Bong x11

One thing about not being in London is that I am spared having to think what to do about Thatcher's funeral.

I said, when someone talked about this years ago, that the funeral I was very sad to have missed was David English's. He was the Daily Mail editor who gave the world the unforgettable front page headline "Abortion hope after 'gay genes' finding"* - the story being such a gene would mean that people could (and in the view of the then Chief Rabbi, should) test during pregnancy to see if the foetus had the genes and have an abortion if it did.

Outrage did a disruptive demonstration at it, and I think that was absolutely right: calling for genocide is unforgivable and there's no honesty in pretending anyone who has done so is nice.

Mrs Thatcher was never that bad, although she did spend time in one Tory conference speech dismissing the idea that anyone had the "right" to be lesbian or gay, and I strongly suspect that the UK's response to the arrival of Aids would have been as feeble as the US's if it hadn't been for the creation of the bisexual threat**.

So I would avoid disrupting her funeral, but if it's true that there are people near Parliament making a noise to replace the silenced 'Big Ben', I'd be very tempted to be there.

* _{16 July 1993, if you're doing the bi history Twitter account...}

** _{The idea that bisexual men would spread Aids from gay men into the straight population - necessary to get action, but something bisexuals could always lose from: either it would happen (and be our fault) or it wouldn't (and thus 'prove' that there aren't (m)any / we don't matter).}