I’m a gay man. Gay people have a long and painful history of oppression and intimidation, and there are still many places where a gay person can be jailed, and even executed, for their sexuality. Gains have been slow and remain precarious. 1.

100,000 gay men are estimated to have been arrested during the Holocaust: when the camps were liberated, many gay prisoners were ’sent on’ by the Allied forces to other jails to ‘complete their sentences’. You might say gay people have skin in the oppression game. 2.

Gay-hating (I dislike the word ‘homophobia’) is widespread and commonplace, and there are few gay people who haven’t at some point encountered it. It comes in a range of exciting flavours, from outright street violence to snide comments about ‘limp wrists’. It’s everywhere. 3.

Gay people fight this, again, in all sorts of ways. Some form organised protest groups, hold marches, wave placards. Some join political parties. Some fight their corner on social media. Some stand for elected office. Some win hearts on the telly. Each to their own. 4.

I’m not aware, though, of any attempt by 'the gay community' to force any political party to adopt one or other definition of gay-hating or be labelled ‘homophobic’. I’m not aware of a list of examples of speech acts which must not be made towards gay people. 5.

As Peter Tatchell’s recent comments exemplify, gay people are a hugely various bunch, as would be any human group of similar size. All kinds of people with all kinds of opinions on all kinds of things. 6.

The ‘gay community’ is and always has been a fiction: there are thousands, millions, of ‘gay communities’, and as many gay identities as gay people. I’ve always resisted inclusion into this nebulous ‘community’, since much of what it claims on my behalf I disagree with. 7.

Don’t like Kylie, for instance. Hate dancing. Trivial example, but no-one speaks for me but me. 8.

I’m not a Jewish person so cannot meaningfully speak for them, of course. But is anyone seriously suggesting Jewish people are not as various, as diverse, as bewilderingly, wonderfully various and unique and individual as gay people? 9

As this debate unfolds, we’re hearing from more and more Jewish voices demanding to be heard: a dissenting BoD member who says the ‘Corbyn antisemitism hysteria is bullshit’, the foreign editor of Jewish News who explains why the IHRA definition is problematical. 10

Not ‘the Jewish community’ as imagined by some right-wing Jewish newspaper editors and some Labour MPs, but real, individual, dissenting Jewish people. Not a passive, inert mass that can be ‘spoken for’, but a frothing, exuberant well of argument and debate and spirit. 11.

Surely we should all cherish this. Surely we should listen to all the voices, not just the loudest ones. Surely the debate needs to include all. 12.

Asserting a single suffocating monolithic ’Jewish community’ surely denies Jewish people that most basic of fundamental rights: to speak in their own voices, to be heard, to not be spoken for. As a dissenting gay man, I support all dissenting Jewish voices. Let them be heard. 13.