A review of Edmund Burke’s ‘Reflections on the LGBT Revolution’

 Edmund Burke is recognised as one of Britain’s senior statesmen. He has made formidable contributions to Britain’s policy in Ireland, America, India, and France, as well as to the ongoing discussion regarding parliamentary government. The stance of his most recent intervention regarding the Lesbian Gay Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) revolution has surprised some, but it is entirely consistent with Edmund Burke’s keen awareness of man’s fallibility. Below is a summary of his book, ‘Reflections on the LGBT Revolution’.

Edmund Burke is in no doubt about the importance of his subject. Early in his book he writes that the LGBT Revolution is 'the most astonishing that has hitherto happened in the world’, however he has ‘grave doubts’ as to its benefits.

 No connection between anti-racism and LGBTism

 Before turning to those ‘grave doubts’, Burke demolishes the argument that there was any connection between the cause of coloured people in places like South Africa, and the cause of people who like to use the label ‘LGBT’. This argument has found its way into many speeches and articles, and Burke rightly believes it is wholly mistaken to connect the two causes. They are entirely different. The cause of anti-racism rests on the dignity all men have as creatures created in the image of God, regardless of the colour of their skin. The cause of LGBTism rests on the assumption that all men and women have a right to have orgasms with whoever they want and however they want. One is about racial equality, the other about freedom to have sexual pleasure in different ways. To connect the two just because both black people and people who like to use the LGBT label have faced opposition, is, according to Burke, ‘facile’.

 LGBTism a ‘fabrication’

 Burke now turns to those ‘grave doubts.’ One is that LGBTism is a ‘fabrication’. It has just appeared. There has been no looking back, and receiving from past wisdom. This unnerves Burke. He fears it is new for the sake of being new. This indeed was made clear by the disgraced former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, when he gave his support to LGBTism. His only argument was that marriage had not changed for a long time. Burke writes wisely - ‘A spirit of innovation is generally the result of a selfish temper and confined views.’

 Morally dubious

 Another ‘grave doubt’ that Burke is about the wanton way the LGBT Revolution has destroyed all the old morality surrounding marriage and children. ‘You begin ill’, he writes, ‘because you began by destroying everything that belonged to you.’ Closely connected to this for Burke is the way the LGBT Revolution and in particular their ‘Pride’ marches brazenly reject the precepts of Christianity. Burke accuses the LGBT revolutionaries of doubling ‘a ferocious dissoluteness in manners and an insolent irreligion in opinions and practice.’

 Burke questions the moral decency of the LGBT leaders for he believes they practised a deceit on the British public. Those who respected traditional marriage were told they had nothing to fear from the success of the LGBT cause. That was not true. For now, ‘fury, outrage, and insult’ are heaped upon anyone who in a ‘mild and lawful’ way criticises the tenets of LGBTism.

 Obscure people ‘intoxicated with unprepared greatness’

 In his usual thorough way Burke has researched the background of the leading lights of the LGBT Revolution. He is not impressed. He notes that most of these people come from the entertainment industry where some have made money out of publicising their lewdness. Many were obscure musicians, made rich by the record industry, and they became ‘intoxicated with their unprepared greatness.’ As a group Burke views them as a ‘momentum of ignorance, rashness, presumption and a lust for pleasure which nothing has been able to resist.’ These people want to pull everyone else down to the level of their own sexual morality. They are ‘levellers who pervert the natural order of things.’

 The need for ‘infinite caution’

 Burke, a devout Anglican Christian, is extremely frustrated by preachers, such as the Unitarian Richard Price, and others in West London, whose sermons lend support to the LGBT Revolution. He mocks the idea that this revolution has anything to do with the cause of liberty, listing all the terrible things that have happened since the pink flag has been flying in Westminster. Burke cites incidents such as children being given harmful medication to change their sex, the confusion in schools over what is now a proper marriage, the insults heaped on the great writer J. K Rowling for saying our sex is biological, and, most disgraceful of all, the sending of a male rapist to a female prison in the name of LGBT rights.

 All of this militates against common sense. Burke insists that the rules of society must be based ‘practical experience, not abstract theories.’  He writes, ‘It is with infinite caution that any man ought to venture upon pulling down an edifice which has answered in any tolerable degree for ages the common purposes of society’. This is perhaps one of the most important sentences in Burke’s ‘Reflections’. Sadly neither Blair nor Cameron showed ‘infinite caution’ when it came to traditional marriage which has served Britain in a ‘tolerable degree…in the common purposes for society’ for our entire history. Instead they pulled it down, recklessly sending society into wholly unchartered seas where there are no lighthouses, and a great likelihood of wild weather erupting from man’s carnality. He writes that, ‘The LGBT leaders are so taken up with their theories about the rights of man that they have totally forgotten his nature.’

