Maggie Fleming encourages us all to use our votes after careful thought.
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As I write this, the general election campaign has just begun – by the time you read it, it will be in full swing. With all the mud-slinging that goes on, it’s easy to get disillusioned with politics and to feel that it’s just not worth voting and that it doesn’t matter who gets in. But it does. So, if you are one of those people who’s more likely to vote to evict a Big Brother housemate than to elect an MP, I’d ask you to think again.
There are all sorts of reasons why a person votes for one party rather than another – tax, the war in Iraq, the NHS, whatever – but if you’re reading this magazine, I assume that gay issues matter to you. Cast your mind back to before May 1997, when the Tories were in power. Those were the days when we had Section 28 and the age of consent for gay sex was unequal and you could be charged with gross indecency for kissing another man. Gays and lesbians were thrown out of the armed forces on a regular basis and the very idea that your foreign partner might be able to immigrate to the UK on the strength of your relationship was laughable – only slightly less laughable than the idea that you might some day be able to have your relationship recognised in law and obtain equal tax treatment with married couples.
All those things – and many more - have now changed for the better and soon the first civil partnerships will be celebrated. We have achieved a tremendous amount in the last 8 years but we can’t afford to be complacent. Although society at large seems happy to welcome us as equal citizens, we do still have enemies who would take away our hard won rights. As I write, there has been no sign of homophobia in this campaign but abortion was mentioned in the early stages and the people who want to erode a woman’s right to choose are often the very same people who want to take away our rights. The head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, is on record as saying that he would like to see social issues play the same role in our politics as they do in the States. We saw last November the way that works when George W Bush was re-elected by people who cared more about preventing same sex marriages than about protecting their jobs.
So before you vote on the 5 th, I suggest that you pay a visit to Stonewall’s website (www.stonewall.org.uk), where they list how every MP voted on seven key lesbian and gay equality issues in the last parliament. You can check out how your MP voted on issues important to you before you decide to cast a vote that’s important to him or her!
- See our full list of gay finance News stories -
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