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Big Gay Flashmob
Tories may
be making the right noises here and there,
but their responses to the concerns of gay
people have been disappointing, says
Peter
Tatchell.
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Dear Dave,
We know this is tough for you.
Tony had it so easy. All he had
to do was repeal Section 28,
allow gay adoption and appoint
the first openly gay cabinet
ministers and everyone thought
New Labour was god’s gift to gay
rights.
You’ve not only had to overcome
your party’s dodgy record,
you’ve also struggled personally
with the prejudices that made
you vote in a pretty anti-gay
way before you became leader. So
big up for everything you’ve
done so far to overcome
homophobia in yourself and in
your party.
But Chris Grayling and Berkshire
B&B-gate really does make us
doubt your homophile
credentials. His comments were
more stupid than offensive –
surely he can tell the
difference between inviting
someone into your home and
providing a commercial service?
It’s a cultural thing, it’s how
they grew up. It’s sort of not
their fault. And they deserve to
be represented in our political
system. But they really can’t
pretend they’re in the majority
anymore. They are literally a
dying breed.
We know you need their support
because they’re politically
dependable, but they’re anything
but shiny and new, so of course
it’s going to be hard to keep
them happy while rebranding the
Conservative party as shiny and
new.
You can’t be all things to all
men, because that kind of makes
you nothing. Either you’re the
party of Section 28, or you’re
the party of 20 gay candidates.
Either Chris Grayling’s comments
were acceptable, or they
weren’t.
On Sunday we’re going to throw
you a party where you can
properly come out as a homophile
or a homophobe. If you want to
be in our gang, you need to dump
Chris Grayling – he’s
cramping your style.
If you’re actually a bit grossed
out by men kissing and think
that lesbians just need a good
rogering from the right man,
that’s ok too. We can tolerate
that. We’ll be polite in public,
we might even bring ourselves to
shake your hand one day. It’s
good that you’re being honest.
But don’t expect us to vote for
you.
Yours sincerely wishing you’re
sincere,
Some gay people
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“David
Cameron and I are very happy to consider the
case for gay marriage,” Shadow Chancellor
George Osborne told me at a meeting in
London on 11 April.
When pressed
what this meant, he declined to give any
assurances that a Conservative government
would conduct a review of the law. A
commitment to merely consider the case for
legalising gay marriage is meaningless. We
asked for a concrete promise that the Tories
would end the prohibition on same-sex civil
marriage but we didn’t get it.
Disappointment
David
Cameron has, at least, offered two specific
gay-rights policies, as we shall see later
in this article, but his response to
questions posed by Pink News readers
a day before our meeting with Osborne was
quite disappointing. Like Gordon Brown,
Cameron supports the ban on same-sex civil
marriage and the lifetime ban on gay blood
donors.
Our
50-minute meeting with the Tory
frontbenchers – Osborne, Theresa May and
Nick Herbert, at which I was accompanied by
the lesbian environmental activist Tamsin
Omond – took place just three hours before
the “Big Gay Flashmob” demo for LGBT rights
outside Conservative election campaign
headquarters in London, which attracted
close to 400 people.
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Big
Gay Flashmob Dynamic Duo |
But the
meeting was a big disappointment. George
Osborne offered us fine words but few
concrete policies for gay equality. His
pro-gay pledges were fairly minor ones. On
major equality issues, such as the bans on
gay marriage and gay blood donors, the
Tories support the discriminatory status
quo.
Civil
partnerships are not good enough. The
Conservatives are out of step with popular
opinion. A clear majority of British people
believe the law on civil marriage should not
discriminate.
A Populus
poll for The Times (London) last June
found that 61 per cent of the public believe
that lesbian and gay couples should be able
to get married in a register office on
exactly the same basis as heterosexual
couples. Most of the public support marriage
equality – but the Tories don’t.
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George Osborne |
“Mr Osborne
refused to support an end to the lifetime
ban on gay blood donors,” said Tamsin Omond,
“stating that lifting the ban was up to the
blood service and its advisory body. He
declined to state where the Conservatives
stand on this issue.”
