Some Gay Tories Still Don't Get It.

A meeting of the LGBT+ Conservatives offers a litmus test of how far gay Tories have moved towards respect for sex-based rights. And startling proof of how far they still need to go.

I’m at the Conservative Party Conference this week. And in case you don’t believe me here I am with Kemi Badenoch.

I tried hard not to behave like a fan-boy. I really did. I may not have succeeded.

I was at the Conference to help out at the LGB Alliance stand. It’s the fourth time the charity has been to the Tories’ annual junket to lobby and persuade. The story of our experiences over this period provides a record in miniature of the transformation in the party’s thinking and perhaps of the country.

Back in 2021, the first time we attended, there was a concerted attempt to have us banned. The collective horror of the trans-obsessed wing of the Tories was led by the party’s LGBT+ Conservative group who wrote to the party to insist we would be a danger to their trans members. It’s to the credit of the Conservatives they told these clowns to get back in their rainbow box. They remain the only major British political party who allow LGB Alliance to have a stand.

Back in the bad old days of 2021 we were dismissed by the LGBT+ Conservatives as an extremist fringe. Given they argued men could have a vagina this struck some as a tad pot and kettle. They had though all the right friends in all the right places. Carrie Johnson was the star speaker at their rally that year co-sponsored by a group called Stonewall. You may have heard of them.

I sneaked into the meeting. I’m biased of course but there was the unmistakeable scent of that perfume known as ….fin de siecle. The clapping and cheering was so ecstatic the speakers might as well have announced the war would be over by Christmas.

One sign things were about to change was that Carrie’s speech was not the rousing tirade we had been promised but just two anodyne lines. Rumours had swept conference that Boris had only agreed to accompany her to the event if she did no more than bless proceedings. Like an LGBTQ+ Mother Theresa.

Nancy Kelley from Stonewall then waddled up to the microphone where she proceeded to roll a few platitudes round her ample mouth of the Hallmark variety.

All the time Crispin Blunt looked on with a misty expression.

I swear he seemed to be daydreaming of some time in the not too distant future when he would be publicly defending a convicted paedophile who got a 15 year old boy drunk before sexually assaulting him.

Perhaps Crispin was imagining the universal applause this would elicit. How proud he would feel. How vindicated. The scene of what, he may have hoped, would prove to be his greatest triumph.

Six months later his career and reputation lay in ruins. Whoops.

I can’t say I was anything but delighted by Blunt’s self-immolation. That’s partly because when he passed the LGB Alliance stand in 2021 he loudly and performatively sneered. When we tried to engage politely with him, even suggesting perhaps he might like to host a debate on the issues around gender and sex, he looked at us and spat out the words, “I’ll host a debate but only after YOU publicly apologise to the trans community.”

When I replied that this wasn’t how debate works and “it’s ridiculous to demand the other side agree with you before you will agree to debate with them,” he stormed off declaring, “I’ve never been spoken to so rudely in my entire life”. He should spend 24 hours in Glasgow.

It was hard to avoid the impression Blunt’s self-righteous obsession had unmoored him from the place most people prefer to inhabit: Reality. Less than a year later his bizarre defence of a paedophile showed where this sort of narcissism can lead. If only Blunt had chosen to engage with people who did not worship at the altar of his genius, maybe he would not have drowned in his own self-regard.

The question is whether the rest of the Conservative Party has recalled the virtues of frank, robust debate? My visit to this year’s LGBT+ Conservatives meeting suggests ….it may have learned a little but not nearly enough. There may have been no Stonewall elephant in the room this time round but the palbable shock and ridiculous responses when I asked about lesbian only events….is proof there’s a huge amount of work gay Tories need to do.