Don't Talk To Me About Love

I was walking past three little kids in the street the other day. They looked to me like they were about seven, but they must have been about ten. Anyway, as I was going past one of them nudged his mate, nodded towards me and said, “there’s your boyfriend.”

I wouldn’t normally bother to mention it but I was on my way home from a screening of Before Stonewall at the London Lesbian and Gay Film Festival. As the title suggests, it’s a documentary about pre-Stonewall gay liberation and what it was like for people who had to keep their sexuality a secret.

After an afternoon of being in a pro-queer environment, listening to inspiring stories of courage and confrontation, isn’t it comforting to know you can still come home and he homophobically abused by infants on the doorstep of your local Tescos?

To be honest I’ve been feeling just the slightest tinge of homophobia myself just lately. On another trip to the film festival I was handed a leaflet for A Day In Hand – a campaign that’s encouraging same-sex couples to hold hands in public.

“Ever wanted to hold her / his hand in public but thought you couldn’t?” the flyer asks. If this is you then please, do us all a favour, grow a fucking spine. Why is it you think you need permission? But more to the point, why would you want to engage in this ridiculous behaviour anyway?

I’m as pro-queer visibility as anyone but, as I've said before, I’d much rather see a law introduced to stop straight people from pawing each other in public, not have a campaign to encourage the gayers to follow suit. I’m sick and tired of them blocking the escalators and slobbering down each other’s throats with their greasy lips making those stomach-churning smacking noises.

On the train is the worst thing. Why can they not just sit there? They’ve always got to start squeezing each other’s legs and making gooey faces, even first thing in the morning. It’s enough to make you heave.

A Day In Hand encourages you to take a picture of yourself holding a same-sex person’s hand in public and then send it to be uploaded onto a website. I say let’s have International Tut at a Straight Couple Day, we can upload snaps of ourselves pointing and sneering and arrange them into colourful gallery. Give ‘em a taste of their own medicine, it’ll be a lot more entertaining.

www.adayinhand.com