The Gay and Lesbian Humanist Association (GALHA) is apprehensive about the new Labour Government’s promises about lesbian and gay rights. It believes that these promises could well be compromised by those made to the religious lobby during the election campaign.
The Labour manifesto’s commitment to bring forward legislation providing discrimination protection at work owes more to the European Directive than its own initiative, says GALHA. And the manifesto also says: “We welcome the contribution of churches and other faith-based organisations as partners of local and central government in community renewal. We will use a successor to the Lambeth Group to look at the Government’s interface with faith communities.”
GALHA spokesperson George Broadhead commented: “Given their blatant homophobia, we are alarmed that religionists are apparently to be given such a high level of input into the Government’s legislative programme. We are concerned that the Government has promised to increase substantially the number of religious schools and provide over £24 million a year to fund them. Given the hostile stance taken on lesbian and gay relationships and the strong opposition to lesbian and gay rights on the part of the various faiths – Anglican, Roman Catholic, Orthodox Judaic, Islamic, etc. – we cannot see how gays and non-believers like ourselves will be fairly treated in these schools – either in sex education or the employment of teachers.”
George Broadhead continued: “In many ways the demands of the gay and faith communities are totally irreconcilable. Faith groups do not want to employ practising homosexuals or atheists in their schools or welfare establishments, and yet the Government has set itself the task of introducing anti-discrimination legislation at work that will protect both sexual orientation and religious belief. How it is going to satisfy both sides, when the differences appear so irreconcilable, is as yet unclear. The ferocious opposition to the gay-friendly European Directive by the religious lobby indicates that when the legislation comes forward in Westminster there will be another big push to exempt religion from the terms of the legislation. This must not be allowed to happen. Religious groups must not be given carte blanche to discriminate against lesbians and gays and non-believers, particularly in jobs that are funded by the taxpayer.”
In an interview with The Pink Paper, Labour minister Chris Smith intimated that a bill would be brought forward aimed at repealing Section 28, even though there has been no official commitment to do so in the manifesto.
George Broadhead said: “We will have to wait and see what form this proposed bill would take, but we suspect that in order to succeed, it will have to make a raft of concessions to the religious objectors. If this is the case, it could make the situation worse rather than better. At least Section 28 is unworkable (although it does have the insidious effect of unnecessarily restraining those who don’t understand it and provides an excuse for those who don’t want to include homosexuality in sex education lessons). If there were large-scale concessions to religious demands for restrictions on sex education and other progressive policies in schools in exchange for the repeal of Section 28, it could be catastrophic.”