The Tory right are, apart from a few real nutters on the libertarian fringe, a paradoxical bunch.
On the one hand, they demand that the market should have completely free rein to run its course and solve all our problems. This leads to their detestation of what they like to call the 'nanny state'.
On the other hand, when it comes to the things that should be most private, and require little or no state intervention - things such as sexual preference, lifestyle and so on - these very same people become champions of state interference.
So they oppose extension of health and safety measures at work because it hampers profit making. Human life it would seem is not that important unless of course it takes the form of a foetus, in which case these selfsame bastions of freedom will troop through the lobbies casting their votes to restrict the freedom of pregnant women.
With gay abandon they lift all restrictions on animal feed - who cares if we get infected by cows? - but vote to ensure that 'our boys' will not be 'infected' by homosexuality, a condition which is apparently easily picked up in showers, particularly barrack showers.
All this was highlighted lately by the huge fuss made of the fact that a gay couple and a lesbian couple were sharing the upbringing of their child. A matter that should be of no importance to anyone bar the couples involved became a cause célèbre for our freedom loving guardians of morality.
'Oh my God,' they cried, 'how can this child grow up to be normal?' - as if homosexuality was some terrible abnormality brought about due to proselytising parents. I saw one extremely tolerant Tory explaining that he had nothing against gays, it was just when they started 'promoting it' that he got worried.
There are two things that strike me as odd about all this. The first is this 'promotion' thing which seems to treat sexuality like a brand of breakfast cereal: advertise long enough and we'll all want some.
The second point is really part of the same argument. The overwhelming majority of gays and lesbians are actually the offspring of heterosexual couples, who almost certainly and without thinking, 'promoted heterosexuality'. Seems like this promotion stuff doesn't always work then. Furthermore, if the overwhelming majority of these 'deviants' are produced not by gays and lesbians bringing up kids , but by heterosexuals doing so, perhaps it is hets who should have to defend in court their right to bring up kids.
All of which leads me to two questions for the gay movement. Why is it that the things you most want from the state are the things many of us, gay or straight, should want to get rid of?
Why should we want the state to give us a licence to live together? It seems to me that when the gay movement broke through in the late 1960s, and real reforms were gained concerning gay rights, one of the big advantages the gay activists brought with them was the fact that their sexual relations had evolved free from the shackles and restrictions of state licences, church blessing and moral sanction. Personally, I think it's none of the state's or, woe betide us, the church's business. I want neither of them to sanction let alone bless my sexual or social unions.
The great myth of happiness through licences or church services is one that is falling apart for heterosexual couples, as the divorce rate continues to rise.
Of course I defend the right of gays and lesbians to get married, but I can't help wondering why the movement should put at the centre of its demands the right to do something that has palpably failed to bring happiness to the majority of those who are trying it today.
Even less can I understand the desire to be part of the armed forces. Again no question, a person's sexuality should have no bearing on whether they are allowed to don military uniform or not. Indeed, it seems strange that you can train people to kill without guilt and face death without fear, but you can't train them to overcome the sheer terror of the thought that the guy in the next bed might fancy them.
Yet fighting for king and country, or Uncle Sam, seems to me to be just about one of the least desirable alternatives society can offer you. To be separated off from society, made to live, dress and socialise apart, to have to endure petty rules, and ultimately to learn to kill or to be killed for a worthless and pointless patriotism, seems to me a sad aspiration.
During the Vietnam War one of the classifications which allowed you to escape the draft in the US was sexual deviancy. Personally, had I been a young American at the time, I think I'd have been happy to sleep with man, woman or long antlered moose if it allowed me to avoid the brutal imperialist carnage that was done in the name of the good ol' US.
'We are all deviants now,' would seem to me a much better slogan than, 'We are all servicemen now.' Strangely enough, though, I get this funny feeling that the next time 'your country needs you', rather like Robert Runcie, the army won't be asking too many questions.
I'm not quite so sure, though, that everyone will be all that grateful for that.