Liberals, say the Right, must find themselves in a terrible quandary. As supporters of both gay liberation and multiculturalism, how do they process the fact that many Muslims believe homosexuality is a crime? Conservatives insist that their confident defence of Western history and philosophy is more gay-friendly than liberal multiculturalism. Jens Spahn, the gay German conservative tipped as successor to Angela Merkel, electrified a political convention two years ago when he said that there must be no compromise with Islamism because: “I don’t ever want to experience another attack or insults when I walk through Berlin hand-in-hand with my boyfriend.
Liberals listening to Trump and Spahn might choke on their tofu. When, they would counter, did Western conservatives suddenly become fans of sexual freedom? Haven’t they spent decades fighting gay rights? Marco Rubio, the Florida senator, was one of the first Republicans to say that Orlando was an attack on gay people – and good for him. But Left-wing critics argued that his outspoken opposition to gay marriage was part of the cultural environment in which Mateen’s bigotry grew. Islam wasn’t the only religious authority that Mateen would have encountered in Florida telling him that gay people are going to Hell. He could have tuned in to any evangelical radio show to hear that. [...]
Because TV is awash with the liberal values of its producers, it can appear as if our entire hemisphere has embraced sexual liberty. That’s a conclusion that many conservative Muslims resent – but they’re quite wrong: not everyone in the West sees homosexuality and heterosexuality as equal. The average Dominican friar has far more in common with a typical Imam than he does with a liberal Conservative MP. And so long as neither Christian nor Muslim breaks the law, we probably wouldn’t expect the state to go out of its way to challenge them. Sexual privacy is now widely regarded as a Western principle – but so is freedom of religious conscience.
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