As news emerges that support for the Conservatives has plummeted in the LGBT community since the party formed an alliance with the Polish Law and Justice Party (PiS)' the Green’s parliamentary candidate for Brighton Kemptown to challenge his Tory counterpart Simon Kirby to ‘come clean’ on gay rights.
“I am not surprised that support for the Tories in the LGBT community is collapsing when the party doesn’t mind teaming up with homphobes as long as they’re sufficiently anti-European'” said Mr Duncan' who is a councillor in Queen’s Park' Brighton.
“One of the Tories latest strange allies is on record as having warned that ‘…homosexuality threatens nothing less than the downfall of civilisation’.
“But the real issue isn’t whether Tory friends in Europe are homophobic – it’s whether a Tory government here will offer more than a few supportive words for the LGBT community: whether it will introduce concrete policies to end the remaining vestiges of homophobic discrimination.
“As party leader' Dave Cameron hasn’t made a single policy announcement on LGBT issues – but he has found time to vote' last year' to deny lesbian couples equal access to IVF fertility treatment. In 2003' he voted to retain Section 28.
“I think voters have a right to know where their politicians stand: so I have today written to Simon Kirby asking him to come clean on exactly where he stands o0n eight crucial questions for the local LGBT community.”
The eight questions Mr Kirby has been asked all relate to what he would actually do if elected MP for Brighton Kemptown.
Mr Duncan’s challenge asks:
Will you:
1. Urge David Cameron to withdraw from the European Parliament alliance with the homophobic Polish Law and Justice Party' Dutch Christian Union and Latvian Fatherland and Freedom Party?
2. Amend the Equality Bill to protect LGBT people against harassment?
3. Repeal the ban on same-sex civil marriage and on opposite-sex civil partnerships?
4. Cancel Labour's proposal to allow faith schools to teach sex and relationship education in accordance with their own religious ethos' which usually condemns same-sex couples as sinful' immoral' unnatural and inferior?
5. End the blanket' lifetime prohibition on gay and bisexual men donating blood?
6. Halt the deportation of genuine LGBT asylum seekers to violently homophobic countries like Saudi Arabia' Iraq' Nigeria' Jamaica' Iran and Uganda?
7. Refuse visas and work permits to Jamaican reggae singers' like Bounty Killer and Buju Banton' who incite the murder of LGBT people?
8. Urge the police and CPS to prosecute record stores and radio stations that promote songs encouraging the killing of LGBTs?
Mr Duncan added: “Just to be absolutely clear' if I am elected MP for Brighton Kemptown I will do all these things – because I am committed to delivering a fairer society for all of us' gay or straight. I wonder if Simon Kirby can and will make the same commitment?”
NOTES
- According to a poll carried out last week' just 22% of readers of pinknews.co.uk are considering voting Conservative in next year’s General Election' down from 39% in June. See: http://www.pinknews.co.uk/2009/10/09/pinknews.co.uk-poll-gay-support-drops-dramatically-for-tories/
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