Delivering quality and tackling inequality for the LGBT community

I sincerely hope the Government does not buckle under pressure from the religious right and allow a discriminatory exemption for religious adoption agenciesin the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations.

If you look back at the key planks of equality legislation for the LGBT community, most have been introduced since May 1997, or by a Labour government thirty years earlier.

There was the Sexual Offences Act of 1967, which decriminalised homosexual acts between two men over 21. Labour legislation.

Same-sex partners recognised for immigration purposes – 1997. Labour legislation.

The ban on gays in the military thrown out – 2000. Labour legislation.

After years of struggle, the age of consent equalised at 16 in 2001. Whose legislation? Labour’s, of course.

2002 – equal rights recognised for same sex couples wanting to adopt unwanted children into a stable, loving home. Labour again.

2003 – Labour repeals the Tory badge of hate, Section 28, and enacts employment equality legislation outlawing discrimination of LGBT workers.

2004 – The crimes of buggery and gross indecency abolished by Labour’s Sexual Offences Act.

2005 – The insurance industry drops “the gay question”. Labour creates Civil Partnerships.

The Conservatives can, I suppose, take some credit for decriminalising homosexuality in Northern Ireland (1982), and reducing the age of consent from 21 to 18 (1994). But those advances are overshadowed by Section 28, and all the other assaults against equality mounted by the unreconstructed Tories who still exist in the shadows behind David Cameron.