Will Harris on displays of public affection

On the same day I have ringside seats for the UK’s first ever LGBT boxing event (because nothing says equality like getting punched in the face, does it?), I open my newspaper to read that, at a pub in the centre of Soho, two gay men have been ejected for kissing in public. The pair were asked to leave the bar at the John Snow after the landlady accused them of being ‘obscene’ while out on their first date.

That people are surprised by this surprises me. The gay rights lobby has seen some major wins over the last two decades – the abolition of section 28, the introduction of civil partnerships and an equal age of consent – but it will take time before legislation filters down to the man on the street. Pockets of intolerance exist still, even in cities like Brighton, and the majority of gay people haven’t lost the instinct to look over our shoulders before deciding whether it’s safe to hold hands.

Even Soho’s Old Compton Street, the gayest stretch of pavement in the world (outside the perimeter fence of Dollywood, obvs), is not immune. Last year, at the end of a date, I was trying to concentrate on a lacklustre clinch outside one of the capital’s oldest gay bars, when an elderly Italian businessman railed towards me in a fit of apoplectic rage.

“You go away now!” he puffed, shoving me hard. “I am a Catholic.”

I must admit I was surprised, not just by the location of his attack, but also by his use of religion as a justification (trying to hold him back, after all, was a pock-marked young woman in a pistachio tube top whose passport I very much doubt read ‘Senora elderly Italian businessman’). As the man heaved himself towards us, fists raised in geriatric splendour, I didn’t feel afraid. I just felt tired.

Tired that, yet again, a total stranger had taken it upon himself to suggest there’s something offensive with the way I live my life. Tired that he’d chosen to take issue with me even though, in the great Venn diagram of society, my life and his exist in entirely separate circles and nothing I do impacts on him in any way. But most of all I was tired that, in England, in the 21st century, this kind of thing is still happening.

So in a strange way I’m pleased those two men were ejected from the John Snow pub last month. Not because I think they deserved it, or that the owners had any right to discriminate (if you don’t like public displays of affection, maybe running a public house is not for you), but because it’s reminded people that, while there might be a gay barman in the Rovers Return, the world off-screen still has a long way to go.