Then & NowHong Kong’s Gay Games brings out the bigots talking about traditional values. Do they mean female slavery, infanticide and foot binding, or plain intolerance?
- Hong Kong Gay Games is a sporting event open to all, but some lawmakers are calling it ‘disgraceful’
- They cite religious and traditional values, forgetting what those ideals really meant
In 1895, Irish playwright Oscar Wilde was tried and convicted in London for homosexual offences, in a widely publicised prosecution that remains controversial. Some erstwhile friends rushed to denounce the author for his “crimes” (which most were aware of anyway) while others sought to combine attempts at tolerance with remarks calculated not to alienate their own public – and sources of income.
Probably the most widely repeated observation was made by actress Mrs Patrick Campbell, who famously stated: “I don’t care what they do in the bedroom, as long as they don’t do it in the streets and frighten the horses!”
Variations on these two-edged “I don’t care what they do in private – But …” sentiments were recently aired in what currently passes for Hong Kong’s Legislative Council, by fruity-tongued former president of the Law Society Junius Ho Kwan-yiu. In a characteristically bilious tirade about “dirty money”– immediately parroted by other legislators of similar overall stature – Ho criticised the public provision of facilities for the Gay Games, scheduled to be held in Hong Kong next year.
Inevitably, attention shifted to the supposed “threat to family values” that the Gay Games might engender. This would be merely sad, except that the imagined “traditional values” that these historically illiterate retrogrades inevitably reference are at sharp variance with hard facts.