Saturday, July 04, 2009

Pride in Nick Clegg

The Lib Dem leader has given me cause to return to Labour List for the first time since the early days of whatshisface. On Pride Saturday for the Sassenach gay fraternity he is speaking about gay rights and how far we have come since his University day when Thatcher brought in Section 28. However, he notes:

'however, the inequalities that persist are frustrating. It is ludicrous, for example, that there is still a blanket ban on gay men donating blood, irrespective of whether they practice safe sex or if they have tested negative for HIV. Plus, although civil partnerships have been a step forward, until same sex marriage is permitted it is impossible to claim gay and straight couples are treated equally. And in school playgrounds ‘gay’ is still used as a four letter word.'


So as the Euro Tories take a step back to those days by aligning themselves with European Homophobes. And Ben Bradshaw recently added that a deep vein of homophobia still reaches right through the Tory establishment to the front benches. I'm proud of our leader, our party, our Liberal Youth for their stance against homophobia wherever they find it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Great article, but why on earth did he write for them? The organ of a government who sends gay people back to be persecuted with a warning that they should be discreet?

This is not the way to bring people together.

I am completely furious.

Would you allow Gordon Brown to put an article on your election address?

Or would you allow him to write a post on here?

Stephen Glenn said...

If Gordon or Alex wants to write here I would let them.

As for Nick posting on LabourList it is preaching to those that aren't in the choir. We are all pretty much on board with that message. There was an interview in the 10th Birthday edition of Attitude which Tony Blair, you may remember me blogging about how I agreed with a lot of what he said on that (I'll bring it through during the week). Labour are the second best of the Westminster or Holyrood parties on gay rights but even they think that they are most of the way there.

As for the Tories and the Nats there is a lot of work still to be done there.

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