Gay Rights Becomes Issue in British Elections
The U.K.'s conservative party have spent month courting GLBT voters, but as elections draw near in Britain, the Tories are embroiled in fresh GLBT controversies.
The new scandals could diminish the 10-point lead that the Tories currently enjoy, but may not be likely to lead to an upset come May 6, the date when elections will take place. However, even a few percentage points could make a big difference in whether the Tories can claim a decisive win--or whether, as some predict might happen, the elections lead to a hung Parliament, in which neither the Tories nor the liberal Labor party take uncontested control of the government.
The Tories have embraced GLBT voters lately, seeking to cultivate an image of greater inclusively and to reach out to conservative youth, letting them see the Tory party as a modern and inclusive entity, rather than a relic from more biased times past. In addition to GLBT-themed events aimed at younger and gay voters, the Tories have also faced up to a checkered past of anti-gay laws, such as the notorious Section 28, a Thatcher-era law that banned any use of government funds to offer supportive discussions of gays or their families in classrooms. The law referred to gay and lesbian families as "pretend" families, and exerted a chilling effect in British schools when it came to discussions of GLBT issues.
Tory leader and front-runner for Britain's next Prime Minister David Cameron went so far as to apologize for Section 28 last summer, saying that the Tories had "got it wrong" and contrasting the party as it once was with its more modern incarnation. "If five years ago we had a Conservative and Gay Pride party," Cameron said, "I don't think many gay people would have come or many Conservatives would have come."
Cameron went to far as to envision Britain's first openly gay Prime Minister, predicting that he or she might well hail from the ranks of the conservative party rather than emerging from Labor. "If we do win the next election," said Cameron, "instead of being a white middle-class, middle-aged party, rather like me really, we will be far more diverse." Indeed, Cameron noted that, "The Conservatives had the first woman prime minister," and predicted that, "we are bound to have the first black prime minister and the first gay prime minister."
But in a kind of "October surprise" for the Tories, the British media has gotten wind of a prominent Tory politician, Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, suggesting at a meeting that owners of Bed and Breakfast-style inns should be allowed under law to turn gay families away and refuse them lodging. "I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences," Grayling commented. "I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home."
No Room at the Inn for Gay Couple
Just such a case arose a few weeks ago when a gay couple--who had paid in advance for a room reserved at a B&B--arrived at the establishment, only for the proprietor to deny them lodging based on the fact that they were two men. Susanne Wilkinson, owner of the Swiss B&B, reportedly told Michael Black and his partner John Morgan last March 19 that it was "against her convictions" to allow the men to share a room and refused them accommodations--even though Britain's anti-discrimination laws forbid denial of goods and services based on sexual orientation.
The men protested being turned away and cited the anti-discrimination law, but Wilkinson responded that the house was private property. "She said she was sorry and she was polite in a cold way and she was not abusive," said Black, "so we asked our money back and she gave it to us."
"They gave me no prior warning and I couldn't offer them another room as I was fully booked," Wilkinson told the press. "I don't see why I should change my mind and my beliefs I've held for years just because the Government should force it on me."
"We were very shocked, and of course angry, that it happened. Neither of us has ever experienced homophobia before and I have been out since 1974," Black said. "We felt we were treated like lepers and not fit to be under the same roof as her." As for Wilkinson's statement that she should have had "prior warning" that the men were a same-sex couple, Black said, "It would be like saying to someone who runs a guest house, 'I'm black or Muslim or blue-eyed,' just in case they have a problem with it.
"There is no reason why we had to make it clear we were two men in this day and age," added Black. "We have stayed in plenty of guest houses in Britain and abroad and have never had a problem."
"In open-and-shut cases of discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation the law's quite clear," said Derek Munn, the director of public affairs for GLBT advocacy group Stonewall. "It's illegal for businesses to turn away gay customers or discriminate against them when providing goods or services, and this can't be overridden by personal prejudice."
"We are Christians and we believe our rights don't have to be subordinated," said Wilkinson's husband, Francis. "We have religious freedom and we are not judging that, but we are not prepared to have that sort of activity under our roof." Mr. Wilkinson said that he and his wife had "already been inundated with abusive calls and emails. It is really sad that people act like that."
