Following the news that homophobic peer Baroness Young has tabled amendments in the House of Lords to overturn the decision by MPs to lower the age of consent for gay men, the Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) is lobbying Humanist peers to oppose the amendments.
Lady Young, former Tory leader in the Lords and a committed Christian, will have the support of her fellow Christians including the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Church of England bishops who have already been vocal in their opposition to the lower age of consent.
GALHA’s Secretary George Broadhead said: “Lady Young managed to get an amendment carried in the Lords earlier this year exempting religions from the Human Rights Bill. If she succeeds in organising things as well as she did around this bill, there is a serious risk that the decision reached in the Commons could be overturned. Lady Young has described the lowering of the age of consent to 16 as ‘a paedophiles’ charter’. In the forthcoming debate she and her fellow Christians can be expected to repeat this calumny and all the other discredited lies they have been circulating about gay lifestyles.
“We must be prepared to combat these religious dinosaurs as vigorously as we campaigned for an equal age of consent in the first place. To this end, GALHA is lobbying Humanist peers like Baroness Muriel Turner and Lord Roy Hattersley, who are members of the Parliamentary Humanist Group, as well as others known to be sympathetic to lesbian and gay rights.”