It's not so long since we held the same views as Muslims about gay rights

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However, when asked to what extent they agreed or disagreed that homosexuality should be legal in Britain, 18% said they agreed and 52% said they disagreed, compared with 5% among the public at large who disagreed. Almost half (47%) said they did not agree that it was acceptable for a gay person to become a teacher, compared with 14% of the general population.

A great deal will be made of this finding. Some of it from bone-headed pundits will be straightforward 'bash the muslims' stuff but there will be more considered discussion along the lines we've seen from Trevor Phillips - 'Muslims aren't integrating'. Now there are a couple of comments to make here - firstly the conservative Muslim position on homosexuality isn't really much different from that of many Christians and Jews. I'm pretty sure that a survey of African Christians in the UK would provide a very similar result.

The second point is that we forget just how far we - both as a society and as individuals - have changed on the issue of homosexuality. In my lifetime we've moved from a society where homosexuality was illegal to one where we welcome gay marriage and have begun to wrestle with the question of transgender and 'gender fluidity'. Many people are still uncomfortable with homosexuality - just the other day I was told of someone still estranged from his family because he 'came out' some thirty years ago. And let's remember that in the 1980s polls told us well over half of people questioned thought gay people shouldn't be employed as teachers.

It has taken decades for us - at least formally through our laws if not always socially - to recognise that homosexuality is perfectly normal. And for many of us the personal journey is just as important - we've moved from 'condemn the sin but love the sinner' to deciding that being gay isn't a sin at all. Not everyone has made that journey but I'm confident that the coming generations - regardless of their parents' faith or ethnicity - will make that journey to tolerance faster than we did.

In the meantime we need to understand the difficulties faced by gay people growing up in Muslim communities (or for that matter those conservative Jewish or Christian communities) and be prepared to support both communities and gay people. Here's a quote from a poignant article by a gay Muslim:

That's why so many gay British Muslims choose to stay in the closet. This leads to a secret double life with dark consequences, such as the gay Muslims living in straight marriages. I’ve seen countless examples of marriages built on a bed of lies, frustration and the unrelenting pressure to conform. It’s not just the closeted individual that suffers. There’s a knock-on effect for the next generation of children who end up finding out that their parents’ marriage isn’t at all what it seemed.

It's only a few decades since this was true for the English so if we start sounding off about how Islam is 'medieval' or prejudiced let's remember that we were just the same a short while ago (and plenty of us still are). Our first task is to help those who want to live an open, happy life not to attack their community or the faith of their parents.

I live in Bradford and have, on several occasions, questioned whether the Council's - and by inference, the City's - agenda and 'action plan' around equality and equal rights is too geared towards matters of race and race quality to the exclusion of other concerns, in particular gay rights. It's not that there's nothing done at all - there's plenty of great work going on - but that we seem too one-eyed on these issues. Perhaps it's time to change the emphasis a little - in the interests of those gay people struggling in the dark within orthodox faith communities in our city?

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Why Stephen Fry is wrong about the Winter Olympics

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So Stephen Fry wants us to boycott the Winter Olympics because they're in Russia where gay rights are (to put it mildly) not as advanced as they are here. And I rather get his point. We have very little sway over a place like Russia and this little lever might just get Mr Putin to change his ways - although I rather doubt it.

My problems with this approach are twofold:

Firstly, if we are to have a cultural boycott (which is, after all, what Stephen Fry is proposing) then should it not be comprehensive? Is the right approach to repeat the cultural sanctions that were used to apply pressure to apartheid South Africa? For sure, the Winter Olympics are high profile (less so than the summer games especially in the UK where aside from curling and the occasional ice skater we don't win very much) but what about football, tennis and athletics - all sports the Russians are good at - will Stephen Fry be writing to UEFA, the ITF and the IAAF to urge further boycotts?

Secondly, boycotts of this sort are collective actions and, as a result, prevent people who may want to participate in the event from doing so. Stephen Fry hasn't spent every waking hour over the last four years perfecting pirouettes at a tatty ice rink in South London or hurtling ever faster down dangerously steep alpine slopes in pursuit of fame and success. Any boycott should be a matter for these people not for self-appointed spokesmen for 'civilized society' such as Stephen Fry. These athletes, in most cases, get just one or two chances to compete in an Olympic Games - wrenching this chance from them in pursuit of a political point, even one as important as gay rights, seems wrong to me. And we should remember that it's the IOC that chooses the venue not the athletes - and in Russia's case did so some long while ago.

If individual athletes want to boycott that is fine and perhaps Stephen Fry might direct his attentions to such gentle persuasion rather than grandstanding.

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On changing one's mind (and removing beams from one's eyes)...

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I’ve changed my mind on a great deal of things over the years – I’m not going to list them but they are many. Yet, somehow people seem rather unwilling to accept that, when somebody says they’ve changed their mind, generally speaking it does actually mean that they have done just that!

Which rather brings us to the matter of politics and the game of using past statements, whipped votes under an old regime and guilt by association as the basis for accusation – even when the person stands there and says, “I’ve changed my mind on that.” And sadly the equalities lobby is among the worst offenders in this respect.

Now it seems to me that a matter such as gay rights is one area where more folk than average have changed their opinions. I’m not saying that the new views accord with the further flung boundaries of the equalities agenda but that people have changed – folk accept gay people in a way that would be a great surprise to the majority back in, say, 1980. There are still areas –sport and especially football, for example – where being gay is a real barrier but attacking someone for their views 10, 20 or even 30 years ago is not a helpful contribution. Particularly where that person has said they’ve changed their mind.

Indeed, I would go as far as to say that those who attack a person on the basis of past actions where they say clearly they would act differently today are guilty of bigotry and prejudice. And behaving so reprehensibly while clutching hypocritically to the moral high ground on an issue is, to this humble sinner, an act of monumental offence.

So to all those people attacking Theresa May for what she did in 1998 I say this:

Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye

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