The politician helping Britain out of the gay 'dark ages'
We speak to Kate Green, Britain’s
Shadow Equalities Minister about gay marriage, trans rights and what’s next in
the LGBT struggle
‘Disgusting, distasteful, cruel and wrong.’
That’s how British Member of Parliament (MP) and Shadow Equalities Minister
Kate Green describes some of the debate in parliament over gay marriage.
But Green and the many pro-equality
politicians are winning. And she is already thinking about what they should be
focusing on as the next step for LGBT equality.
We caught up with her after the
Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill for England and Wales had cleared the elected
House of Commons and just passed an initial vote in Britain’s upper chamber of
parliament, the House of Lords. But everything is still to fight for until the
final vote in the Lords, likely to be on 15 July.
As the opposition Labour party’s
lead on equality, Green has been at the forefront of the debate. Meanwhile, she
has also been involved in bringing transgender issues to the center of British
politics for the first time.
Green knows marriage is not the
final hurdle in the LGBT struggle – bullying in schools, a glass ceiling at
work and cuts to gay and trans services are all on her mind. But the fact the
marriage bill is now almost certain to pass is giving pro-gay politicians hope
and confidence.
We started by talking about the
bill and how it will change Britain.
Were you surprised by the result in the House of Lords?
I was surprised by the size of the
majority. We have to be a little cautious as peers don’t traditionally want to
vote down a bill at second reading. They are revising chamber and want the
debate in full so they can revise it. Nonetheless it was a much bigger majority
than I thought we would see – it was two to one nearly.
We have always been confident there
is a majority in the House of Lords for the legislation and nothing we have
seen this week has shaken that confidence. My impression was some of the speeches
were really the last howls of protest of a dying breed.
Even in the House of Commons we saw some of the arguments about
polygamy…
Well they are just disgusting,
distasteful, and cruel and wrong and ill-informed and nasty.
I thought there were also some very
beautiful speeches in the House of Commons, particularly from some Conservative
MPs because it has been harder – or perceived to be harder – in that party to
come out. And they were talking about how this enabled them to be completely
open and relaxed about their sexuality and talk about it publicly.
This is why you have to pass this
legislation. For how long have we prevented people from being themselves? How
cruel is that?
I said in my second reading speech,
you are a teenager and you are trying to make sense of who you are and your own
sexuality, not to endorse a particular form of sexual orientation by not
allowing people to marry tells young people ‘there’s something a bit wrong with
you, you are a bit screwed up’. That’s outrageous – what are we doing to young
people? All we do then is store up unhappiness for years to come.
Politicians lead and respond to public opinion. Do you think
politicians’ views on trans issues and gay issues may have given the wrong
message to society?
For gay and lesbian issues
undoubtedly, even we heard again in the House of Lords some really quite
bizarre and offensive and hurtful things [in the debate over gay marriage].
It seems to me for gay and lesbian
people this is the last hurrah of the old guard. They are so plainly now out of
step with where the country is and the polling that Stonewall [leading British
gay campaign organization] did was pretty clear on all that.
Political leaders still feel it is
acceptable to use this language that is obviously utterly wrong but for lesbian
and gay issues it is becoming more and more something society will not
tolerate.
For transgender issues, I don’t
think we are there yet. You don’t see many politicians speaking about it at
all, and I think it is considered much more socially acceptable to use language
that is inappropriate and actually very offensive and hurtful. Some of the
implications transgender people are not safe to be around children – what
possible evidence have they got for that kind of assertion? Most politicians
are still keeping their head down on the issue.
Do you expect the bill to lead to a kind of wider benefit?
I do. I think it will be part of
the process of absolutely mainstreaming attitudes to same-sex couples.
Politicians are now thinking what
are the next frontiers for LGBT issues? Media portrayal is a huge one. I think
health – mental and physical health. We know there are much higher levels of
depression, higher levels of suicide among some lesbian and gay people.
Mental health is significantly
impacted if people can’t acknowledge their sexuality or suffer bullying or
mistreatment as a result of it. So there is a clear new policy frontier to be
following there.
