Putting aside the question of William Hague’s activities with his aide Christopher Myers, the Psychologies office debated today: Does everyone have to have children or risk being thought gay? (As if homosexuality actually stopped men or women from having children anyway …)
But that’s what we sniffed out when we read the coverage of the Foreign Secretary’s ‘inappropriate’ room sharing while on the campaign trail earlier this year. Goaded by bloggers’ questions and tabloid innuendo, and seeking to sound ‘straight’, Hague ‘broke his silence’ on the series of miscarriages that have prevented him and his wife Ffion from having children.
This is pretty sad stuff. First, because they wanted children and have not, so far, been able to. But, second, because if the Hagues had wanted us all to know about their fertility issues, they would have told us. And, finally, because it promotes the idea that everyone should reproduce. And if not, why not?
Julia Gillard, the almost Prime Minister-elect of Australia, has neither married nor had children, though she does have a long-term partner (Phew! Thank God for that). However, she was described as ‘deliberately barren’ by Liberal senator Bill Heffernan. Gillard claimed not to have been personally hurt by the audaciously offensive comment, though she did say she didn’t think it would raise comment for a man in the same position. The fact that it has in the Hagues’ case is no boon for women’s rights; rather, it’s a low point for all of us.
If he is gay, there is a strong argument for answering it with a shoulder shrug — does it really matter? And if he isn’t, does explaining why he doesn’t have 2.2 kids for the requisite photo shoot seem like the correct response? I’d like to think that intelligent, sophisticated thinkers might realise we were all a bit more evolved in our thinking than that.
Photograph: © Daniel Deme/WENN.com
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