NHS scandal: Part II
Kenneth Roy
St Salvator’s Hall, St Andrews
I approached Lorn Macintyre’s article (5 February) about the implications of marriage equality for university chapels with a heavy heart. There is, currently, a cottage industry of writers whose faith is so threatened by the possibility of same-sex marriage that they feel moved to write tediously un-illuminating articles about the topic. I only bothered to read this one because it was about St Andrews and I am a graduate from there – permanently marked by my membership of the Labour Club in the most right-wing university in the English-speaking world.
It wasn’t long before I realised that this article was about more than an issue of complex ecclesiastical property management. The dogwhistle word was ‘flaunt’ – apparently homosexuality is being flaunted not only in supervised student dances but in the very library itself. Any anthropologist can tell you that, all over the world, sexuality is flaunted; flaunting is one of things that young people do. But the writer clearly yearns for a time when homosexuality was very much unflaunted – hidden away in dark and secret and dangerous places, like the St Andrews West Sands.
He has another dogwhistle moment when he talks about the way in which the internationally renowned political scientist who is now the principal of St Andrews University outmanoeuvred the all-male Kate Kennedy Club (KKC) into opening up its membership to women students. He gives us the impression that she is both uppity and – by the way he suggests she is likely to return to the States – flighty; he encourages us to believe that she just doesn’t belong. She’s not accused of flaunting anything but it is implied that her support for equality of access on the Fife campus is irresponsible and ill-considered.
I was a member of the KKC myself and I think I played the part of Cardinal Beaton in the 1967 procession. Its main purpose, as far as I recall, was as a learning experience for men who wanted to network with other men like themselves and exclude anyone who was different. After I left St Andrews, I grew up and came out or, maybe, I came out and grew up. At any event, I put away childish things and I left behind that way of dividing up my social reality into a clique who mattered a lot and the mass of humanity who mattered rather less.
The KKC was set up in 1926 – just weeks after students had acted as scabs during the general strike. It was a time when the university-attending section of the middle class was attempting to articulate some new values for itself after the first world war, in face of the new challenges of the Labour Party and the enfranchisement of women. It was a time of great political and cultural uncertainty and the KKC, while masquerading as a charitable body, was intended to be a bastion against the unknown. Any institution that remains unchanged after 70 years and is dogmatically unresponsive to the world around it is bound to need some fresh air to reinvigorate it and save it from dereliction.
Lorn Macintyre, ignoring the historical context of its construction, prefers to see its unreformed character as symbolic of a secure world where everyone knew the rules. His flat earth approach to history prevents him from realising that the ground is moving under his feet.
His homily about the KKC helps us to understand his problem with the changing patterns of homosexual lifestyles. The drive towards same-sex marriage is not the creature of Alex Salmond or David Cameron; it is a global movement which reflects deep-seated transformations in the ways in which people express intimacy towards one another. There are no rules but, over the course of time, norms will develop about the ways in which same sex-marriages are perceived. Some of the attempts which opponents are making to trim them and restrain them will invite the scorn and amusement of future generations. Did they really try to use the ecumenical character of the university chapel as a barrier against the emergence of marriage equality, incredulous students will ask their teachers in years to come?
My solution to the vexed question of St Salvator’s Chapel would be to de-consecrate it and turn it into something like a museum of early music so as to guarantee the conservation of its architectural features. Then it can be rented out for conferences and concerts and, of course, weddings. People who want to wed there will be able to do so regardless of their sexual orientation or their world view; it will be no-one’s business if the marrying couples are Presbyterians or Zoroastrians or atheists. All will be welcome. It will act as a focus for inclusivity in the town in contrast to the festering sore of exclusivity that is the Royal and Ancient Golf Club. I might even consider marrying in the early music museum myself – if I didn’t think that marriage was still something of a patriarchal and private-property-promoting institution.
Bob Cant is the editor of Footsteps and Witnesses: lesbian and gay life stories from Scotland
