Britain’s Conservative prime minister: an unlikely gay rights champion? Photograph by Moritz Hager (C) World Economic Forum.
Remember David Cameron’s cringe-inducing interview just before the 2010 General Election with GT (see below)? The then Leader of the Opposition got so flustered that he had to ask his press officer to halt the interview because he couldn’t present a convincing line on equality to the interviewer. With these images in the collective consciousness of gay voters, and without the convenience of the Tories being in government to dispel them, it was still easy to badge them as the nasty party, as Theresa May had once said.
But the Tories do have some form, historically. Much like Margaret Thatcher’s clinching of that party’s leadership by a woman way back in 1975, the party quietly clinched another first recently with the election of the lesbian MSP and So So Gay interviewee Ruth Davidson as leader of the Scottish Conservatives. Davidson is, so far, the only openly gay politician to lead a mainstream UK political party – although the Scottish Tories have just one Westminster MP at the moment, which in representative terms puts them not far in front of the Scottish Greens, co-convened by the openly gay Patrick Harvie.
Much has changed since Thatcher’s day, and, with credit to Cameron and people such as the Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone, the coalition have on the whole got their act together when it comes to gay equality. With a little help from the Liberal Democrats, a number of equality initiatives have been placed on the table – with encouraging signs about the sort of policy directions the government is prepared to take.
Take Cameron’s audacious (for a Conservative) support of gay marriage. ‘I support gay marriage not despite being a Conservative, but because I’m a Conservative,’ he told the assembled blue-rinsers at the Conservative Party’s annual conference in September. By making gay rights such a cornerstone of his conference speech, he was making a blatant attempt to steal Labour’s sparkly heels. Under the previous government, the age of consent was equalised, Section 28 repealed and civil partnerships were introduced. In response, the coalition has its own version of the equality agenda, perhaps because it has recognised how important the pink vote really is. David Cameron, at least, cannot afford another embarrassing interview on these matters, and his advisors will have told him so.
Action on gay equality has not been confined to the domestic stage. William Hague’s strong statements addressed to nations that criminalise or oppress homosexuality have included threats to withdraw aid – a clever but clearly right-of-centre response to ongoing violence towards LGBT people in countries like Nigeria, where the government has proposed making it an offence for anyone to even support gay marriage. There is a broader human rights agenda behind the statements, of course, although UK immigration authorities still deport LGBT people back to countries where homosexual acts are unambiguously a crime punishable by prison or even the death penalty. The intention, however, is undoubtedly a positive one, and despite the obvious side-effects of withdrawing aid to already poor developing nations, the UK surely shouldn’t be propping up violently homophobic regimes.
It’s not all good news, though. There are still plenty of Tories who don’t sign up to the Cameron modernisation agenda. Only this year, Roger Helmer, the Conservative MEP for the East Midlands condoned ‘conversion therapy’ for gay people, despite the overwhelming evidence that such ‘therapy’ is immensely damaging, not to mention ineffective. Then there’s Richard Drax MP, who talked of the ‘questionable sexual standards’ of gay couples (although he didn’t go so far as to specify what particular sexual standards were questionable). And among the party’s lower ranks some have even gone as far as to equate gay marriage with bestiality - ‘with no apology’. Nice.
Despite the ignorance of some backbenchers and some unreconstructed Conservative Party members, however, the coalition has laid down the gauntlet for Labour – which, with much justification, has almost always been seen the traditional party of gay rights. Is Labour’s record in danger of being overshadowed? At the 2015 General Election there will be a whole new generation of young lesbian and gay voters who weren’t old enough to vote last time around – as well as many progressively minded voters who may consider the coalition parties a safe bet with regards to gay rights. While Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Greens have long had very pro-gay policies, will the combined record of the two governing parties be enough to convince older generations of traditionally hostile LGBT voters to forgive the Tories for their previous record?
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