Political prisoner, activist, journalist, hymn-writer, emerging thinktanker, aspiring novelist, "tribal elder", 2019 parliamentary candidate for North West Durham, Shadow Leader of the Opposition, "Speedboat", "The Cockroach", eagerly awaiting the second (or possibly third) attempt to murder me.
Sunday, 19 December 2010
The Magnificient Evans?
Perhaps not. But at least he had the wit and the decency to vote against the further extension of the dangerously low age of consent at 16. To vote against the civil partnerships arbitrarily restricted to unrelated same-sex couples. And to vote against the pantomime repeal of Section 28, under which no prosecution had ever been brought, and which had never been known to cause a single case of the much-trumpeted school bullying, any form of which is exactly as unacceptable as any other form, as anyone knows who deserves to hold any position in a school.
In Pink News it says
ReplyDelete"Mr Evans also said that he regrets not initially supporting the equalisation of the age of consent and the abolition of Section 28, designed to stop the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools.
“I was confused about how to protect youngsters at school. The law did the opposite of what was intended. We shouldn’t have been telling young people that being gay was wrong.”
He has to say that now. Bloody Cameron. But his voting record is his voting record.
ReplyDeleteIt's not a case of "having to say that now" though, The Daily Mail says this of his voting record.
ReplyDelete"Mr Evans, MP for the Ribble Valley, voted against lowering the age of gay consent from 18 to 16 in 1998.
Two years later, however, he voted in favour of the measure. The law was finally changed in 2001.
The MP was also absent from a vote in 2001 which paved the way for civil partnerships.
But he backed the reform in 2004 after following an agreed party line laid down by then Tory leader Michael Howard.
He also abstained in a vote on gay adoption, but in this instance he was given a ‘night off’ by party managers who had imposed a three line whip against the plan.
It was only in 2003 that Mr Evans became more active in the fight for equal rights – voting for the repeal of Section 28 which banned local authorities from promoting homosexuality in a positive light.
As I said.
ReplyDelete