“B and B is meant to stand for ‘Bed and Breakfast’, not ‘Bed and Buggery’ for God’s sake,” declares John Dickler, spokesperson for a group of militant B and B owners seeking the right to refuse to rent rooms to gay couples. “What right-minded person would want two men getting up to that sort of thing under his roof?” Dickler’s stance – which, despite being in direct contravention of anti-discrimination legislation, has unexpectedly gained support from many Conservative MPs, has drawn a hostile response from gay rights groups. “It’s utterly ridiculous – why just pick on male homosexuals?” asks James Floundly of the Gay Defence League. “Believe me, a straight couple could be getting up to all manner of lewd and depraved sexual acts in their rooms – including buggery! Then there are the lesbians to worry about!” However, Dickler is unrepentant. “Look, this is a moral issue – I have every right to decide exactly who it is that I spy on in my own B and B,” he retorts. “As a heterosexual man, I find it completely impossible to masturbate whilst watching two men going at it – straight couples and lesbians are completely different. If you can’t get your end away to them, then you are impotent or dead!” Dickler quickly added the proviso that he would only allow beautiful lesbian couples to stay at his establishment. “None of those fat dykes in comfortable shoes,” he mused. “They’re guaranteed to make the old tallywhacker go limp in your hands.”
According to Dickler, being forced to accommodate gay couples could see the profits of many B and Bs slashed. “There’s just no market for this sort of gay porn,” he claims, explaining that many of his fellow B and B owners regularly film their guests with hidden cameras. “There’s no way that most of these establishments can survive on the money generated by putting up travelling salesmen and bird spotters. There’s a big market, though, for this candidly shot porn. It’s a victimless crime really, the guests being filmed are never likely to see it, and the footage is sufficiently grainy they’re unlikely ever to be recognised by anyone else. So who’s being harmed?” The Gay Defence League has responded by announcing a boycott of B and Bs’ run by overtly Christian owners. “Many of these people claim their objections to our members staying under their roofs is based on religious conviction,” explains Floundly. “Well, we have moral objections to their religion. I mean, they could be Catholics, in which case we could be staying under the same roof as kiddie fiddlers! It’s outrageous!”
Prominent Christians have been quick to condemn this latest development, claiming that it represents yet another attack upon their faith by the forces of secularism. “Wherever you look today, militant secularists and atheists are trying to restrict our legitimate right to act self-righteously and carry on as if we have a monopoly on morality,” declares Harold Helmett, Bishop of Staines. “These Godless heathens won’t be satisfied until they’ve driven us out of every public institution – already we can’t force people to say prayers before council meetings. Next thing, they’ll be preventing us from indoctrinating school children through school assemblies and compulsory religious studies classes. Where will it all end?” He insists that if this erosion of Christianity’s privileged place in British society continues, then the country will face a moral collapse. “The fact is that people, left to their own devices, are completely horrible bastards. Without the Church to constantly castigate them for being sinners and threaten them with damnation, then they’d spend all their time fornicating, murdering and pleasuring themselves,” the cleric opines. “The masses are simply incapable of any form of coherent or rational thought – we’re doing them a favour by indoctrinating them with Christian values at every opportunity. Whether they like it or not.”
However, Helmett’s intervention hasn’t been welcomed by all of the militant B and B owners, “There’s a strong suspicion amongst my members that they’re just trying to jump on the bandwagon, in order to promote their own moral agenda,” says Dickler, in explanation of the hostility shown by some of his group. “I mean, for many of us, this isn’t a question of our religious beliefs being infringed, but rather it is about our right to be sexual deviants.” According to the B and B proprietor, the issue is one of sexual freedoms. “Let’s be quite clear – we’ve got nothing against the gays as such. Indeed, we fully support their right to be open about their sexual orientation,” he says. “But what about other sexual behaviours? Shouldn’t we voyeurs and peeping toms not also have the right to express our sexual preferences in the privacy of our own homes – even if those homes also happen to have rooms let to nubile young women?” Dickler believes that running a B and B is one of the few outlets left open to those of a voyeuristic persuasion. “Where else are we presented with such opportunities, other than through this kind of self-employment?” he asks. “Ever stricter security checks by employers such as hotel chains has pushed us out of salaried professional positions.”
Bishop Helmett isn’t to be deterred from his intervention in the dispute, claiming that there is no contradiction between Christianity and voyeurism. “Don’t we tell the faithful that the Almighty is watching their every move? That nothing can be hidden from the Lord himself?” he says. “Obviously, we don’t mean this literally, instead He works through agents to achieve this end. Agents like these good people running B and Bs – by monitoring the filthy activities of the sinners who stay in their establishments, they are doing God’s work! The perverts need to know that there is no hiding place for their unspeakable activities!” Nevertheless, Dickler thinks that Helmett is still missing the point of the issue. “We don’t want people to stop sinning just because they’re being watched. On the contrary, we want them to sin more, in different positions, with sex toys, fruit and household implements,” he explains. “All we want is the right to decide who we want to watch committing sins and the kind of sins we expose our eyes to!” James Floundly is equally dismissive of the Bishop’s intervention. “I’m not surprised the God botherers are siding with the peeping toms,” the Gay Defence League spokesperson says. “They’ve got a lot in common – everyone knows the God squad get their kicks from listening to parishioners’ intimate confessions of their sins. They probably record them to whack off over later!” The B and B owners’ case will be heard in the High Court next week.
