Not exactly random eye candy - this guy is Spain's former Mr. Bear, and a Moroccan Muslim

I’ve lost a fair few illusions since I came out aged 18. Among many groundless fancies dashed over the years, I’ve realised that:

- I do not have a lovely singing voice.

- I do not look cool with an “interesting” haircut.

- I cannot breakdance / vogue/ krump, even when extremely drunk.

- Despite my mother’s protests to the contrary, I do in fact bear a passing resemblance to Henry VIII.

True to my self-satisfied self I’ve come to terms easily with these limitations – but the illusions I’ve lost about my fellow gays since getting to know them better have proved harder to do without.  When I first arrived on the scene, I assumed that because gays were the butt of so much prejudice, they’d be less prejudiced themselves.  Exposed to rejection and discrimination, gay people would be kinder, more inclusive, slower to judge and quicker to understand, an example to other people of what tolerance means.  Was I right?  Was I f***

Certainly I’ve come across many people whose sexuality has blown the doors off the prejudice they lived with in their own families.  I’ve often heard people say “If I wasn’t gay, I’d be a blinkered idiot like my brother/sister/parents”.  But the rainbow alliance between the victims of prejudice I imagined as a teenager has turned out, like a rainbow itself, to be a mirage.  I’ve met racist gays who would fuck but not date a non-white person and misogynist gays who think the pressure fashion exerts on women to loathe their bodies is a good thing.  I’ve come across rich gays who look down on people who aren’t “solvent”, privileged gays who think the developing world gets all it deserves and macho gays who sleep around but think their sisters shouldn’t cohabit before marriage.

While some of those views make me sick (actually, all of them do), I’ve accepted that a mere mutual fondness for cock isn’t going to create a universally shared ideology.  Now I think about it, my earlier assumption that being gay would mean sharing my liberal views had a faint whiff of fascism to it, as if people who disagreed with me couldn’t possibly join the club.

At the same time, when I come across outbursts like that by my (now former) Facebook friend Mark Ames – promoter of Europe’s biggest bear club XXL – I still feel hugely disappointed.  For those who haven’t come across yet, Ames suggested a boycott of all Muslim businesses and countries after youths fought with police outside East London Mosque. As a recent Dispatches programme on Channel Four showed, there is indeed a problem with Muslim extremism in East London, caused by the Islamic Federation of Europe infiltrating local institutions and then coercing and bullying people.  Moderate muslims, however, are the first target for extremists – recently a female Muslim councillor has been scared into wearing traditional dress after receiving anonymous death threats, while non-religious groups for Bengalis have had council funding removed.  Do we really want to isolate these people further by blaming them for the actions of the people who are bullying them?  It seems cruel and simplistic, a bit like hating gays because of the discovery of one gay paedophile.

Watered down, fleeting and illusory

This spat has been much discussed – and Ames has now apologised publicly.  I still think there is an important point worth making.  While we still get a load of shit, the position of gays in this country has improved hugely in the past few decades.  Now that many of our rights have been recognised, are we going to pull up the drawbridge and look at other minorities with automatic fear and suspicion?  Our own treatment has given us an inside knowledge of how prejudice breeds injustice – we should never lose sight of that in the way we treat other people.

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