{"id":10963,"date":"2017-08-07T17:09:42","date_gmt":"2017-08-07T16:09:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/?p=10963"},"modified":"2017-08-07T18:20:57","modified_gmt":"2017-08-07T17:20:57","slug":"hurtful-national-trust-rainbow-row","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.christianvoice.org.uk\/index.php\/hurtful-national-trust-rainbow-row\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Hurtful’ National Trust in Rainbow Row"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"National<\/a>
National Trust goes gay with 6-colour homosexual rainbow badges and lanyards – but volunteers objected.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The National Trust is in a row over the promotion of homosexuality after volunteers refused to wear homosexual equality symbols.<\/p>\n

The National Trust is Britain’s leading conservation charity. It exists, according to its most recent Annual Report<\/a><\/strong>, to protect \u2018the nation’s heritage and open spaces … for everyone to enjoy’. It operates in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. There is a separate National Trust for Scotland.<\/p>\n

According to the BBC<\/a><\/strong>, the National Trust required staff and volunteers at Felbrigg Hall, a stately home in Norfolk, to wear rainbow badges and lanyards in support of a campaign to promote homosexuality.<\/p>\n

Annabel Smith, the Trust’s head of volunteering and participation development, said \u2018Whilst volunteering for the National Trust we do request and expect individuals to uphold the values of the organisation.’<\/p>\n

But of course, the promotion of homosexuality does not appear in the aims or values of the National Trust.<\/p>\n

\"Felbrigg<\/a>
Felbrigg Hall<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Dissenting volunteers<\/h2>\n

By Friday, over 30 (and possibly as many as 75, depending where you read) of 350 volunteers refused to be part of the stunt.<\/p>\n

Initially, National Trust management offered them duties away from the public gaze. \u00a0Non-rainbowed staff would be an embarrassment. \u00a0Its director general, Dame Helen Ghosh, said anyone who did not agree with the campaign was \u2018free to step back from the volunteer role or take a different role for the duration’. \u00a0Who said Victorian-style labour relations were dead?<\/p>\n

But Lucy Pasha-Robinson writes in the Independent<\/a><\/strong> that 240 National Trust members revoked their membership over the weekend in disgust. Meanwhile, the volunteers went to the newspapers. \u00a0They accused the Trust of encroaching on their political freedoms. \u00a0The Trust began to get rattled.<\/p>\n

Dame Helen was left humiliated as a National Trust official later issued a statement on Saturday. \u00a0Now they were \u2018making it clear to volunteers that the wearing of the badge is optional and a personal decision’.<\/p>\n

Previous owner \u2018outed’ as homosexual<\/h2>\n
\"Professor<\/a>
Professor Richard Sandell has been promoting LGBT issues for twenty years.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

One Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer owned Felbrigg Hall. The distinguished historian and author left his ancestral home to the National Trust when he died in 1969.<\/p>\n

But as part of its pro-sodomy campaign – it actually has a special page for it<\/a><\/strong> – the National Trust latched onto rumours that Lord Ketton-Cremer was homosexual. It commissioned Professor Richard Sandell from the University of Leicester to dig up any dirt he could find.<\/p>\n

In true gutter journalism style, Sandell trawled the local area for anyone prepared to say Ketton-Cremer’s sexuality was an \u2018open secret’. He pored over his poems and books about acquaintances to try to find code words and possible euphemisms. But he failed to find anyone to say his subject engaged in any same-sex activity with anyone.<\/p>\n

The Trust then hired the King of Crass, Stephen Fry, to voice a video. In the frankly tedious film<\/strong><\/a>, Fry states Ketton-Cremer \u2018defied the conventions of his day’. Actually, he didn’t. He lived exactly as a bachelor of those days would do.<\/p>\n

National Trust ‘hurtful’<\/h2>\n

The film appalled Ketton-Cramer’s nephew and niece. Ted Coryton and Katie Spencer are demanding to know what proof the Trust has that their uncle and godfather, known to them as \u2018Bun’, was homosexual. Moreover, even if he was, what right did the National Trust have to \u2018out’ someone who chose to keep his sexuality secret? \u00a0The squire died two years after sodomy in private was decriminalised in 1967<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\"Robert<\/a>
Robert Wyndham Ketton-Cremer outside Felbrigg Hall, which he bequeathed to the National Trust.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u2018It is simply so hurtful,’ Mrs Spencer, 78, told the Daily Telegraph<\/strong><\/a>: \u2018It is outrageous and totally unnecessary. The National Trust has done this to get publicity to get people to visit the hall and make money. I personally didn’t think there was any suggestion he was gay. The first I heard was when I was shown the article in the Telegraph about the Trust’s film. I would like to know what proof they actually have. I think Bun would have felt betrayed by the National Trust. He was a fascinating man, a brilliant historian and biographer. \u00a0That was how he would want to be remembered. His sexuality was a private matter and should remain so.’<\/p>\n

