parties which seek to become narrow, moralistic sects will inevitably die or lose elections. The Left find it difficult to understand how Roger Helmer and I can be in the same party. I suspect we would both say that there is far more that unites us than divides us.

This response indefensibly trivialises Helmer's statement. When he was the victim of homophobia from the Mail, Dale suggested, persuasively, that an acid test to see if a statement is anti-gay is to see how it would strike us if made about, for instance, Jews. Well, if Helmer had suggested that anti-semitism does not exist, but is instead a leftist conspiracy designed to silence those with conventional views, he would have been drummed out of the Conservative Party. And Dale would not not professed unity with him - he would have disowned him. So why did he fail to do so when Helmer lauched an attack on gays?

Iain Dale performs a distinctive and useful service for the Tories, by helping them to limit the damage done by stories that challenge their record on LGBT issues. He has repeatedly signalled that such stories do not trouble him, either by keeping silent when he could have voiced concerns, or, as with Helmer and Kaminski, by actively extending his support. To many, that message will be powerful: after all, if prominent gay party activist Iain Dale is not bothered, these stories must all be a storm in a teacup, right?

Iain Dale has decided where his loyalties lie, and sadly they are not on the side of combatting prejudice or promoting equality. In fact, to be frank, I think Dale would not know LGBT equality if it slapped him in the face with a size 12, rhinestone-encrusted stiletto heel.