 A male rapist is sent to a female prison

 Burke returns in more detail to the case of Adam Graham, the male rapist who decided to pretend he was a woman, and so was sent to a female prison. Burke asks us to imagine the outrage and betrayal the other women would have felt when Graham was brought into their midst. Burke also looks at the case of Andrew Burns, another violent prisoner who pretended to be a woman and who caused great alarm when he was moved to a female prison due to the dictates of LGBTism.

 In perhaps the most eloquent section of his ‘Reflections’ Burke laments that the age of common-sense and chivalry has passed. He mourns for the time when gentlemen would fiercely defend the privacy and dignity of their wives and daughters, and how in previous generations ‘ten thousand swords would have leaped from their scabbards’ to defend them from the onslaught of predators like Graham and Burns.

 Having made sure that his readers have fully taken in the terrible disgrace of these government actions Burke then asks a simple question: ‘In the midst of these insults to common-sense, how can these LGBT leaders claim to be ‘forming plans for the good order of future society?’ The answer of course is that they and their ideology is wholly unfit for contributing to the good of society.

 Civilisation destroyed by intellectuals

 After dealing with these specific cases, Burke then surveys what will happen to Britain because of the LGBT revolution. He asserts that civilisation rested ‘upon two principles, the spirit of a gentleman and the spirit of religion.’ LGBTism relentlessly attacks both principles, and so Burke concludes that Britain will end up as ‘a nation of gross, stupid, ferocious, and, at the same time, poor and sordid barbarians destitute of religion, honour, and manly pride’. For this Burke blames the atheistic intellectuals. They write to destroy, not to build. ‘With them it is a sufficient motive to destroy an old scheme of things because it is an old one…. they are at inexplicable was with all establishments, including the establishment of marriage.’ Indeed Burke believes that this cabal of intellectuals seek ‘the destruction of the Christian religion’ and ‘these atheistic fathers have a bigotry of their own and they have learned to talk against monks with the spirit of a monk.’

 While it is children who are the main victims of the LGBT revolution, Burke highlights the cases of many hard-working professionals – teachers, doctors, clergy, civil servants – who have been hounded out of their work by LGBT fanatics working with the state. Burke has taken the time to interview many of these people and finds them ‘in general persons of moderate minds and decorous manners.’ There is nothing harmful about them, but they have been unjustly harassed because of the LGBT revolution.

'Ready to cut up the infant’

 Drawing to a close Burke asserts that the LGBT fanatics are flirting with illegality because they are experimenting with other people’s lives with ‘untried speculations.’ And especially children. They are not asked whether they want to have two men or two women bringing them up, and yet this is allowed, even encouraged. And research has shown that children are happiest when brought up by a husband and a wife. Burke’s conclusion is damning for adults who play with the lives of children in this way. They are ‘ready to cut up the infant for the sake of an experiment’

 Good order

 In his final paragraphs Burke underlines that, ‘Good order is the foundation of all good things’. And this means that marriage must be honoured and respected. LGBTism has torn apart the meaning of marriage. The fanatics of this creed have talked about liberty, but without wisdom or virtue, which means their cause becomes ‘the greatest of all possible evils.’

 Already Burkes ‘Reflections’ has caused an uproar amongst ardent supporters and sympathisers of the LGBT revolution. He is dismissed as being a bigoted patrician and an enemy of social progress. Some have painted him as the cruel persecutor of all those who struggle with the paradigm of marriage between a man and a woman as being the norm. That is not fair. As in his previous writings, Burke had no hostility towards the down trodden poor of Paris, he wished them well, and that meant ‘good order’, not anarchy, the guillotine, and a military dictatorship that crushed them in the wake of the French Revolution. So now, Burke has no hostility towards those who, do not feel able to marry someone from the opposite sex. He wishes them well, but that means maintaining ‘good order’. LGBTism destroys the foundations of that ‘good order’ and without any caution is trying to build a new society on the sand of untested speculations about human sexuality. Burke sees that this will come crashing down, probably with terrible violence. And in that cruel chaos, both the traditionalist and the radical LGBT supporter will suffer.

Burke was right about the French Revolution.

He is probably right about the LGBT Revolution.