Daytime television can be grim at the best of times. This week it was further degraded by the many inappropriate barbs aimed at the late Ann Widdecombe. The erstwhile Tory minister and Reform UK matriarch’s sudden death at her Devon home is now the subject of a murder investigation.
I encourage you to offer prayers for the repose of her soul, and with the intention that whoever is responsible for her death is swiftly brought to justice.
While awaiting a police statement on her suspected murder on Friday afternoon, Sky News stalwart Adam Boulton labelled Widdecombe a “spinster” and “old maid”, even speculating about her virginity.
It was plainly unnecessary to employ such pejorative language to refer to the fact that Widdecombe never married. It was even more inappropriate to raise the bizarre question of whether this recently killed 78-year-old woman had ever had a sexual relationship. Even typing out these words for the purpose of critiquing them I find rather embarrassing.
Boulton’s tone and coarse wording came across as petty and misogynistic, but would likely be sanctioned by the chattering classes because Widdecombe happened to be a socially conservative Catholic.
Following a significant online ruckus, Boulton has since admitted that he had been “insensitive” and “wrong” in the timing and phrasing of his remarks. As Christians, we are, of course, commanded to forgive – regardless of how hard it can be.
Still, his instincts revealed something about the bien pensant attitude towards the likes of Widdecombe. Does he think it is understandable to slyly disparage an elderly woman for not marrying or having children because he believes he holds the “correct” opinions on women as a group?
This is the same mainstream media that frequently celebrates sexual identities and relationships outside Christian marriage or abstinence. Would Boulton have aimed the same bile at a feminist who had remained single because she did not believe in marrying a man? Or at the ever-growing ranks of divorced public figures, of which he himself is one?
With some small exceptions, it often seems that just about every lifestyle, aside from Christian marriage or Christian abstinence outside marriage, is tolerated by the establishment.
Widdecombe had, of course, answered questions about her private life, although she was refreshingly private compared with many modern “photo-op” politicians. When quizzed by the Guardian in 2013, she rejected any suggestion that her political career had prevented marriage.
“It just didn’t happen. I never set my face against it … it was never a sufficient priority to go out looking. If someone had barged his way into my life, I would probably have been quite receptive, but he never did, and I never went looking,” she explained.
Widdecombe was steadfast in her beliefs, including her respect for freedom of expression. Like any weathered politician, she took many such remarks in her stride throughout her more than 30 years in public life. We cannot expect everyone to take the Christian view of love, sex and marriage, and should ourselves attempt to be as charitable as possible towards our detractors. Still, we must observe the sad fact that the vitriol the Catholic view sometimes attracts from wider society can be so shocking and crude that even murdered old ladies might not be spared from it.
