Richard Littlejohn: It's not easy being a gay rights champion

You'll recall a couple of months ago Richard Littlejohn announcing what a big supporter of gay rights he was, calling on his unexpected love of Tom Robinson's Glad To Be Gay as evidence:

Although I draw the line at cottaging - casual sex in public toilets - it struck me as absurd that what Tom Robinson called "pretty policemen" were being sent to entrap men into propositioning them.

So, Littlejohn's position is clear: he doesn't think its right that cops be sent into toilets to entrap cottagers.

So why does he keep banging on - or, possibly, banging off - thinking about George Michael in that toilet? If he doesn't approve of entrapment, why does he keep dragging up George Michael falling victim to a pretty policeman being sent in? Littlejohn raised it at the end of his earlier piece, and today - in an article where the hateful little man suggests raping children, Fred West's crimes, consensual extreme sex and cottaging are all moral equivalents - he returns to those toilets again:

When George Michael was arrested for exposing himself in a public toilet, he made a video mocking the police. We were invited to treat it as one big joke.

It's like Littlejohn knows he shouldn't keep going back, but he just can't stop picturing it in his head, like some sort of compulsion.

Richard trots out his 'ha, see, I'm not homophobic' get-out again:

No one ever satisfactorily answered my question at the time: what if he'd done it in the Ladies?

The reason why nobody has ever answered the question, Dickie, is because it's a pointless question. What if a gay man had been caught cruising for sex in a women's a toilet? Why would he? Or do you simply mean 'what if George Michael had got his penis out in a ladies?' - but that's a totally different type of crime; you might as well ask 'what if he'd been double-parked during rush hour'. Generally, if you're a man who finds the sight of another bloke's penis disturbing, you probably wouldn't be in a public toilet in the first place, what with the tendency of blokes to get them out while in there.

The thing about cottaging is, while it might make some people feel uncomfortable - especially if you're British, having to politely murmur "it's very flattering, but... no, actually all I wanted was a wee..." can be so very awkward - it's consensual and, if you're not looking for it, chances are you'll never be aware it's going on in the first place. Which is why they have to send those pretty policemen in in the first place, Richard.

You couldn't make it up

Yesterday's Daily Mail had what might be the most bizarre Richard Littlejohn column to date where the tired old rant-machine managed to combine a by-numbers piece about how homophobia is illegal (which he made to sound like it was both true and a bad thing) with a surprising degree of intimacy with Tom Robinson's Glad To Be Gay:

The last line of Tom Robinson's 1978 anthem Glad To Be Gay goes: "The buggers are legal now, what more are they after?"

It was supposed to be ironic. Back then, even though homosexuality was no longer a criminal offence for consenting adults, gays faced prejudice and persecution.

I can remember singing along with Tom. Though homosexuality wasn't exactly my idea of a night out, I thought it outrageous that gays were subjected to discrimination in areas such as employment, housing and pensions.

Really, Richard? You sang along with Glad To Be Gay and thought it was about council housing and pension rights? Rather than being a song that was more concerned with the pressing matters of entrapment and queerbashing and - here's a funny thing - journalists in the popular press describing gays as corrupting and disgusting and perverted?