I saw that Peter Thatchell had been unplatformed a couple of days ago. I’d worked out he was gay, and thought, meh, another warrior being fed into the machine. Sorry Peter. You are far better than that, and far more interesting, because you have a spine.

Peter Tatchell is a thundering nuisance. Self-righteous, hectoring and permanently outraged, the gay rights activist has agitated his way through life without ever having much in the way of a proper job. Since leaving Australia for Britain in 1971 to evade the draft, he has drifted from one political campaign to the next, shouting down the patriarchy, the church and Western capitalism in general.

Still, not even his severest detractors would deny his courage. Many gay activists confine themselves to attacking softie bishops, knowing that bishops are enjoined by their faith not to retaliate. Sure enough, Christians — or Anglicans, at any rate — fall over themselves to apologize for their past oppression of minorities.

Tatchell, though, does something much bolder. He takes on anti-gay Caribbean rappers, hardline Islamist preachers and Third World kleptocrats. Good for him. Surely we can all agree that being executed by having a wall pushed onto you in Tehran, or being murdered in a drive-by shooting in Kingston, is a bigger deal than disagreeing with a clergyman’s definition of marriage.

Tatchell is brave in two ways. First, he has straightforward, physical courage: He still carries injuries inflicted on him by Robert Mugabe’s henchmen when he tried, for a second time, to carry out a citizen’s arrest on the African dictator. But he has political courage, too. By picking on targets who are not exclusively white, Western and wealthy, he challenges the hierarchy of victimhood which underpins the world-view of many Leftists. He tramples across the hypocrisy of those who inveigh against Republican politicians opposed to gay marriage, but who see outright homophobes in developing countries as, somehow, products of colonialism.

This integrity has now brought Tatchell into conflict with other elements of the British Left. The National Union of Students, or at least its LGBT+ officers, won’t share platforms with him at universities. His sin? To be in favor of freedom of expression.

It’s hard to think of anyone who has pursued the cause of gay rights so single-mindedly. But because Tatchell happens to believe that Christian bakers shouldn’t have to produce cakes for gay weddings, his years of activism count for nothing.

We have, in other words, reached the point where people are ostracized, not for holding unfashionable opinions, but for tolerating unfashionable opinions. Calling for free speech is, in the world of our oh-so-sensitive student activists, enough to deny you the right to free speech.

Why quote this? Because he is an illustration. A parable. He shows that many are hypocrites. Thatchell, whom I disagree with on some things (Gay Rights) but not others (Mugabe is a bastard, and the Iranians should not kill gay men, and people have a right to their views) is an old school leftie and a consistent one at that. His consistency means that he does not fit into this virtue spiral, and he is being removed, for we must have comfort, peace, silence and safe places.

As others have pointed out, this is a form of conspicuous consumption. The poor cannot afford them.

And he said to them, “Is a lamp brought in to be put under a basket, or under a bed, and not on a stand? For nothing is hidden except to be made manifest; nor is anything secret except to come to light. If anyone has ears to hear, let him hear.” And he said to them, “Pay attention to what you hear: with the measure you use, it will be measured to you, and still more will be added to you. For to the one who has, more will be given, and from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away.”

And he said, “The kingdom of God is as if a man should scatter seed on the ground. He sleeps and rises night and day, and the seed sprouts and grows; he knows not how. The earth produces by itself, first the blade, then the ear, then the full grain in the ear. But when the grain is ripe, at once he puts in the sickle, because the harvest has come.”

And he said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable shall we use for it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which, when sown on the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth, yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes larger than all the garden plants and puts out large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”

With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. He did not speak to them without a parable, but privately to his own disciples he explained everything.

(Mark 4:21-34 ESV)

Thatchell would hate me, for taking scripture seriously, but I’d comfortably buy him a beer. Because he has standards, and tries to live by them. For the measure you use will be the measure used against you. And if we reflect on this, by that measure we have all failed.

I would rather have people offend me than not have free speech. I don’t feel a need to apologize, nor appease, for the teaching of Christ. On sexuality — today’s passage is about us being the temple of Christ in our body and our need to flee sexual immorality — or on economics, or on the current triggers of the perpetually offended.

For I do not own the church. I am part of it, I pray, but it is owned by God. God brings the growth, and we understand it as poorly as we understand why this seed germinates and that does not. The church has provided shelter, even to its enemies, and grace, and health. It has indeed become a mustard tree.

And thus the offended want it pruned into what shape offends them least. But fashion changes like the wind. This we must not allow: for Christ is the only means to mercy. For if we are to be judged by the standards we espouse, we will all be found wanting.