Two veteran voices of the British and Northern Irish centre-right – Matthew Parris and Jeff Dudgeon – have spoken almost in concert this September, their arguments converging around the same theme: the gay rights movement has travelled far, but it must now tread carefully.
Parris, writing in The Spectator (26 September), recalls the grim days of the Conservative Group for Homosexual Equality – furtive meetings in basement rooms, warm white wine, and whispered solidarity. He remembers the sniggers at the very word “homosexual” and the political tightrope between not lying and not declaring. Yet his story is also one of rapid transformation: a John Major government lowering the age of consent, an electorate largely indifferent by the 1990s, and today’s Parliament with over 9% of its members openly gay. What was once unthinkable is now embedded in public life.
But Parris insists this victory brings responsibility. He rejects the notion that “anything goes”, warning that the respect so painstakingly won could be fragile. Pride’s inflatable phalluses and a culture of loveless gratification, he argues, risk alienating a wider public that has granted tolerance based on privacy and moderation. He is wary of conflating gay and trans causes, not out of hostility but because, as he puts it, “women have rights too” and because pushing too far risks awakening dormant opposition. History, he reminds us, does not travel in straight lines: “We gays ask for respect. We need to show it, too.”
Jeff Dudgeon, writing separately, strikes a similar but sharper note. A veteran Ulster Unionist and himself a pioneer in the decriminalisation struggle in Northern Ireland, he points out that gay issues no longer command political attention. The sheer representation of LGBT MPs in Westminster – three times their proportion in the population – is itself proof that discrimination has collapsed. But the silence around this fact, he suggests, is telling. If gay men and women are already secure in law and in politics, why the continual expansion of the LGBT+ agenda? For Dudgeon, the trans debate has filled the vacuum, releasing a simmering section of the public “who don’t want homosexuality advanced as their best, as the BBC would like.”
Both men, therefore, issue the same warning in different registers. Gains are real and deep, but they are neither permanent nor beyond challenge. Hubris – whether in sexual libertinism, overreach on identity politics, or the insistence that “history is on our side” – risks provoking a backlash.
Parris couches this as conservatism in its truest sense: respectability, restraint, continuity with the wider moral codes of society. Dudgeon voices it as political realism: if gay people are already integrated, then overstating their marginalisation may exhaust public patience.
Together, they represent a generational shift in tone. The age of pleading for equality is over. The question now is how to live with it – and how not to lose it.
Links:
It was another ordinary Friday in Belfast, though the Linen Hall Library has a way of turning the ordinary into something more. Its windows gave off their familiar glow onto Donegall Square, drawing people inside from the damp pavements. I was there for a lunchtime session on Flight from Prague – The Making of a Refugee, a book that traces one family’s escape from Czechoslovakia between September 1938 and November 1939, and the lifelong shaping of identity that followed.
Oranges, the 2004 Australian short, is striking in its simplicity. Nothing grand happens here, yet everything that matters does. A bicycle accident brings two boys together; one brags about his experiences with girls, though whether it’s truth or bravado is left for us to quietly consider. What unfolds in these ordinary exchanges is less about the words spoken and more about the silences between them—the hesitations, the glances, the fragile reach of teenage bravado colliding with real curiosity.
Belfast Mela 2025 – More Than a Festival, But Still Room to Grow
The Belfast Maritime Festival 2025 returned to the city’s quaysides last weekend, drawing thousands of visitors to celebrate the city’s seafaring heritage — despite heavy rain that persisted throughout Sunday afternoon.
live music, food stalls, and family entertainment across Queen’s Quay and Sailortown. Organisers reported strong attendance across the weekend, with Saturday’s clearer skies drawing the biggest crowds.
Boys Grammar is a short film that lingers with you long after the screen fades. Directed by Dean Francis and written by Rozlyn Clayton-Vincent, the 2005 award-winning piece pulls no punches in its portrayal of bullying, toxic masculinity, and the silence of institutions that should protect the vulnerable.
This was not my first time in the Belfast Opera House, and it was not my first time attending a musical. Still, it was my first time attending a Community Dress Rehearsal for the Follies, and especially in the company of a group from the NI Civil Service LGBT.
Summer Friends (2021) – Between Tides and First Feelings
silences, the play of light on water, and the passing days to carry the story forward. The film is less concerned with what happens than with the unspoken tension of what might.