Oats, and the getting thereof

Another defeat for ID cards. I wonder if Bliar is getting the message?

The last thing Mark Oaten and the Lib Dems need is another voice wading into the morality debate so I shan’t (very much). I will say however that, if you are leading a double life and you put your head over the parapet by, maybe standing for the leadership of Britain’s third political party, you have to expect that journalists will delve into your life. It doesn’t make it right, but it is going to happen. Sadly the fact that Mr Oaten’s affair was a homosexual one has seemed to make the tabloid interest even more prurient. Society is still riddled with people who think of homosexuality as something dirty, something to be ashamed of. Outings like this do nothing to help, but had Mr Oaten been honest about his feelings, left his wife comfortably off then he would have far less to be ashamed of. The upper echelons of the British establishment is full of people who were buggered senseless at their public school. He could have joined the gang.

To illustrate society’s hypocrisy, I’ll end with the tale retold in today’s The Independent;

In the early 1920s when homosexuality was still a crime that could be punished with life imprisonment, a male prostitute was in court charged with an act of gross indecency. The judge was a puritan soul who considered that sort of thing disgusting. He wanted to ensure that the young man was punished to the fullest extent and sought the advice of the Lord Chancellor.
“My Lord, My Lord, what should I give to a young man who has allowed himself to be buggered?” he enquired.
“Oh, I don’t know,” came the reply “30 bob, two quid, whatever you have in your pocket.”