When it comes to gay rights, Britain is moving backwards
In July 2013, I stood outside Parliament as campaigners celebrated MPs overwhelmingly voting to pass equal marriage. People danced and sang. A friend proposed to his long-term partner. It was a joyous atmosphere.
Six years on things feel a little bit different. Not a lot. Not enough that most people would notice it. But there’s been a shift.
The other day, former Cabinet minister and failed Tory leadership contender Esther Mcvey said that “parents know best” when it comes to teaching children about LGBT relationships in school. It followed months of protests by Birmingham parents, who did not want their children taking part in such lessons. Shamefully, one of the second city’s Labour MPs, Roger Godsiff, subsequently told the protestors “I will continue to fight your corner because you’re right.”
In an age of populism, when not being offensive or cruel to minority groups is readily dismissed as ‘political-correctness gone mad,’ it is all too easy to see how this has arisen. These politicians thought they had an audience for their comments. That people would respect them for being plain-speaking and honest instead of ‘woke’. Depressingly, they are probably right. It certainly feels like the broad social liberal consensus that saw such progress on LGBT rights has been broken.
Mcvey was still in her party’s leadership contest when she made her comments. She wanted to be Prime Minister. Despite this, she advocated something that could harm LGBT children and families because she thought it might win her support with socially conservative members of her party. Thankfully, the likes of Justine Greening and Amber Rudd called Mcvey out for her comments. Greening, the first openly gay woman to serve in Cabinet, tweeted: “You can’t pick & choose on human rights & equality. Children should understand a modern & diverse Britain they’re growing up in.” The public rebuke, immediately backed up by Rudd, was welcome. However, they were hardly the intended audience for Mcvey’s comments in the first place. She knew all too well to which gallery she was playing.
In between the political posturing, pictures emerged of a lesbian couple who had been beaten up on a London night bus after being subjected to homophobic abuse. A group of teenagers have subsequently been arrested.
The truth is that LGBT people have always been aware that things like this can happen. Talk to any gay person and they will be able to recall a time when they did not feel safe. When they checked around to see who had seen them kiss their date. When they let go of their partner’s hand in public, just in case. We all have those stories.
And while it is easy to dismiss Mcvey and Godsiff’s comments as just words, the case of a lesbian couple in London being attacked on a bus shows the dreadful consequences when an atmosphere of homophobia is allowed to fester. Those girls were attacked as a direct result of being openly gay in a public space.
There is, it should be said, a specific kind of abuse aimed at lesbians that this incident exemplifies. The teenagers who allegedly attacked the couple are said to have asked them to kiss so they could watch. A combination of longstanding misogyny and pornography have conspired to make some men think that women are there for their entertainment. That any romantic interactions between two women are performative, for them, and are incomplete or illegitimate without a man. It is right and proper we talk about LGBT rights in the round, but we must also talk about the specific discrimination each of those individual letters faces.
It has been 50 years since the Stonewall riots, the incidents that kicked of the modern gay rights movement. There has been huge progress in a relatively short space of time, and with equal marriage coming to pass in the UK it was all too easy to imagine that the battle for gay rights here was largely won. Gay people could have successful careers and live happy, middle class lives. However, these incidents were grim reminders that while things have come a long way, and while LGBT people in this country do have many more rights than before, those things can be quickly taken away.
It is not just about legal rights either. It is about society and culture, and whether people are to feel happy and safe in their own skin. Politicians comments and violent assaults on a night bus all chip away at that.
However far we’ve come not all progress is permanent. It needs to be defended.
