Assignment - BBC World Radio

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/p00xs1qb

Homosexuality is not against the law in Iraq. Yet for years now, gay men and women have been persecuted for being different. In the lawless years post-Saddam Hussein, people blamed the radical militia groups but today - in a supposedly free Iraq - victims say that the state run police are also involved in the arrest, torture and sexual abuse of homosexuals. Natalia Antelava investigates for Assignment on the BBC World Service.

Listened to this broadcast in the early hours of this morning. Just trying to give more exposure and help us appreciate what happens in countries "we" liberate.

Allan Horsfall

Pictured here with Ray Gosling (on the left) Allan Horsfall was first active for gay law reform in the late 1950s. In 1964, he founded Britain’s first ever grassroots, gay-led rights organisation, the Manchester-based North-West Homosexual Law Reform Committee, which became the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in 1971, when I first met Allan during the Southampton and the Sheffield CHE conferences. In the 1970s and 80s, CHE was the UK’s largest ever democratic, mass membership LGBT rights organisation, with several thousand members nationwide. Allan was president of CHE from 1974 until his death. In 1997-98, Allan co-led the successful campaign to free the Bolton 7, who were facing jail for sex acts involving more than two men, under Britain’s antiquated, homophobic sex offence laws. We all walk in Allan’s shadow. He was still campaigning for LGBT rights until a few months before he died.
His activism spanned more than 50 years. Allan worked for the National Coal Board from 1959 to 1971 and then for the Salford Education Committee. He later campaigned for improved bus services as an executive member of the National Federation of Bus Users.From the late 1950s to the early 1960s, he was a Labour councillor in Nelson and a regional chair of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

In 1960 he unsuccessfully lobbied the Labour Party to support the Wolfenden Committee proposals for the decriminalisation of male homosexuality.Horsfall saw Wolfenden as a brave but flawed first step; being critical of the limited decriminalisation proposed and scathing about Wolfenden’s refusal to support public initiatives for the implementation of his report.Although much of his life was spent working for law reform, Allan sympathised with radical politics and encouraged each new generation of LGBT activists.A contemporary of Harry Hay and Frank Kameny in the US, and predating Harvey Milk by two decades, Allan ranks with Antony Grey, Jackie Forster and A E Dyson as one of the great pioneers of LGBT law reform in the UK.

For 48 years he was in a relationship with Harold Pollard, a head teacher and former chairman of CHE, until Pollard’s death in 1996.

Typical Tories

Conservative MP for Basingstoke Maria Miller, who was appointed yesterday by David Cameron as culture secretary and has direct responsibility for the newly moved Government Equalities Office (GEO), is under the spotlight after a number of activists noted her questionable voting record on LGBT equality.

According to the politics website PublicWhip.org.uk, since becoming an MP, Mrs Miller has either voted against or been absent from all major LGBT rights votes in the House of Commons.Labour MP Chris Bryant tweeted on Tuesday evening: “Maria Miller is now in charge of the equalities unit consultation on equal marriage. She voted [against] gay adoption”.There have been three votes in parliament of significance to the LGBT community since Mrs Miller entered the Commons in 2005.She was absent from the vote on the Equality Act of 2007, and she voted against allowing same-sex couples access to fertility treatment in 2008.However, in May of this year she urged Prime Minister David Cameron not to succumb to pressure from some on the right-wing of the Conservative Party, but to continue with the joint-coalition agreement to introduce same-sex marriage by 2015.Mark Pack, blogger of the LibDemVoice website, wrote that it is important to remember that there was equal displeasure by others when Home Secretary Theresa May was initially given responsibility for the GEO in May 2010.Whilst also having a questionable LGBT voting record, Mrs May subsequently demonstrated her commitment to supporting gay rights by recording an Out4Marriage video earlier this year.
In other reshuffle developments concerning gay parliamentarians, Grantham and Stamford MP Nick Boles has been promoted to the position of planning minister, and Reigate MP Crispin Blunt is returning to the backbenches after losing his job as prison minister.In May of this year, Mr Blunt joined the likes of Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg and Labour MP Andy Burnham in recording a video for the Out4Marriage campaign.In his video message, he said: “If like me you were born in 1960, the pace of change around all the equality issues over the last decade or so has been incredibly impressive, and what it means is that issues like same-sex marriage and a lack of access to it now just seem like the anomalies that simply leave those remaining examples of inequality, that everyone now really accepts is unacceptable.” Mr Blunt came out as gay in 2010, when he separated from his wife of 20 years.

Discrimination

British courts have found overwhelmingly against Christians, occasionally comparing their beliefs unfavourably with secular principles. Now the issue has reached the top of the legal process, and, by making this an oral hearing, the European Court is clearly troubled by it and taking it very seriously.
Its findings will constitute a watershed moment in what has become a slow-acting, but profound, social change. Attention will focus especially on the ruling in the cases where Christians claim they faced discrimination by being forced to provide services to gay people despite their belief that homosexual practise was wrong. It seems likely that, whatever is decided in Strasbourg, that Christians will soon be able to wear crosses at work, but the judgement on their beliefs about homosexuality will be far-reaching. In Scotland the question of independence will I have no doubt reach the people of Scotland to decide alongside the equity agenda of same sex marriage probably reaching statue by 2014! Get saving for the parties folks!