Jock's Place | ...ramblings of a Geo-Mutualist Liberal Democrat

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Greg Barker and "Tory Wives"

26.10.06
at 04:15

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"Your typical loyal Conservative wife" has long been a synonym in some circles for what the rest of us shirt-lifters affectionately call "fag-hags". Actually - it's a bit more than that - she is a byword for heterosexual "cover" for gay men wanting to make their way in supposedly homophobic conservative politics. Ffion Jenkins got the same when she married Willie Hague. If truth be told, the same was said of Sarah Gurling, now Mrs Charles Kennedy, and of Sarah Macaulay, now Mrs Gordon Brown.

So, it's terribly tragic for everyone concerned when you hear of a real case of shall we say "sexual confusion" and there is speculation as to whether someone was really hiding his light under a bush, so to speak, all along. Doubly, trebly in this case, tragic when there are children involved. But no more so than if he was running off with another woman. So all credit to David Cameron if he holds to his word and refuses to judge Greg Barker's political ability and future on what is a bit of a personal mess. This is, after all, the twenty-first century, and not the nineteen-eighties when his party would be condemning his new "pretend family relationship" with legislation.

Since Greg is 40, and I am approaching the same, I can identify with him in a way - certainly my feelings have changed, becoming more open to finding love in people of either gender. It's not terribly trendy to say so in the entrenched "gay community" just as much as the "heterosexist community", but we need to appreciate that sexual identity is more fluid than the last two or three hundred years' of predominantly British macho-masculine history has led us to believe.

Has he always identified in secret as "gay" but been living a double life? He's sired three children, after all. People change in all sorts of ways. Loves change. He seems no better, or worse, than anyone who, after some years of marriage, has lost the fire that was once there and fallen for someone else. The gender of his new love should make no difference to the rest of us. It likely will to his kids - just because other children can be the cruelest.

But...he did work for one of those Russian kleptocrats we grace with the term "oligarch". That's the real skeleton in Mr Barker's newly redecorated closet. And if he ends up getting fired for anything, it should be the hug-a-huskie stunt he led his boss on a few months back!

But if there are young, gay, Tories out there (I can never quite understand why) Cameron's support for Barker will I hope make them think twice about taking on a fag hag till death do they part for the sake of a selection meeting.

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On 28.10.06 at 14:45 Dave Hill (not verified) said:

A very thoughtful and humane view of the, er, affair. Does his unfortunate voting record on gay issues in the House...

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_headline=it-s-such-a-shock---but-men-think-they-can-get-away-with-it-these-days---mother-in-law-georgina-&method=full&objectid=17992356&siteid=94762-name_page.html

...confirm your forgiving view or might you think of qualifying it slightly?

Interestingly, gayness has recently been (sort of) exposed in a different sort of conservative in another country. There's been some interesting blogging about that too. Find it via here:

http://davehill.typepad.com/temperama/2006/10/shock_jock_alan.html

Good luck to you!

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On 29.10.06 at 19:00 Sue George (not verified) said:

Hello Jock,
Interesting blog you have here...
Who knows what has been going on in Greg Barker's head. He may suddenly have met a man and decided he was gay, or that he loved that man in particular. He may always have had bisexual feelings to which, naturally enough, the world at large has not been privy. He may even have been in the closet for 20 years - to the world, or to himself.
Interesting you say that sexuality is fluid. For many people, it truly is. For others, it isn't: they always like the same gender, same type of person, same sort of relationship.
To me, it seems that, at any one time, there are very few acceptable or recognised ways of being sexual, or of seeing one's sexuality, or of self-defining. I think society at large needs to realise that the way we have looked at it over the past however many years simply doesn't do justice to the infinite variety of ways of being and feeling.

PS You say in your profile you probably think too much! Not possible. The world needs people to think as much as possible, particularly as so many people try not to think at all.

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On 29.10.06 at 13:28 Jock Coats (not verified) said:

Hmm. Not sure I would actually. My real point, which may not have come across as clearly as it might, is that people change.

I do know lots of gay men who were against the adoption bill. And if we actually had a gay friendly government that had lived up to its promises, he should never have even had to think about voting out Section 28, since he was elected four years into the government's term and they had plenty of opportunities, mostly raised by people like Harris and Woodward, to do something about it well before then. I understand that Barker did not in fact vote in that one anyway. Which in itself, though not as good as John Bercow, was a bit rebellious when there was a three liner on the Tories to vote against it.

I used to get wound up by people who voted one way and lived another. But my point was we don't know that he did that. My current belief is that people can be in all sorts of ways a hundred per cent self identifying as heterosexual, until something happens - and that may be as simple as meeting someone with whom you just click. Maybe that's what's happened here. It seems the city and political rumour mill is quite good at spotting closet cases". It seems Greg might have needed an interior decorator to spot his closet...:)"