With Islam on the Rise, Gay European Voters Shift to the Right

Townhall 

Throughout Europe, the growth of Muslim populations and the rise of Islamism have created a new, but unsurprising, political shift. Gay voters are moving to support populist right candidates in hopes of stopping the rise of culture that is not just hostile to gay rights, but a threat to the lives of European gays.

Spiked writer Albie Amankona is calling this the rise of "homonationalism."

Amankona writes, "Across Europe, gay voters are moving rightwards. Britain has not quite caught up yet, but it will. The only question is whether the Conservatives or Reform UK will be the ones to benefit."

He says two incidents reminded him of this. The first was an LGBTQ+ conservative fundraiser, where MP. Katie Lam spoke. She said LGBT rights such as same-sex marriage, are the product of particular cultures, and that Britain and the West built the "legal and cultural framework that made LGBT equality possible."

She's right, of course. The small-L liberalism and individualism of Western society did make such equality possible, even though conservatives may disagree with things like same-sex marriage. Islam and Islamic culture stand diametrically opposed to those ideals and rights. Not just for the LGBT community, but women too.

Amankona also notes a video out of France showing a "young, very camp man, wearing make-up and sporting truly impressive eyebrows" being approached by a Muslim influencer. That Muslim influencer offered the French man cash to say "salam aleykoum" ("peace be upon you").

The young man rightly refused, saying, "N. We're in France here."

That last is an especially interesting anecdote, given the recent passing of French actress and activist Brigitte Bardot. The Left has worked to posthumously cancel Bardot because she was an outspoken critic of the very kind of Islamism seen in that video. She called it a threat to France and its culture. For her "crime" of ungoodthink, Bardot was dragged into French courts multiple times and fined thousands of euros.

Bardot, of course, was right about Islam, and this writer doesn't doubt that the same Leftists attacking her would also accuse this young Frenchman's refusal to bow towards Mecca "bigoted" and "Islamophobic."

It's not, of course. "Islamophobia" doesn't exist. No one has an irrational fear of Islam. But smart people can, should, and do have a fear of an ideology that treats women like chattel, throws gays off buildings, and is so inherently violent that many cities, including Paris, have canceled New Year's Eve celebrations thanks to threats of terrorism.

Amankona says that in 2022, France's Nationally Rally party sent the largest number of openly-gay MPs to parliament, and that somewhere between 20 and 25 of the party's 89 MPs are "believed to be gay." He says things are similar in Spain, where YouTuber Carlitos de España, who is gay, says, "‘Islam keeps me up at night. They want me dead." Along with other social media influencers, de España helped form Las Marifachas, "a deliberately provocative group whose name fuses a slur for gay men with a slur for fascists." This group has helped "build a bridge" between Spain's LGBT community and the right-leaning Vox party. 

And in Germany, the leader of the Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is Alice Weidel, a lesbian woman in a civil partnership with a Sri Lankan. Amankona says that a poll of 60,000 users on the gay dating app Romeo showed the AfD party had the most support.

As Amankona and others, including this writer, have pointed out: Europe has imported large numbers of migrants from parts of the world where homosexuality is illegal and culture is hostile towards gay people. 

In 2020, three gay men — James Furlong, David Wails and Joe Ritchie-Bennett — were murdered by Libyan refugee Khairi Saadallah in an act of "religious jihad." It is such atrocities, Amankona says, that will bring "homonationalism" to Britain.

The Left, in Europe and America, would do well to take note of this shift and work to understand it. Of course, they won't, and they'll likely fall back on their tried-and-true tactic of calling gay voters "racist" or "fascist" for embracing the right-wing parties that hope to keep them from being murdered by the radical Muslims in Western nations.