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Stephen Fry, speaking from California, said “If people want to reserve marriage for a man-woman thing then fine, call it something else."

He continued: "A bonding, a uniting, a legal yoking - that's fine. Yoking is a lovely word. Yoked together…"

Well Mr. Fry you may be happy with being yoked, but we deserve the right to have what everyone else can have. Not because we want something different or special, or because we want to shake things up or start rewriting dictionaries, but because it is a civil right.

If we pay the same taxes, we deserve the same rights.

Mr. Fry, its not that you’re saying separate but equal is fine, you are saying separate and unequal is ok with you. Perhaps you don’t need the financial benefits that come with being able to marry your partner, but don’t then deny that to the rest of us.

It’s incredibly depressing to see what should be role models for young LGBT people, people like yourself Mr. Fry, who have immeasurable talent and wit and sophistication, carelessly dismissing something that so many are working so hard for. It really doesn’t help.

It further damages young LGBT people, people who get tormented at school for their sexuality by bullies who think homophobic language and taunting is acceptable because they hear Chris Moyle doing it on Radio 1, but to then see you on Chris Moyles’ Quiz Night! It makes young LGBT people who get called “gay” think that they are just making a fuss out of nothing because when they see you and other celebrities go on his show, it puts out the message that these taunts are nothing to complain about.

The fact that you and your partner can walk down the street together without the threat of a lynching, that you can host TV shows and that you and your partner can see each other in hospital if one of you should take ill, is the product of many working long and hard, often at huge personal cost. Its because of those who have fought for civil rights and against homophobia for decades.

With so few out gay and lesbians in the media, and even fewer with anything matching your talent, Mr. Fry, you are looked to as a role model, whether you want to be or not. But you are not helping by dismissing the fight for gay and lesbian civil rights and dallying around with homophobic bullies.

LGBT Network have been calling for this reviw of the blanket ban on gay and bi men giving blood since we raised it at Scottish Parliament last year. We presented an array of evidence from around the world that showed it is not protecting the saftey of blood by having a blanket ban on gay and bi men and allowing all straight people to donate no matter who they had sex with and when.

Our evidence we presented to parliament is available here http://www.lgbtnetwork.eu/?page_id=1024  and you can see for yourself how a change in the criteria is best to keep blood products safe.

Unlike Stonewall and others, this ban cannot just be seen as discrimination. No one has a right to be a blood donor, but those who are allowed to donate blood have a responsibility to practice safe sex. We know many many gay and bi men do, and many, many straight men do not.

Therefore to make blood as safe as possible, the donor eligibility should be based on factors such as when was the last time a person had unprotected sex or sex with a new partner and when did the person last have an HIV test. An HIV negative man who is having safe sex with another man is prevented from donating, yet a straight man who had unprotected sex with a woman he KNEW to be HIV + can donate after a year.

This is part of a larger need for us to look again at HIV. As we showed in our evidence to parliament, the majority of new infections are from heterosexual people. HIV is something we all must think about, we all must protect ourselves and we all must get tested, regularly.

Reviewing the donor eligibility criteria for blood donations is an important first step in creating a new attitude to HIV that is based on facts not fear, and this review is a good move towards that.

Today the LGBT Network submitted its petition to the Scottish Parliament, calling for the Marriage (Scotland) Act of 1977[1] to be amended to allow two persons of the same sex to register a civil marriage and to register a religious marriage, where the particular faith institution allowed it. In short; to bring marriage equality to Scotland.

The Civil Partnership Act of 2004[2] was passed by Westminster for the whole of the UK. The Scottish Executive consented to Westminster legislating a Scottish section within the Act. When a Civil Partnership is registered, the law mandates that it is performed in a secular manner. Therefore gay people of faith whose religion may wish to celebrate their marriage are not allowed to have that done. Nor does the Act offer any provision for a ceremony to be held when the partnership is signed, as opposed to marriage where words have to be spoken as well as the register signed.

The Scottish Parliament was founded on the value of equality; that every citizen is entitled to the same rights as all others, and to be respected and protected by the government we elect. Although the Civil Partnership Act was and is groundbreaking, the status quo remains that there is one law for straight couples and another law for gay couples. The fact that they have equal status does not detract from the fact that they are separate and different.

