I recently listened to a fascinating The Irish Times podcast interview between Hugh Linehan and Ronan McCrea, a law professor in the University College London and sometimes contributor to this newspaper, in relation to his latest book, The End of the Gay Rights Revolution.
This book is a must read for anyone who is seriously interested in the effects of LGBTQIA+ activism in a liberal society. It raises the question as to whether LGB rights should be inseparably harnessed to demands of trans activists.
It asks whether an “all or nothing” LGBT coalition approach risks endangering the current liberal supportive societal consensus, by playing into the hands of those who would turn the clock back on gay and lesbian emancipation.
Those are themes on which I have also written here on occasion in the past. But McCrea’s book admirably deals with them in far greater depth.
Teenager dies following serious incident at emergency care facility in north Dublin
Live: Tánaiste Simon Harris wins confidence vote, as Opposition criticises ‘broken promises’
Live: Caelan Doris returns as Andy Farrell names Ireland squad for Autumn Internationals
A look inside the Canadian ambassador’s home: ‘This would be a temple in Canada’
Its opening chapter describes a charity tennis tournament held in Trinity College Dublin in 1990 at which a major international tennis celebrity amused the large attendance by publicly embarrassing a mortified 13-year-old ball boy, mocking the boy’s effeminacy – an incident lightheartedly and uncritically recounted in The Irish Times the following day.
That ball boy was McCrea. He relates those cringe-making events only to underline how gay people’s rights and status (including his own) in Ireland have changed immeasurably in the intervening 35 years.
Is this the end of the gay rights revolution?
But his book is chiefly concerned with exploring the implications of growing reaction to those changes by political and social forces who can exploit liberal people’s fear that they must accept every aspect of LGBTQIA+ activism, regardless of legitimate concerns with some of the seemingly more strident demands of trans activists.
McCrea does not want to draw up the ladder or raise the drawbridge, leaving transgender people to perish rightless. He says that liberal values and societies, which he loves, are not invulnerable, and that gay and lesbian political progress needs to be protected from blind activism at the political edge rather than taken for granted. He also examines the social consequences of patterns of casual sexual encounters found in the lifestyle of many male homosexuals.
In the podcast, McCrea mentions the modern use of the term “sex worker” as a neutral term for a prostitute. This is a reminder of an Act passed in 2017 which makes payment for sex criminal, but someone now referred to as a “sex worker” is not doing anything illegal by receiving payment.
Imagine a court case concerning a mature woman arrested without warrant under section 13 of the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences) Act 1993 – as amended by section 25 of the Criminal Justice (Sexual Offences) Act 2017 – because a garda reasonably suspected her of having paid an adult male escort for engaging in sexual activity.
You might think that the case absurd. You might think: “How come she is being prosecuted, and he isn’t?” Until 2017, neither of them would have committed a criminal offence.
About one man a week is now prosecuted for paying for sex, but no woman has yet been prosecuted for paying a male escort for sex. Tabloid newspapers tell us that both forms of the sex trade are thriving in Ireland. Online advertising evidence confirms that. Has the 2017 Act reduced exploitative prostitution or merely camouflaged its public profile?
The Act came shortly after Ireland’s Gender Recognition Act of 2015. The 2015 Act was one of the most liberal acts of its kind worldwide, allowing anyone to have his or her gender changed to the opposite sex by simply executing a statutory declaration. Its consequences for gender-defined sporting activities and single-gender spaces and facilities have caused uncertainty and a good deal of controversy, such as that concerning the convicted criminal Barbie Kardashian.
McCrea fears that pushing trans activists’ demands creates fertile ground for general reaction among voters in the centre to be persuaded by populists and social conservatives. He suggests that things have gone too far, and that the result may be a reversal of the progress already made by the huge majority of gay and lesbian people.
My own wider take is that political and social liberalism, nationally and internationally, is more vulnerable than ever, and that it is under growing threat from those bent on polarisation and division in pursuit of electoral domination.
Truthful, honest, cancellation-free and respectful public discourse right across the spectrum of social change issues in liberal democracies is needed.
Genuine liberals should eschew lazy-minded, cowardly, and sometimes woke “nothing to see here” positions on complex issues, including trans rights, gender identity, migration, asylum-seeking and religious liberty and intolerance, which legitimately concern voters on the political centre ground.
McCrea quotes the well known demand for honesty concerning the limits and downsides of pursuing liberal agendas by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, himself an American liberal: “The liberal project begins to fail when it begins to lie.”
