A classic Daily Mail headline today: “Mutiny at the National Trust: Dozens of volunteers quit or refuse to work after being told to wear Gay Pride badges”. The story which has the Mail frothing concerns a group of octogenarian National Trust volunteers who say they have been forced to wear gay pride badges at Felbrigg Hall in Norfolk and were so upset at the threat to their homophobia and bigotry they promptly resigned. The Telegraph says large numbers of people are threatening to boycott the National Trust because of this furore and others are leaving. Imagine loving an old building so much you volunteered to help preserve it and then stopped volunteering because you didn’t want to wear a badge?
Paragraph after paragraph follows the shouty headline with criticism from the usual Tory suspects and a Ukip MEP (more National Front than National Trust) called Gerard Batten who said: “This is politically correct nonsense gone mad. Who the hell do the National Trust think they are? Why should the people who volunteer to show people around be forced to wear a badge that’s got nothing to do with their role? If half the staff have walked out it serves the trust right.” Except, of course, that no one has been “forced to wear a badge”. Read the National Trust’s own words: “We are encouraging volunteers to wear lanyards for public-facing roles but we are discussing concerns with those who do not feel comfortable doing so.” What the hell is wrong with that? As Peter Tatchell put it: “We are marking the 50th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. It seems entirely appropriate that the National Trust should join in the celebration. If they ignored it people would understandably ask why.”
If people really were being “forced to wear a badge”, it would be wrong. Whilst I might question the motives of elderly people who grew up at a time when gay people were treated as perverts and criminals, this remains – just about – a free country. We can choose what to wear, within reason, within the law, anything we like and we can choose not to wear something if we don’t want to wear it. Private dislike of gay people might seem a bit odd to younger people, but it wasn’t so long ago that this was the norm. And homophobia that is deeply ingrained within the psyche of some old people won’t be ended just like that.
The National Trust has taken exactly the right stance. It is “encouraging people” to wear lanyards and badges, not telling them to wear them. The Daily Mail knows this full well and that’s why it buries the National Trust response near the foot of the article. But it’s just the latest in a series of tired Mail articles attacking the organisation which not that long ago saw Theresa May make some ignorant and wildly inaccurate comments about how the Easter Egg hunt had seen the name Easter removed, when it hadn’t.
In the world of the Daily Mail, everything is broken and nothing works. We are being overrun by migrants and rampant homosexuals who are just as bad as each other. Yes, it’s “political correctness gone mad.”
We’re getting there with LGBT rights and the Hate Mail is barely more than a small pot hole on the road to true equality. Education is the only way forward. Sadly, some people lost the ability to learn many years ago.
