I must have walked past the John Snow pub in Broadwick Street, Soho, a thousand times without ever going in.
To be honest, it doesn't look like my sort of place. Soho is full of these places – traditional-looking straight pubs catering for office workers, old-style drinkers. They're not meant for people like me, and there is no shortage of bars and restaurants in London that are more my sort of thing, so I've always gone somewhere else. One online reviewer says, of the John Snow, a Samuel Smith pub:"It's a timely reminder of what a British pub and the social pub experience is all about." Yep: not going in there, then.
Jonathan Williams and James Bull, however, did think it was their sort of place. They were out on a first date, and had gone to the John Snow to have a pint of cider. After a while, they started to get a little bit amorous, and began to kiss. It was described by a bystander subsequently as "snogging but not heavy petting".
After some time, the landlord came over and asked them to stop because, he apparently said, it was "bothering" him. Mr Williams and Mr Bull, acknowledging that this was a polite request, refused and carried on. The landlady came over and told them to leave; their kissing, she said, was "obscene". Afterwards, the police were called by the couple. A public kiss-in was planned at the John Snow pub last night in protest.
The law is quite interestingly ambiguous on this sort of thing nowadays. There is no question that pub landlords are perfectly free to throw out customers. On the other hand, they must not refuse service to customers on the basis of their sexual preference or race. What was the reason that the John Snow threw the pair out? Was it their nature, or was it their behaviour? Was that behaviour expressing their nature in what ought to be an ordinary way? Would a heterosexual couple kissing in the same way have been thrown out?
It must be said that many people, of all varieties, find public displays of affection off-putting. In an oddly paradoxical way, human beings are rarely at their most attractive when in the middle of an act of love. We have all had the experience of sitting down for a quiet train journey, a quiet pint, or just on a park bench when a neighbouring couple embarks on an attempt to lick the phlegm off each other's uvulas.
Perhaps there are people in the world who find this sight enchanting, or evidence of love's young dream, but I suspect most people give a sigh, pick up their bags, and go to sit somewhere else. Perhaps it would be a better world if we all made the effort to endure sights that we don't find attractive. But in practice we usually find it easier to let people exercise their freedom, out of our own sight, if necessary.
To take a parallel example: it is important that women have the right to breastfeed in public. Nobody would, or should, try to prevent them. On the other hand, though I know in theory it's a beautiful sight, in practice I just don't want to eat my lunch while an infant is feeding at the next table. No doubt I should get over a primal feeling of mild disgust – it happens only when I'm actually eating myself, I should say.
In practice, on the couple of occasions when the question has arisen, I've just asked quietly if I could move. That's OK, isn't it – a stranger gets the freedom to feed her baby, and I get my freedom to enjoy my lunch?
Of course, there is no such universal right to snog. We aren't allowed to snog in the jury box, in libraries, or, mostly, at the family dinner table. Somewhere between convention and restriction lie the rules of when, and where, we are allowed to kiss passionately.
Mr Williams and Mr Bull might reasonably have thought that a pub in Soho was a fair enough place to start kissing. It's frankly a little bit surprising that the landlord and landlady of a pub in such a place could go on being surprised and shocked by the sight of two men kissing. If you want to run a pub where you are not going to see such a thing, then probably Broadwick Street is not such a good choice as, ooh, somewhere in the middle of Dartmoor?
Though we might like to think of the people who make these objections, however, as fairly antediluvian in attitude, isn't there a better reaction than calling the police and going to law over the subject?
Not so long ago, it was not uncommon to make polite requests of people to modify their behaviour, if it was genuinely intruding on you. It was possible to ask the people at the next table to stop smoking until you had finished eating; not to talk quite so loudly on the telephone; to ask their child to stop kicking the back of your chair. Nowadays, it's the law or nothing.
Well, I wouldn't like to be asked by the landlord of a pub to stop snogging my husband, either. On the other hand, I probably wouldn't make a point of snogging my husband in a straight bar in any very intense way, either. It's certainly your right to live your life in an open and honest way, including being able to take hotel rooms with whomever you choose.
Is it your right to insist that perfect strangers watch you snogging with tongues in public? Not so sure about that one. I'd happily go along to a protest snog-in, because I think it's probably quite a good thing that the straight world gets used to the sight of gay people kissing and holding hands. But at this moment, the most effective weapon against this sort of distaste is not the police and the equality acts, but the old-fashioned retort of "Come on, Sidney – I can see we're not welcome here". As for the landlords of the John Snow, a move to Orkney might be just the thing.
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