If we truly believe in equality; if we actually want to live in a society where citizens are treated the same no matter what their sexuality, then allowing separate but equal to remain the law of the land simply cannot stand. The era of discrimination and segregation based on the colour of a persons’ skin began to be dismantled with the US Supreme Court ruling that “separate but equal is inherently unequal.”[3]

Yet more than 50 years later, we are still denied access to the basic institution of marriage in the UK. Instead we have been given something that although is considered equal under the law, is also considered separate. A gay couple that is legally married in Spain or South Africa has thier marriage changed to a civil partnership when they come to the UK. A Canadian couple went to the High Court in 2006, seeking to have their legally valid Canadian marriage recognised as such under UK law, just as heterosexual marriages are recognised no matter where they are performed in the world. Sir Mark Potter, the High Court Judge rejected their plea in Wilkinson v. Kitzinger[4]. In his judgement he stated how civil partnerships were indeed different from marriage, and that the government, in denying gay couples the right to marry, was engaging in a legitimate attempt to protect marriage and family life. He also effectively fined the couple £25,000 by making them pay the governments legal costs.

More recently in October 2008, Lord Bach, the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State in the Ministry of Justice reaffirmed the British governments opposition to same sex marriage. He states that when the government passed the bill “we made a distinction in it and did not call single-sex partnerships marriage… it did not call those partnerships marriage, and that remains the Government’s policy.”[5]

That blatant inequality is incompatible with the values of the Scottish Parliament. It conflicts with the principles of Scottish law, and is contradictory to the inalienable rights of every citizen.

The definition of marriage is not static; it changes as our society does. For many centuries, marriage was a mere contract to better the position of one family or to remove rivalry with another. Our interpretation of what constitutes a relationship has progressed from a wife being considered little more than the property of her husband to a partnership of equals; and our society now stands at the point where it affords equal protection to couples regardless of gender. So what then are the reasons for allowing only marriage for straight couples and civil partnership for gay couples? If they are really the same, why are there two different laws and two different forms to fill in at the registrar’s office?

The word marriage evokes timeless values of love and commitment, and it radiates a clarity of status in society as well as a subtle collection of personal, social and spiritual meanings that two people are united in all aspects of their life. Marriage is the strongest word we have for a declaration of total love and commitment to one another; and to deny any person that opportunity is to deny the full measure of dignity and humanity that we are all endowed with.

Can our society not be one where two people decide what status is best for them? Straight couples who wish to get married already get the choice between having a religious or civil ceremony. But of course there are some straight couples who would balk at the thought of even entering into a civil marriage, and would perhaps prefer a civil partnership, free of some of the associations and imagery that marriage brings. Just as how there are gay couples, who embrace the concept of marriage, and wish to celebrate their love by entering into this ancient institution, be that as a civil ceremony or one conducted by a progressive religion.

By denying same sex couples the right to marry on the grounds that some religious groups are opposed to it, enshrines that particular religious dogma into law, and ignores the diversity of faith groups that exist who would willingly marry two people of the same sex. In terms of performing religious marriage, it must be up to that particular faith to decide who to marry, not any government or parliament. Our 21st century state must respect the pluralism of belief and the diversity of faith that exists in Britain.

This petition is but one small step in the road to full equality and participation in every aspect of society. As we have seen from the battles over same sex marriage in the United States, there are those who will spend all they can and will fight to the very last to prevent gay couples being married. This does not mean we should run from the fight. We should not be afraid of standing up for what we believe in just because someone else is preparing to knock us down. And we should never be willing to compromise on our fundamental values, on our basic human rights or on our belief in the morality of equality.

This makes it incumbent on all of us who wish to live in a more equal world that we do not let someone else fight for a right we wish to enjoy. This is not the LGBT Networks campaign for marriage equality, this is simply a petition we thought was a good idea.

The campaign must come from all of us; from the group of friends who debate amongst themselves whether they would really be happy with a civil partnership; from the young person who isn’t happy to accept she is growing up in a country that wont afford her the same rights enjoyed by others; and from the happy couple who go down to the registry office, and instead of asking for civil partnership documents, demand that they be allowed to marry.

Some will say that there are more important things to do, and in some ways that’s true. But we can do more than one thing at a time. Putting your name to a petition or starting a conversation doesn’t detract from anything else that needs done.

