IDENTITY politics warning! I’m writing as a 69-year-old, homosexual man who has been privileged to share life with another man for almost 40 years.

I will also ignore the recent adoption of the rainbow symbol by the NHS; because the occasion of the Taunton path’s dedication was specifically declared to be ‘The Stonewall Riots’.

There is a great deal of confusion going around in talk of adult human sexuality these days: even the journalist and broadcaster, Julia Hartley-Brewer uses ‘gender’, when she means ‘sex’. And nowhere was this confusion more on exhibition than in your article on Taunton’s new ‘Rainbow Path’.

In the overwhelming majority of human beings the paired biological human sex chromosomes in the individual cells will be either designated as ‘xx’ or ‘xy’: the first denoting that development of the foetus will take place along female lines, whilst possession of the ‘y’ chromosome ensures that development will proceed along male lines.

There are some extremely rare exceptions to this rule; which may be explained in the pages of a learned Journal such as ‘Nature’ or ‘Scientific American’.


READ MORE: Mayor officially opens Taunton's 'rainbow path'
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No matter how much surgery you have to alter your genitalia, or how many hormones you take to suppress ‘secondary’ sexual characteristics, every cell in your body will still contain one of the pairs of the sex chromosomes with which you were born. 

The concept of ‘gender’ is more fluid; and may provide far greater room for manoeuvre than is available within the ‘nature-determined’ binary male/female division.

Another area for confusion was tackled within the homosexual ‘world’ decades ago.

Unlike being predominantly, or exclusively, heterosexual or homosexual, ‘trans’ is not a sexual orientation! So why it is included in that infamous acronym ‘LGBT’ beggars belief. 

Could this be an attempt by ‘identitarians’ to sow discord among those of us who fought for homosexual rights? Homosexual men were fighting for the right to enjoy sex with a person of the same sex (it was never illegal for lesbian women). Which sex are ‘trans’ people fighting to enjoy sex with?

As Councillor Perry declaims, “Rainbows mean different things to different people”: yet, here again, the ‘natural’ rainbow encounters problems when it comes into contact with the ‘identitarians’. For more and more colours are required to be added, so as to be “fully inclusive” and “celebrate diversity”: someone will always be able to claim they have been left out.

Furthermore, is there not a ‘Santa Claus’ element to Cllr Perry’s recognition that “rainbows are popular with children”. 

Again, I must point out that ‘homosexuality’ describes the inclination to enjoy sex with an adult person of the same biological sex. 

At what stage in a child’s development is it appropriate to tell the child that this factor is what the pretty rainbow path is intended to convey? That is a debate in itself.

There is a censorious and puritanical side to the ‘woke’ agenda, which appears to be attempting to eliminate ‘sex’ from all adult discourse. 

Women, in particular, suffer through this process, as the loud ‘trans’ activists, and their apologists, attempt to depict being a woman as a ‘secondary’ sexual characteristic, or just a matter of gender: rather than being a person’s entire lived experience, from cradle to grave. 

How would men react if a ‘trans’ woman claimed that, provided she had her genitalia modified, and took the right hormone blockers, she had accomplished all that it took to be ‘a man’? Where does ‘adolescence’ fit within their scenario?

Finally, what does this ‘Rainbow Path’ accomplish? Will it change people? If so, is that change likely to be positive or negative? Who is going to maintain the path? 

Already, homosexual people are reporting ‘kick-back’ against the ever more ludicrous ‘rights’ claims being made on behalf of some mythical “LGBT+ Community”. 

MARK
Wiveliscombe