Does Britain really want to project an anti-gay message on the world stage?
Does Britain actually want to project an anti-gay message on the world stage?
LGBT rights are under severe threat in large parts of the world. In parts of Africa and the Middle East they are practically non-existent, with gay and lesbian people facing execution or life imprisonment in states like Uganda.
A resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin is also attempting to halt what it sees as the spread of American and Western “non-traditional values”. In a speech last December, Putin said that traditional family values were a bulwark against “so-called tolerance – genderless and infertile”.
As is so often the case with the promotion of ‘traditional values’, what is really desired is a wholesale roll-back of LGBT rights.
And yet it hasn’t always been easy for gay and lesbian people living in the UK either, with many of the battles won in the recent past still being fought by the Trans community.
Pride in the distance we’ve travelled on LGBT rights should, though, be a facet of the image Britain wishes to project to the outside world.
This why the prospect of Philip Hammond as foreign secretary is a concern.
Hammond was one of just four Cabinet ministers to vote against gay marriage last year and has previously been accused of likening gay marriage to incest. Last year Pink News reported that Hammond “told students in Surrey that allowing gay couples to marry would be like sanctioning ‘incest’ … When the students asked why, the MP believed the government should retain a ban on same-sex marriages, he responded by likening the current ban on equal marriage to ‘incest’, where it is illegal for two siblings to enter into wedlock.”
Hammond voted against the equalisation of the age of consent, the repeal of Section 28 and against allowing same-sex couples to adopt children.
He doesn’t appear to have had a significant change of heart, either. At the end of last year Hammond was still maintaining that the Gay Marriage Bill was “damaging” for the Conservative Party and that he was “shocked” by the legislation.
This isn’t the sort of image Britain wants to project to the world at the best of times. When you have a resurgent global anti-LGBT movement grouped around a powerful ally in Russia it’s a serious cause for concern.
We’ve heard a lot from the government recently about the promotion of ‘British values’. One of these values is, presumably, the right LGBT people now have to live the life they want to live – regardless of ‘traditional’ opinion.
But for values to have any meaning they must be universally applicable. If you believe a white Englishman should have a particular right then you cannot deny the same right to a Black African.
The government has made significant progress in the area of LGBT rights for British citizens, yet it thinks it appropriate to appoint a man who has always been hostile toward them as its de facto spokesperson aborad. This at a time when LGBT rights are severely threatened in a significant proportion of the globe.
It may indeed be time for a fresh face at the foreign office, but forgive me if I’m not over the moon about the ascendance of Philip Hammond.
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23 Responses to “Do we really need a foreign secretary with an anti-gay rights record?”
DebsnSoots
Surely the issue is not whether the cabinet should be made up of people from minority groups – but rather that those in the cabinet should embrace equality and make policy that reduces the harmful effects of prejudice?
rat man
What do you want, an exhaustive list of behaviours that are natural, or not a choice, but not socially acceptable nor legal.
Not wanting gays to get have legal rights does not stop you lecturing other countries from blowing up their citizens or beating the living daylights out of gays.
When you can point to him advocating the beating of gays, then you have a point.
brad
I agree with the sentiment of what you say but….
I do not know what ’embracing equality’ means. Do you mean equal rights? For whom? On what basis? Is private health insurance compatible with your notion of equality? It is? Then one person receiving care while another does not is compatible with your notion of equality?
Is great wealth compatible with your notion of equality? If not then how do you redistribute it? Or is one person sleeping in the street while another owns palaces compatible with your idea of equality?
Are private schools compatible with equality? Must women women be allowed into mosques?
Equality is not a simple notion.
Henry Page
Oh, I see, so you set the parameters for when I have a point? In your dreams. The Conservative (Nasty) Party has an all too recent history of actively discriminating against LGBT people.
I for one would prefer Cabinet Ministers to be active supporters of equality on the basis of age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, race, religion or belief, sex, and sexual orientation. Not wanting gays to have legal rights does stop you lecturing other countries as they point to your own record and likely accuse you of double standards. How can a UK Foreign Secretary argue for legal rights for people in other countries when his/her record here is one at shows his belief in inequality?
Sorry, but I have a point – whether you like or agree with it or not.
snowstorm7
Most Muslim MPs, including Tory Muslim Sajid Javid, voted in favour of same-sex marriage, so the conflict you’re perceiving exists more in your imagination than in the political facts.