As election fever gets ready to grip the nation, Damien Killeen reports on Pink News’ live-streamed political debate…
Last week, ‘Pink News’ sat down for a live streamed debate with Labour’s Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, Tory peer and Leader of the House of Lords Baroness Stowell, the leader of the Green Party Natalie Bennett, Lib Dem Chief Whip Don Foster, and UKIP Culture spokesman Peter Whittle. Having made the effort to look enough like a metropolitan homosexual and also wearing a bright enough shirt to distract security from my crippling poorness I managed to get into the venue.
A debate discussing such important topics can mean only one thing of course, it’s election time again and the main parties are all calling for our LGBTQI+ voting asses. This year there are more names to learn – a hung parliament (*snigger*) reminds everyone in the media that those smaller parties outside could serve some purpose – but in general the routine remains the same.
The debate was hosted by Evan Davis, who did his utmost to prod and trip the interviewees into some meaningful responses although the whole thing ended up being terribly polite. The problem with being bipartisan is you can’t really attack one without, for the sake of fairness, attacking all. Very few are up to the task and neither, apparently, was Evan who kept the audience tittering congenially but spilled no blood.
It was, however, a chance to see some of Britain’s political heavyweights (and Peter Whittle) square off. I’m going to 
kick things off with everyone’s favourite Tory, Baroness Stowell. She happily consented to Evan Davis calling her Tina so I will, too, not because she gave me permission but because I feel like she’s not the target audience of QX Magazine and as such will never read this. Also Tina is an amazing name. (And Barbra. Barbra is great as well. Imagine you had two male cats called Tina and Barbra. Fantastic.) Anyway our Tina is best known in the gay community for steering the bill through the House of Lords for the Conservatives that legalised same sex marriage. In other words her track record is pretty top notch.
So, how did she fair with the issues? Well, for the most part she towed the Tory line of a one issue election very consistently – if in doubt bring things back to recent economic recovery. She managed to deflect what could have been the most uncomfortable question of her evening – whether queer voters should forget past injustices that Tories perpetrated against them – by openly apologising for Section 28 and again focusing on progress and current achievements.
Tina supports the existing structure of relationship & sex education (RSE) in schools as sufficient, outright rejecting the idea that a specific RSE education class that also addressed gender and sexuality should be made a legal obligation for any schools, let alone primary ones. She also supports the idea that David Cameron should be the UK’s LGBT envoy to the world. I think Tina might have been drunk.
“This is one of the worst human rights abusing regimes and our approach to Saudi Arabia on all kinds of issues, including arms sales, is a disgrace.”
Now, time to look at the real star of the night, the vein in Yvette Cooper’s neck. The only person to express real passion and anger during the evening, Yvette won this debate by virtue of seeming to actually care about the politics at hand, strange as that sounds. Yvette really wants RSE education to be compulsory from primary to secondary school. Like really. You get the impression that Cooper has been running at a wall in Parliament with this for a while now and she isn’t taking it sitting down. Her war-cry that “the kids are right, the parents are right – everybody is right who is campaigning for this – we need compulsory sex and relationships education in all of our schools” gets perhaps the biggest applause of the night.
The main question that tripped Cooper up involved the possible introduction of genderless passports. Admittedly no one gave a particularly satisfactory answer but given that she is currently Shadow Home Secretary you would expect a more committed answer. Waffling about the difficulties and complications in changing laws does not a fulfilling answer make. Yet, politics is still a very heterosexual world so is it logical to expect a politician to grasp complex notions of alternative identity in a debate context?
UKIP spokesman Peter Whittle managed to be exactly what you might expect from a gay man who left the Tories because they were too liberal. Peter tried initially to link every question to immigration (why build new housing when you can camp out on the cliffs of Dover with a riffle) but when it became apparent that this wasn’t a popular tactic he sank back and avoided taking a clear stance on anything else. He did provide the line to reassure the audience “Let’s get rid of the elephant in the room. You know UKIP opposed gay marriage. That I would say is changed. In the sense that, we accept the law.” What a gem.
Speaker Don Foster was keen to push the Lib Dems as guardians of power. Their track record in reigning in the Tories’ more conservative leanings has merit, but by discussing the party’s ‘for greater good’ track record of betraying Lib Dem values for future rewards isn’t the best; for too long minorities have recognised ‘for the greater good’ is at their expense. Frankly, the intrigue of political alliances is far more interesting on HBO and as Don is no Tyrion Lannister (and as no one I could see was having sex behind him while he talked) it is hard to imagine many warmed to his argument.
Natalie Bennett highlighted one of the strongest points of the night – although she stopped short of Yvette’s rallying passion. While the other parties have to rely on rhetoric, the Greens have the benefit of the high ground in that they already widely support minority issues – ‘We have, we are, I am’ is a much stronger position on queer issues than ‘We hope, we try, I may’. Natalie’s best received moment came when she decried the UK’s relationship with Saudi Arabia. Refusing to mince her words she declared “This is one of the worst human rights abusing regimes and our approach to Saudi Arabia on all kinds of issues, including arms sales, is a disgrace.”
“For too long minorities have recognised ‘for the greater good’ is at their expense.”
The only question Natalie couldn’t give a satisfactory answer to was the question none of the panel managed to answer – regarding updating surrogacy regulations to be more in line with U.S. laws. It was however not so surprising. Asking for such detailed answers off the cuff to such specific questions seems foolhardy. Other questions varied between being too complex to be satisfying or too broad to be worthwhile. Politics is still a very heterosexual world, so is it logical to expect a politician to grasp complex notions of alternative identity in a debate context? If this is a queer debate why is one of the biggest topics housing? It’s an election. That topic is being broken down from every angle by the mainstream media. Perhaps this small amount of time put aside for a LQBTQI+ debate could tackle relevant issues that won’t be discussed in the ‘Evening Standard’ every day for the next month.