"Very Alarming"
Grayling made the remarks at a meeting of a think tank called The Center for Policy Studies. He was unaware that his remarks were being recorded. Grayling went on to say that such rights to deny lodging should only be allowed in cases where the owners were offering accommodations in their own residence. "If they are running a hotel on [Main Street], I really don't think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes," said Grayling.
But Grayling's opinion could prove "very alarming to a lot of gay people who may have been thinking of voting Conservative," said the head of British GLBT advocacy group Stonewall Ben Summerskill. "The legal position is perfectly clear. If you are going to offer the public a commercial service--and B&Bs are a commercial service--then people cannot be refused that service on the grounds of sexuality." Added Summerskill, "No one is obliged to run a B&B, but people who do so have to obey the law. I don't think anyone, including the Tories, wants to go back to the days where there is a sign outside saying: 'No gays, no blacks, no Irish.' "
Another scandal emerged shortly after Grayling's remarks made headlines, when a defense spokesperson wrote in a letter that he opposed a bill that would equalize the age of consent for gay sex to 16, which is the age of consent for heterosexuals, reported 24dash.com on April 22. "I was strongly against lowering the age of consent from 18 to 16," wrote Julian Lewis. "My reasoning was that there is a seriously increased risk of HIV infection arising from male homosexual activity.
"When it comes to legalizing practices that involve serious physical risk, I believe the higher limit should apply," continued Lewis. "This is the reason why we no longer allow 16- and 17-year-olds into front-line situations in the Armed Forces, for example.
"On the other hand (though no-one seems to have noticed), I voted in favor of the civil partnerships bill," Lewis pointed out. "One of the criticisms commonly made of gay relationships is that very often they do not last. It therefore seems obvious to me that, when a gay couple wish to commit to each other, by forming a permanent relationship, they should be encouraged and assisted in every way."
The Labor Party called for Cameron to fire Lewis for his comments, with Home Secretary Alan Johnson writing to Cameron to say, "As a frontbench defense spokesperson for the Conservative Party, Mr. Lewis is responsible for guiding your defense policy. That would include allowing gay people to join the military, which was a reform Labor introduced.
"Labor also introduced an equal age of consent, which Mr. Lewis apparently opposes," added Johnson. "You have been actively seeking the votes of gay people throughout Britain, but your frontbench team includes people who are evidently against any notion of homosexual equality.
"You need to show some leadership and sack Mr. Lewis," Johnson warned Cameron. "Otherwise your claim that the Conservative Party represents change will prove to be nothing but a shallow public relations exercise."
Anti-Gay Allies
A spokesperson for the conservative party responded by pointing out that since the Labor Party took control of the British government in 1992, "we have seen a massive increase in HIV infections and sexually transmitted diseases across all the population--straight and gay. Labor has failed to tackle the crisis in sexual health which is why a Conservative government would make it a priority," the spokesperson added. "We would protect spending on public health and do more to give people the information they need to live healthy lives."
Cameron has recently announced that he will be sending a leading conservative politician, Nick Herbert, to Poland in an effort to convince Polish politicians to ease up on anti-gay rhetoric. But the move comes only after the conservatives accused journalists reporting on anti-gay Polish stances of writing slanted, or even fictionalized, articles in order to bolter the Labor Party.
Noted Toby Helm, a journalist for U.K. newspaper The Guardian, in an April 22 article, "[L]last autumn, when journalists first began to point out that the likes of the Polish Law and Justice party (PiS) were homophobic (anti-gay views are central to its Catholic fundamentalist view of life) they were attacked by the Tory media machine for being part of a Led-led smear operation. The stories were nonsense, they said, and Inspired-inspired lies.
"I remember once being told to stop writing that 'ghastly stuff' about the views of the Poles as it was all wrong and not helpful and I was just being urged on by Labor," Helm wrote. "It was a shameful defensive spin operation led by William Hague and the shadow Europe minister, Mark Francois, who had allowed their Eurosceptic zeal to cloud their judgment and any sense of what journalism is."
Helm went on to note that the conservative party had compiled their own report about the PiS and other political parties with whom the Tories might ally themselves. "It was never published, though. It revealed that Law and Justice and other parties... did have extremist tendencies and would be unsuitable partners."
However, wrote Helm, the Tories' "reaction to the fact that independent journalists had unhelpfully revealed the truth about their new best friends in Europe was to attack the messengers in the free press."