No, Ms James, the LGBT community has no duty to vote Conservative

By Jonty Pryor

Now, let me begin by saying that I believe nobody has a ‘duty’ to vote for a specific party. The beauty of democracy is you can choose who you feel best represents you, your ideals and who will best lead the country. I am of course referencing Ms James, the conservative parliamentary candidate for Stourbridge who informed myself and other members of the LGBT community that we have a duty to vote Tory.

Well Ms James, no thanks.

She tells us that the Conservative party has changed across the country – not just in David Cameron’s rhetoric. Let’s consider. On the 6th of April this year new laws came into force meaning that lesbians have equal access to fertility treatment on the NHS. On top of this, the biological mother and her partner can both appear on the birth certificate. This – for the first time – enshrines a two mother family in law.

Gordon Brown led 230 of his MPs to introduce this law and to equality for LGBT people. David Cameron led 92% of his voting MPs to say that LGBT people are second class citizens, a vote that said Lesbians are unsuitable mothers and need the guiding hand of a man. I have no duty to vote for the Conservatives.

The leader of the Conservative Party may be saying some nice things about gay people but his votes simply do not reflect this and I dread to think how gay rights will deteriorate under Cameron’s Britain.

The past 12 years have seen the introduction of Civil Partnerships, an equal age of consent, the repeal of section 28, the introduction of discrimination laws, ended the banning of LGBT people serving in the military, increased sentencing for hate crimes, produced and implemented the Gender Recognition Act and given LGBT people the right to adopt children. So if it comes to a choice between Cameron’s kind words or Gordon Brown and Labour Party action, I’ll stick with Labour.

So where do we go from here? I hear many calling for full Gay Marriage, others for Civil Partnerships across the board leaving Marriage to the religions. Others want the entitlement to donate blood. But I believe that Labour in Europe need to now push for Civil Partnerships across the EU. This would introduce equality laws for those in countries such as Poland and Romania. It would also mean that countries wanting to join the EU such as Turkey would have to accept that they cannot treat certain demographs in their own country as an under-class.

Back in the UK, perhaps LGBT people don’t have a duty to vote Labour. (I’m not usually one to say that a single issue should decide your vote.) But the Conservatives believe that we don’t deserve or need equality under the law, and unfortunately the Liberal Democrats are – as usual – in a position to say some pie-in-the-sky things because they’ll never implement them. If you want LGBT rights only the progressive polices of the Labour Party can deliver them.

We are yet to achieve full equality but we are making steady progress; progress that can happen and will happen under a Labour Government.