This summer I travelled to the USA with a companion. We sat next to each other on the plane and occassionally, our legs touched each other. We shared tense moments in an airport discovering our flight was delayed but relaxed that evening during a late supper in a deserted restaurant in our exclusive stop-over hotel. We shared a room .. for five days. We laughed, we joked, we even had a time and a place to rendevous should fate mean our paths parted. On the return leg my luggage was lost and my companion waited, patiently, for me to solve my issue.
Of course, my companion was a man and therefore, under the rules of the day, we may have taken part in an 'improper relationship'
What a load of shite.
The furore over the relationship between the Foreign Secretary William Hague and his advisor is such a ridiculous framing of the continued deep-seated homophobia that runs through this country that it makes me furious.
We start with the idea that two men cannot be friends without their relationship being 'improper'. We then move on to the idea that two men sharing a room is somehow 'improper'. Not a bed, mind you - a twin room! We then drill down into some of the more murky depths of the insinuation - that somehow a gay man's relationship with another gay man is a threat to national security in a way that a man and woman could never be. Oh no. That somehow by hiding this 'non-fact' that William Hague is somehow showing a lack of integrity?
It gets worse. Max 'Leech on Modern Society' Clifford suggests that questions need to be answered why a multi-millionaire would need to share a room? Well, I'm not a highly trained journalist looking to cover all the angles (/sarc) but I can think of half a dozen possible reasons off the top of my head including the not unreasonable prospect that William fancied someone to have a chat to late at night?
Because, you know guys, being in the same room as someone does not mean you have to slip your slender majority into the opposition benches!
Has there been any implication that the impropriety within the alleged relationship might be adulterous? No. Not at all. Its all about the G-A-Y.
In my mind, the only improper thing around here is the sad mirror this throws up on our society.