It was the response to the sex imagined of Transport Minister David Campbell's sortie to the Kensington sex club late last week that killed him stone dead politically. It wasn't just sex, it was homosexual sex, and despite all the assurances of equality for homosexuals the sex is seen by many heterosexuals as at best sordid. Had Mr Campbell been sprung visiting a mistress, perhaps even a woman at a brothel, we'd have given not a moment's thought to the particular sex that might have taken place, but Australians have been recoiling at mental images of the walrus-like David Campbell engaged in homosexual sex! Indeed, it's those private images that provide the shock and horror in what would otherwise be a mild and shortlived scandal.
The wider problem is that heterosexuals tend to concentrate on the sex when they meet homosexual men and women, a sort of prurient fascination, and so the sex comes to define the person. For men particularly, as it was for David Campbell, that sex is often regarded with horror.
David Campbell's utter, irredeemable disgrace illustrates again that homosexuals will not enjoy equality until homosexuality comes to be seen as just another sexuality, as heterosexuality is seen as simply a sexuality.
Has David Campbell paid a higher price because homosexuality is not yet just a sexuality?
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