Galloping Morality

I was a Sixth Former when homosexual genital activity was decriminalised; I remember (and was impressed by) the distinction made by the politicians between what was wrong and what should be penalised as criminal. I'm sure they were sincere; I'm equally sure that many of those who had a cruel burden of fear lifted from them would themselves have been less than joyful if they could have known of an age, our age, in which boarding-house keepers and wedding-cake makers and flower-sellers could have their lives made a misery, could even be ruined, for refusing to bow before a newly minted 'Morality'.

Well, that battle, the Gay Rights one, is deemed to have been substantially 'won' now (except within the Catholic Church). The new battle (since we always need a new one) is 'Transgender Rights'. We are told we have to pretend that a man who has been castrated and filled by medics with female homones is a woman. To emphasise that being such a 'trans' is every bit as normal as being unmodified, the Devil's Philogical Department has come up with a new prescribed set of lexical conventions. Humanity is now divided between the 'cis' (that is, a human in its birth gender: I am a 'cisman'), and the 'trans' (the castrated male is a 'transwoman').

English readers as old as I am will remember the heady feminist days when Professor Germaine Greer was the heady feminist icon. She is no fool; she wrote some acute books. Yet the other day there were demonstrations because she had been invited to speak at the Cambridge Union. Why demonstrations? She was once a Fellow of Newnham College in the Younger University, the Statutes of which limit its Fellowship to women. And the Governing Body was intent on electing a 'transwoman'. Greer protested that, whatever this person was, it was not a woman. She resigned her fellowship. So now she is not only persona non grata with the leaders of the Galloping Morality; her views have become so evil that she merits even to be "denied a platform".

It doesn't end there. A hundred or so people, many of them academics, proceeded to put their names to a letter to the Grauniad [the most 'liberal' English daily newspaper] calling for universities again to become places which allowed free speech. Among those who signed, to give him credit, was Peter Tatchell. I write "to give him credit" because, as English readers will know, Tatchell has long been a noisy and determined advocate of 'Gay Rights' and a scourge of 'homophobia'. He is not someone I have often been in the habit of admiring. But he was big enough to be prepared to stand up for Free Speech, and so the Galloping Morality now feels that it would very much rather not have any more support from him, thank you very much.

Hot News: a report flickers up on to my screen that Kings London is not to be outdone by Cambridge: poor silly George Carey is in trouble. He was recently spotted chasing down the road after the Gallopers, shouting "Wait! A horse! Let me ride with you! I adore Euthanasia!". But, nevertheless, his image and likeness is now to be removed from a window commemorating distinguished alumni, after a campaign against him by  ... no, forget it, this is becoming repetitive.

You have to get up extremely early in the morning to keep up with the Galloping Moralists. Wherever will they have got to by tomorrow morning? Spare a thought for their poor overworked horses.