Who needs enemies....Gay Inc. In The U.K.

By: Craig Rigby
There has been a festering sore at the centre of gay politics in the UK for a while. This week was the party conference for the smaller of the two parties in the governing coalition and it seems to have brought the puss filled ulcer to a greasy, leaking head. Only time will tell if the boil can be lanced or if it will cause blood poisoning and death for the patient.

The patient in this case is the gay rights organisation Stonewall. Stonewall was founded in the 1980s to lobby the government for civil rights for lesbian and gay people. It has had a lot of success in its time. It successfully lobbied for gays in the military, employment protections, and the right of equal access to goods and services. Stonewall was also instrumental in gaining the very strong UK civil partnerships laws, laws which are different to marriage only by name.

But this is where the trouble began, while most gay people are happy with civil partnerships as they stand, most are also irritated by the lack of the word itself. Many people blame Stonewall for the situation. At the time of the consultation on gay partnership rights, Stonewall decided that pushing for every right associated with marriage was good enough. As long as gay people had equal legal entitlements, they were willing to let the word go. I for one think this was a mistake, it would have been far better to push for everything and be turned down than to roll over meekly.

U.K. Pride Week Politics

By: Craig Rigby
Gay marriage has been in the news this week in the UK. Politicians from both sides of the aisle are being asked about it so I wanted to go through what they are all saying, and what it may mean for the future.

Most of them seem well meaning, but a lot of them are confused. As an example take Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London. When asked about gay marriage in 2000, before he was a serious politician, he wrote that if you were to allow gay marriage you may as well let a man marry his dog. This week while at a gay pride march (nothing like pride for sucking up to the gay vote) he told gay rights campaigners that he thought the conservative party should support gay marriage. Later, when asked for more information he stated that he fully supports civil partnerships. He doesn't know the difference between the two. How well informed our leaders are...

Also take comments by the Prime Minister. Writing in The Independent newspaper about what he wants to do for gay people, he stated:

“I know there is one other subject that the gay community is particularly interested in: marriage. As someone who believes in commitment, in marriage and in civil partnerships, my view is that if religious organisations want to have civil partnerships registered at their places of worship that should be able to happen.”

Here you can see the Prime Minister seems confused as well. He takes a point about marriage and answers it with a policy on civil partnerships. So before we move onto the other politicians lets set him straight, what exactly are the differences between civil partnerships and marriages?

Ireland Passes Civil Partnership Bill

By: Craig Rigby
So I spotted some good news buried in the back of my news paper a week ago. The Republic of Ireland parliament has passed a civil partnership billed extending some of the legal rights associated with marriage to gay people. This Irish President has now signed the law having found it fully compatible with the Irish constitution. This is no mean feat for a country in which the catholic church still has so much influence.


The Irish Justice Minister has called the legislation “one of the most important pieces of civil rights legislation to be enacted since independence.” And who can disagree?

I don’t much follow Irish politics, it doesn’t make the news much over here. Normally the only Irish news I get comes from my grandparents, who despite being English back through the bloodline and never having lived in Ireland manage to have become Irish community leaders in the UK. They even once had dinner with the Irish President… crazy…. Anyway, here is my uneducated understanding of the situation. I am sure my Granddad will read it and call me up to put me right if I get too much wrong.