But change doesn’t just happen. If we want it, we have to act like it. We have to stand up to those that say marriage should only be for straight people, or that civil partnerships are enough for us or don’t rock the boat to much in case some people don’t agree. Of course there are going to be people who are against this, but we should never shrink from the fight just because we might get hit.

In 2009, the 40^th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion, I think about those courageous individuals who fought hand to hand with the police, to assert their right to exist, to be themselves openly and to be with the people they love, free from intimidation and harassment. Their legacy is not the laws that favour us, but our desire, our passion, and our right to be equal.

Nick Henderson

Director, LGBT Network
9/1/09

Every week there seems to be a story on the Pink News website about homophobic content on the BBC, and more often than not there is a follow up story about how the BBC has ignored those complaints or defended jokes about hanging gays in Iran[1] or nasty slurs against Linsday Lohan and lesbians.[2]

It seems to take a bandwagon as big as Russell Brand and Jonathan for the BBC to acknowledge that has done anything wrong.

But this ignores the bigger issue. I think that with the multitude of programmes that are broadcast over a sprawling network as large as the BBC that is so closely related to British society, there are bound to be incidents where we as a community are offended or attacked, still so pervasive in British society.

But within a network as sprawling and as diverse as the BBC, there is no space for the gay community to defend itself against such attacks, or use the media as a way to educate people about the LGBT community and reinforce that such attacks are not acceptable.

If there was a racial slur made against an Asian person on a mainstream BBC programme, there would rightly be indignation within the Asian community, with space for debate provided by the Asian media, such as the BBC Asian Network.

I think it’s a great thing to have such diversity on the BBC. It is funded by pretty much everyone in the UK, and therefore communities within Britain deserve space and time on our national broadcaster to discuss and debate issues important to the community, to develop the communities’ culture and promote new trends and different ideas.

How much do you think the BBC spends on programmes directed at the LGBT community? Well, they wouldn’t tell me when I asked, but they were more than happy to tell me that they were “determined to portray fully-rounded gay & lesbian ‘normalised’ characters in our television output.”[3]

I might have been also interested, according to this freedom of information response, to know that there are gay people on Doctors, Dog Borstal, and there was an entire documentary on BBC Three one time, called. The Trouble With Gay Men.[4]

It is to the BBC’s credit that they include openly gay characters (although there is less good to be said about the inclusion of Lesbian, Bisexual or Transgender people) on a few of their mainstream shows, but I fail to see how that significantly benefits the gay community, when it’s still just a token gay in a programme that is overwhelmingly heterosexist. It can even be detrimental in trying to build a gay culture that LGBT characters are portrayed with everyone around them being so cool with their sexuality that to the casual straight viewer, it appears that there are no real problems facing the community anymore.

One must only glance a few times a week at websites such as pinknews.co.uk to see that there are dozens of stories every day that are of supreme interest to gay people, but maybe not to anyone else.

What we lack in Britain is the space to discuss them, to debate and to challenge British society and our own community.

There is not the time on mainstream BBC to look at the range of issues that affect us in depth, and to give our culture and our history the proper investigations and debate that it so sorely deserves.

There lacks the opportunities for LGBT people to have programmes that deal with LGBT issues or are really only of interest to the LGBT community to have that reach the target audience through the mass media.

When a homophobic slur is made on a mainstream programme, there is nowhere for us to talk about it as a community; to look at the issues behind what was said, or to debate our place in British society.

According to research carried out by Stonewall, LGBT people provide around £200 million[5] of the license fee, and in return we are subject to homophobic abuse on a weekly basis, and confronted by a wall of silence when we complain to the BBC.

To start with, there needs to be LGBT dedicated programming across the vast array of the BBC network. Programmes that are aimed at the gay community and deal with issues important to us, and that should encourage LGBT people themselves to be involved in the programme at all stages of development. For example, a daily radio talk shows that discusses LGBT news and current events, that can ask the tough questions to politicians and public figures on issues that are important to us. Or a weekly TV show that gives a roundup of gay entertainment, music, movies and books, and space for up and coming LGBT stars to make their name.

Now I am not a TV producer, but there are plenty of LGBT people who are or who have better ideas than this, and we are entitled to have the BBC listen to us. Eventually I want to see a digital TV and radio station that provides the broad range of programming that our community deserves. This is not about segregation of news or entertainment, but it is about providing a space in British society for LGBT people to have their say, a say that is long overdue.

 

Nick Henderson
Director, LGBT Network
6/1/09