My bleeding heart

Religion, sex, politics. There's a reason for this holy trinity of dinner party taboos. I'm standing listening to a discussion about the sexual preferences of the DUP's Paul Berry, and one things leads to another. I could just mind my own business but, you know, I am a Bleeding Heart Liberal and if there's one thing we BHLs will in no circumstances tolerate it's other people's intolerances, writes Róisín Ingle.

According to a Sunday tabloid, a couple of years ago Newry and Armagh MLA Paul Berry had a series of text chats with a gay man he came into contact with in a chatroom. This was followed, allegedly, by a meeting in a Belfast hotel where Berry received a "sports massage".

This was big news because baby-faced Berry has always aligned himself with the homophobic views held by the DUP, the Free Presbyterian Church and many organised religions. He denied the allegations, and later, when the party suspended him, he mounted a legal challenge which he recently dropped.

Last month Berry talked about the allegations for the first time on UTV's Insight programme. He had been "foolish", he said. At the time he wasn't "as close to God" as he should have been. The rather odd interview left viewers with more questions than answers. Had he been sexually involved with the man? Or was he talking about his "foolish" behaviour and the period that followed, during which he contemplated suicide, only because he had been caught?

Being a BHL, of course, I have no interest in whom Berry finds attractive. That's between him and possibly his wife but has no bearing on his ability to serve in public office.

So I'm standing there - I can't really say where - and the conversation moves on from Paul Berry to homosexuality in general, and suddenly I am in a conversation about whether or not gay people are "evil".

The person who thinks they are evil will never budge. He can't; he won't, so I shouldn't even engage. But I am a BHL and so I do. "If your son was gay would you think he was evil?" I ask. "Yes, I would," this man says. "It says in the Bible."

"There's a lot of rubbish in the Bible," I say, which is a rubbish response but I'm losing it now. I'm getting drawn in even though I know this conversation can end only in tears. Soon, it does. They are mine. I leave the room.

Oh, I am so liberal. Skin colour, sexuality, the more varieties the better, but I can't tolerate this. I'm reminded of that time I was in a taxi and the driver started going on about black bus drivers and how they were stupid, and when I objected, he shouted at me. He said I know where you live and roared abusive language out the window as he drove past. I cried then, too.

It's the despair, you see. Faced with opinions I can never change, the despair comes. And frustration. And hopelessness. And tears.

Outside, I get into the car. I roll the window up and he's trying to get me to open it, to make friends again, maybe, laugh it off because he is a good man, whatever about the things he was brought up to believe. But I can't laugh it off because I am a BHL and his words kill me. I tell the driver to get me away from here and I am sobbing, sobbing as though somebody has died.

By the time we get to Tesco, a few minutes later, I am ashamed of myself. Embarrassed. I know I need to apologise. Send a "sorry" card. Sorry not for my beliefs, but for my behaviour. Because crying won't change anything. Or judgment. Or condemnation. He believes what he believes because of his life experience, which I, being a BHL, should be able to accept. I don't have to like it. In fact I am allowed to hate it. Hate the sin, love the sinner. Be a liberal in the true sense of the word.

Not long after my embarrassing episode, I am watching Billy Bragg in Vicar Street. As always, the gig is half-concert, half-political rally, and in the middle of another rant some misguided soul in the audience asks Billy to shut up and just get on with the music.

But Billy is who he is. He's a BHL. He won't just get on with the music. He knows pop and politics can mix and he's ranting now from the stage saying that we have to confront it all, the racism and the intolerance, we have to confront it wherever we find it. At work. In the pub. Around the dinner table.

I'll keep on confronting it, but I'll choose my battles more carefully in future. I still haven't sent the card. Maybe this is the card. Sorry. From the illiberal liberal. With love.