I see that a new museum has just opened in Darlinghurst in Sydney in a disused police station. Its focus is queer history and culture. Qtopia it’s called. Apparently some gay demonstrators were thrown into the cells at the very same police station in 1978. So it’s a bitter-sweet sweep of history which, no doubt, will find a place in Qtopia.

While I don’t live close-by and probably won’t visit the museum, the Prime Minister, the NSW Premier and the Lord Mayor of Sydney did. They were, among others of renown, reportedly treading the red carpet rolled out for the occasion.

In general, I am not sure about having history tagged with particular human characteristics. Apropos black history, gay history, transgender history, etc. I assume there’s women’s history? Do other sub-groups of humans have histories based around their anatomical, psychological or sexual particulars? Normally you think of history categorised in terms of nations or collections of nations, or peoples. Makes it manageable for one thing. I assume that queer history has a quite different time line in, say, Africa than in Europe, than in the countries in the Middle East. I mean being feted in Sydney in the twenty-first century while being thrown off tall buildings in Gaza. Exactly how does “Queers for Palestine” compute in the museum? Just thinking.

The removal of discrimination against people on the basis of their sexual preference was in my view an act of enlightenment inside Western civilisation. And not before time. However, while this enlightenment was belated, it stands in stark contrast with those cultures which apparently still see no wrong in persecuting gay people. Hopefully, the queer museum acknowledges the role of Christendom and Western civilisation in removing discrimination based on sexual preference; even if it had to be dragged there.

It’s a reaction to past discrimination and therefore understandable but the celebration of homosexuality seems a bridge too far. Reportedly in the museum there is memorial to those who died during the AIDS epidemic. Maybe its misprint. A memorial to those who developed new medicines or who provided care and comfort seems appropriate. But dying of AIDS and perhaps also contributing to the epidemic among women and among those given blood transfusions is perhaps not worthy of being memorialised. I don’t know?

In any event, there is a sharp difference between live-and-let-live and celebrating what the Catholic church calls “disordered” sexuality. Homosexual couplings are a dead end. We rightly celebrate marriage between a man and a woman because it is the wellspring of children and also offers the best formula for bringing good people into the world. “Gay marriages” are simply two people of the same sex cohabiting. Good luck to them but there is no marriage. It is society kidding itself. Living a lie; pretending the opposite of the truth.

It’s hard to get right. As I said before, persecution ending one day can lead to laudation the next. Both wrong. Two of my ex-colleagues were gay in my last fulltime job. My niece and her female partner are gay. They just got / get on with life. I had and have no experience of them wanting some special recognition for being gay. It’s probably just the lobbies at work. It’s the same with this awful antisemitism among Green – Left politicians. I bet some members of my church vote that way, they seems to believe in what the ABC tells them about global warming, however none of them are the least antisemitic.

Of course, the perpetually aggrieved, with axes to grind, find their way into positions of influence. Don’t want to be a party-pooper, but in my view it would be best for those paid by taxpayers like the Prime Minister and Premier to avoid giving them give them air by turning up to red-carpet openings of queer museums.