The siblings, from Cornwall, share the late Ketton-Cremer with another godson, Tristram Powell, from London. \u00a0All believe the move represents a betrayal. \u00a0Moreover, they argue it could have serious implications for future legacies to the Trust. \u00a0They have a point. \u00a0Who is going to leave property to the National Trust knowing its officials are prepared to seek and publicise salacious gossip about you years later?<\/p>\n

Virtue signalling<\/h2>\n
\"Clare<\/a>
Clare Balding recording a podcast promoting homosexuality for the National Trust<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The Trust’s pro-sodomy campaign does not end here. The National Trust has also signed up the BBC’s token sports lesbian, Clare Balding.<\/p>\n

Miss Balding will do a series of podcasts<\/a><\/strong> on homosexually-themed National Trust properties. There turn out to be very few, by the way. And of course, this is not a serious attempt at increasing its membership among the 1% of the population who are sadly homosexual. If they like old houses, they will join the Trust’s four million other members anyway. No, the Trust is instead engaging in a perverted form of \u2018virtue-signalling’ while blundering into the minefield of social engineering.<\/p>\n

Indeed, Mr Fry said: \u2018Some have asked why Prejudice and Pride is necessary \u2013 why the lives of people who challenged conventional ideas of gender and sexuality should be made public and celebrated in this way. The answer is quite simple \u2013 to do anything less is to suggest that same-sex love and gender diversity is somehow wrong, and keeping these stories hidden only lets prejudice \u2013 past and present – go unchallenged.’<\/p>\n

Once again, Lord Ketton-Cremer did not ‘challenge conventional ideas of gender and sexuality’. \u00a0Moreover, some 40& of the population still believe gay sex is wrong, after all the years of pro-sodomy propaganda. And we can venture the figure will be higher among National Trust members.<\/p>\n

Professor Sandell added: \u2018We have equality in many areas of the law but there is a need to build greater public understanding.’ I was right. It’s virtue-signalling and propaganda rolled into one.<\/p>\n

Condescension<\/h2>\n
\"Dame<\/a>
Dame Helen Ghosh – the ‘condescending’ director general of the National Trust is to be replaced next March.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is not the first controversy at the National Trust under Dame Helen’s tenure, says the Guardian<\/a><\/strong>. During her leadership, the Trust found itself drawn into debates about fracking and windfarms. \u00a0The Trust quite likes the former, but is snooty about the latter. And earlier this year our members will recall it replaced the word \u2018Easter’ by \u2018Cadbury’ in publicity for its egg hunt.<\/p>\n

Rachel Cooke, also in the Guardian, writes<\/a><\/strong>: \u2018There is a growing sense in some quarters that the Trust is distracted from its main purpose \u2013 conservation \u2013 and that in its determination to be inclusive, it is, for want of a better description, dumbing down.’<\/p>\n

Miss Cooke also has some acerbic observations on the Trust’s acquisition of land and on Dame Helen Ghosh, with whom she secured an interview. Dame Helen is a retired civil servant. The National Trust pays her \u00a3183,960 as its director general.<\/p>\n

But Miss Cooke says: \u2018Her manner is \u2013 how to put this? \u2013 edged with condescension. Five minutes into our conversation, she tells me about her first-class history degree from Oxford, as if this alone should settle my mind in her favour. … She talks loudly of the importance of listening to other views without ever really giving the impression that she is doing so.’<\/p>\n

Dame Helen Ghosh to leave<\/h2>\n

And now Dame Helen is returning to her alma mater. \u00a0She gained a first in history, you know. \u00a0She will leave her job at the <\/a><\/strong>National Trust in March 2018 to become the first woman master of Balliol College, Oxford. \u00a0She is taking an obvious career step.<\/p>\n

National Trust members and volunteers will be eager to attend its Annual General Meeting in Swindon on 21st October 2017<\/a>.<\/strong>\u00a0 \u00a0Will this topic come up? \u00a0What will Dame Helen condescend to say to the backward member masses? \u00a0Will her replacement will be as eager to force gayness down everyone’s throats? \u00a0Is the National Trust going to continue alienating the public with repellent virtue-signalling? \u00a0Will it return to its core business of\u00a0protecting the nation’s heritage and open spaces for everyone to enjoy – not just the intellectual elite? \u00a0When are the next elections to the National Trust’s Council?<\/p>\n

Click on the links below to share this story:<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

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The National Trust is in a row over the promotion of homosexuality after volunteers refused to wear homosexual equality symbols. The National Trust is Britain’s leading conservation charity. It exists, according to its most recent Annual Report, to protect \u2018the nation’s heritage and open spaces … for everyone to enjoy’. It operates in England, Wales 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