David Cameron should ignore calls to fire Chris Grayling.

They’re off. Or rather, they will be tomorrow – but already the foot-slogging has started. George Osborne says Labour’s taxes will stamp on recovery, Gordon Brown insists that the economy is like Wayne Rooney’s foot, and Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling has shot himself in the foot…after rushing in where angels fear to tread. Thus the first boob has been committed before we’re even under starter’s orders in the Political Twit of the Year marathon.

It’s quite possible that Chris Grayling is a prat, but I suspect the country is (in private) far more approving of what he said on the subject of gays than appearances might suggest. No doubt within a day or two, an opinion poll will appear to suggest that 90% of Britons find his views ‘disgusting’ (to quote the entirely disgusting Lord Mandelson yesterday) but this too will be no guide to reality. On the whole, if you ask the British whether they think it’s right to break the law, they will still say no; and very few self-respecting interviewees are willing to appear openly anti-gay to a stranger.

Grayling is right on several bases, although I suspect he isn’t bright enough to know why. First and foremost, a B&B is an ancient British tradition that falls somewhere between being a private and public institution – purely because it is somebody’s home. I think it therefore not proven (perhaps even doubtful) that the proprietors of the establishment in question broke the law.

Second, saying the law is an ass has a long and fine tradition in the UK – as many of us in the 1960s believed when marching to abolish the death penalty….and decriminalise homosexuality. There is a very real difference between irrational prejudice against somebody’s ethnicity, and the dislike (on religious grounds) of sodomy: the latter may be a conscience matter, the other more likely a bigoted prejudgement.

Third, The law is a total ass on the subject of ‘turning people away’: any pub or club may show the words ‘we reserve the right to refuse admission’ and be within the law. What, on any grounds? Well, probably not – just grounds likely to do harm to that business by annoying regular customers.

And this is where the nub of the debate really lies. For reasons which aren’t their fault, gays have traditionally found their haunts and huddled together there for warmth. This was true in turn of certain pubs, the YMCA – and after 1980 a great many clubs. I am bound to say that quite a few of these over the years have famously turned straights away….on the grounds (in the celebrated case in Sydney some years ago) that they were openly gay clubs. Let’s say a hotel makes two gays very welcome. They tell all their friends – and within six months it’s a ‘gay hotel’. What if that isn’t what the owners wanted?

The attitude of the two ‘victims’ in this context I find extraordinarily illiberal. Mustard keen to sue the backside off the owners (who, on their own admission, were very apologetic to them) when asked about the effect on the livelihood of those owners, their needs were dismissed with “Well, they’ll just have to find something else to do, won’t they?”

Am I arguing that two wrongs make a right here? No, I am pointing out that this whole body of law is – like most things emanating from the pc cadres – daft from end to end. Thanks to feminists, we are no longer allowed to have men-only clubs. As a result of idiotic ASBO legislation, a tiny minority can object to porcine illustrations outside a pub called The Pig & Whistle. And now New Labour want to outlaw criticism of homosexuality – effectively rendering a minority aberrent sexual predilection above the law.

Were it my responsibility, I would repeal all legislation encouraging an attitude among any minority that they have the right to demand anything beyond equality before the law. This isn’t as potty as it sounds: it would merely put the onus upon the complainant to prove unequal treatment – as opposed to there being a judicial assumption that the act of refusal in the first place provides that proof.

Would this mark a return to widespread racial discrimination? No, it wouldn’t…but it might make some racial minorities wake up to the fact that privilege is privilege, wherever it occurs. And above all, it would destroy a heinous industry that employs muddled people, and encourages an attitude of unearned entitlement.

I am not racist, anti-gay, anti-Irish, anti-women or anti anything very much. I just think that it is natural for species tribes to want to be among their own kind – and fascist to force people to provide services to those they would prefer not to. The one and only exception to this is the medical profession, where – ironically – more and more consultants are desperately keen (despite their hippocratic oath) to refuse treatment for hip replacements to people who are overweight. Now that, in my view, is a truly criminal act.