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clovehitchedI'm currently at the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool, which is proving to be fascinating. I've been elected to serve on the executive of DELGA, the Lib Dem LGBT group, for 2011, talked one-on-one to Lynne Featherstone, Equality Minister, and attended some excellent fringe events on subjects as diverse as the role of faith and secularism in society and nuclear power (where I found out, to my surprise, that the chief exec of Renewables UK supports the building of new nuclear power stations, for reasons I found myself agreeing with).
Anyway, perhaps the most astonishing thing was this evening, at the DELGA fringe, jointly hosted with Stonewall, who are not very popular here, it seems. The panel consisted of Stonewall head honcho Ben Summerskill, Equality Minister Lynne Featherstone, Lib Dem gay MP, Stephen Gilbert and DELGA president and former MP, Dr Evan Harris. It was astonishing for what happened on the hotly debated subject of marriage equality in the UK, which Stonewall have been eerily silent on.
To cut a long story short, Ben Summerskill broke that silence by suggesting that marriage equality was too expensive, and that we would be better employed worrying about homophobic murder instead, and as he confided to me and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
zoeimogen, there are feminist arguments that marriage is inherently wrong and they need to be taken into account (last I checked, Stonewall are still claiming to be an LGB charity, not a radical feminist charity).
Anyway, Zoe has blogged about the whole thing here. You should go and read it if you are at all interested in LGBT marriage equality, seriously. It's astonishing stuff and calls into question whether someone like Summerskill should be at all involved in being a gay rights representative in the UK. I think he is deeply out of touch, and probably a liability at this point.
Also posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/246262.html - you can comment here or there.
Anyway, perhaps the most astonishing thing was this evening, at the DELGA fringe, jointly hosted with Stonewall, who are not very popular here, it seems. The panel consisted of Stonewall head honcho Ben Summerskill, Equality Minister Lynne Featherstone, Lib Dem gay MP, Stephen Gilbert and DELGA president and former MP, Dr Evan Harris. It was astonishing for what happened on the hotly debated subject of marriage equality in the UK, which Stonewall have been eerily silent on.
To cut a long story short, Ben Summerskill broke that silence by suggesting that marriage equality was too expensive, and that we would be better employed worrying about homophobic murder instead, and as he confided to me and
zoeimogen, there are feminist arguments that marriage is inherently wrong and they need to be taken into account (last I checked, Stonewall are still claiming to be an LGB charity, not a radical feminist charity).Anyway, Zoe has blogged about the whole thing here. You should go and read it if you are at all interested in LGBT marriage equality, seriously. It's astonishing stuff and calls into question whether someone like Summerskill should be at all involved in being a gay rights representative in the UK. I think he is deeply out of touch, and probably a liability at this point.
Also posted at http://auntysarah.dreamwidth.org/246262.html - you can comment here or there.