Free-vote issue
On several
other LGBT issues, Osborne defended the
Conservatives’ opposition to gay rights. He
insisted that parliamentary votes on gay
equality should remain a free vote.
“Gay rights
is a free-vote issue. It is a matter of
conscience. We don’t think MPs should be
forced to follow a party-line whip,” Osborne
told us. “We took the same view as the
government on not including protection
against homophobic harassment in the
Equality Bill [. . .] While we don’t go as
far saying that convictions for past
consenting gay offences should be quashed,
they should be regarded as spent for the
purposes of criminal record checks [. . .]
“In our
view, parents should have a right to
withdraw their children from sex-education
lessons. Tackling homophobic prejudice can
be dealt with in other parts of the
curriculum [. . .] There are no plans to
reverse the right of lesbian couples to
receive fertility treatment. I would fight
any such attempt [. . .] I was not aware
that it [transgender identity] is classified
as a psychiatric disorder. We’ll look into
it [. . .] Bullying in schools based on
prejudice should be treated as aggravated
bullying and attract more severe penalties,”
said Osborne, although he declined to
specify what these penalties should be.
Huge scepticism
The Tories
are obviously worried that the shadow Home
Secretary Chris Grayling’s comments in
support of homophobic discrimination by B&B
owners (see Andy Armitage’s
article in this issue) have undermined
their party’s image as being gay-friendly.
The only reason we got this meeting with
Osborne was because of the planned protest
and because of the anti-Tory backlash
generated by Grayling’s comments.
Tamsin Omond
added: “David Cameron talks about gay
rights, but where are his gay-rights
policies? We want to know what he would do
for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender
people if he became Prime Minister. In the
light of Chris Grayling’s comments, there is
huge scepticism that the Conservative party
has really changed. We fear that in private
many top Tories still don’t believe in full
gay equality.”
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David Cameron |
The
Conservative Party’s annual conference has
never voted for gay equality, and there are
no concrete gay-rights policies in any Tory
policy document. This suggests that David
Cameron’s commitment to gay rights is not
embraced by the whole Tory Party and is not
deemed worthy of a mention in official party
publicity.
However,
just 24 hours before the scheduled
gay-rights protest outside Conservative
campaign headquarters, Cameron announced his
party’s first-ever proposals for gay
equality. It’s good news that he has, at
last, offered two specific gay-rights
policies, but disappointing that he hasn’t
promised to end the bans on same-sex
marriage and on gay blood donors.
Criminal-record checks
He was
taking part in an online Q&A with readers of
Pink News, and says a Conservative
government will adopt a zero-tolerance
approach to homophobic bullying in schools
and will treat as spent any convictions for
consenting gay behaviour that has since
become lawful.
However,
under Cameron’s proposals, the unjust
convictions will not be quashed as such but,
as a concession to protests from the gay
community, he said that a Conservative
government would ensure that the convictions
would no longer need to be disclosed on
criminal-record checks when gay men apply
for certain jobs and volunteer work.
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Demonstrators at Tory HQ
© Brett Lock |
Although the
convictions will not be quashed, this is a
move in the right direction. The failure of
the current Home Secretary Alan Johnson to
match this commitment makes the Tories more
progressive on this issue than Labour.
It is a big
let-down, though, that Cameron is proposing
only two gay-rights policies. His zero
tolerance of homophobic bullying is too
vague. It is contradicted by the Tory
leadership’s decision early this month to
block government plans to ensure that pupils
aged 15 and over receive sex and
relationship education to counter
homophobia.
David
Cameron’s gay-rights credentials are still
weak. He doesn’t support ending the bans on
same-sex civil marriage and heterosexual
civil partnerships. His failure to mention
scrapping the lifetime ban on gay blood
donors is a lamentable omission.
Cameron
evaded questions on the Conservatives’
alliance with homophobic parties in the
European Parliament and on securing EU-wide
recognition for British civil partnerships.
He gave no explicit assurances on ending the
postcode lottery in NHS gender reassignment
surgery for transgender people.
Despite his
commitment to allow same-sex couples to
adopt children, he did not reply directly to
the question on whether he would amend the
law to allow some adoption agencies to
refuse to place children with lesbian and
gay couples.
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