There is a lot of work to be done
in schools. Stonewall are doing a great project as are Schools Out [LGBT groups
working in schools] around getting schools to take on homophobic bullying, to
think of the way sex and relationships education can create acceptance and
understanding of same-sex relationships. But the fact is this government will
not make sex and relationships education a compulsory part of the curriculum so
it is up to us in the Labour Party to push that.
The other thing I am very worried
about is public spending cuts, particularly in local authorities, which will
impact on specialist support services for the LGBT community – so advice
services, specialist mental health services, advocacy, even just the community
and social activities which have enjoyed a degree of public funding.
Gay marriage has helped make the Conservative government appear more
gay friendly. Are you worried that will cost Labour some traditional LGBT
votes?
I think people will probably notice
Labour is still very much the party setting the agenda on this. The government
wouldn’t have got this legislation through if it hadn’t been for Labour votes.
Most people’s view is by the time
of the election this legislation is not going to be an election issue. That’s a
good thing. It may have been an electoral advantage for us if there had been an
election this year, but it is probably more important it is not an issue at
all.
At the moment some transgender people are still concerned about the
equal marriage bill because it says the wife or husband of a transgender person
can stop them getting a gender recognition certificate so they can veto their
marriage going from being a ‘straight’ to a ‘gay’ one.
It is important to have the debate
about this because you are balancing the sensitivities of two members of the
couple.
On the one hand you have the person
who wishes to undergo gender reassignment feeling it is a very personal
decision for them. At the moment the other spouse can take the decision, under
the legislation as it is currently drafted, for the marriage to continue
uninterrupted.
But on the other hand you have to
recognize there will be some partners who will feel I am absolutely not able to
contemplate being married to someone of the same sex and although I can take
action to end that marriage I don’t see why I should be put in that position.
And the legislation says a person who has already transitioned still
has to declare their original birth-certificate gender to their future spouse.
But if they had a criminal conviction or were a rapist they wouldn’t have to
declare it.
Or even a history of child abuse…
So what does a partner have a right to know before marrying someone?
You are talking about a
relationship which really has to be based on trust and openness but I guess in
many marriages people keep secrets. To what degree the state has a role in that
is quite a hard question.
I know it seems unimaginably
unlikely that people wouldn’t disclose but there may be cases where it is long
in someone’s past. It is a really interesting question and it exemplifies a
wider issue.
We have seen the death of trans teacher Lucy Meadows who was harassed
by the press and the publishing of the Leveson Report into standards in the
British media which criticized reporting on trans issues. Your party wants to
implement Leveson’s recommendations in full to help trans people...
Yes, and there are many other
advantages to Leveson being implemented in full as well.
But how much faith do you have that the post Leveson world is going to
be better?
That’s a very hard question. I
think certain sections of the media, certain publications, were cavalier,
callous, cruel, irresponsible and unthinking.
It was very interesting reading
some of the transcripts of the evidence given to Leveson and seeing them almost
being brought up short by some of the questioning and saying things like ‘that
wasn’t our finest hour’.
It was as if it was the first time
some elements of the media had been confronted with what they were doing – and
that human beings were involved and they were damaging and destroying their
lives.
Whether that has resulted in any
immediate change of behavior, I think there is not much sign it has, there have
still been some pretty egregious examples. On the other hand it seems to me
that it is important we use Leveson and the terrible death of Lucy Meadows and
the climate of discussion to keep banging this message home.
In the end the media are not just
leaders of public opinion, they are massively, massively responsive to it. I
have been quite struck by how much the debate has moved in the last seven
months and I think it is hugely down to the courage of some transgender people
speaking out now and saying ‘this is how we are being treated’.
There have been several big meetings in parliament over the last few
months about trans issues. Do you think this is a flash in the pan or the start
of something interesting?
No I think it is the start of
something interesting. Because the campaigners, the advocates, on trans issues
are organizing. They are operating in a sustained, determined, systematic way
and as a result they have now got some momentum going.
And I have done some events in the
last few weeks. One was organized by Trans Media Watch when they invited MPs to
come along and sign up to their pledge on the portrayal of transgender people
in the media. And MPs did come, by parliament standards it was a high turn out
– and across party and I think there were peers there.
That campaign is beginning now to
get political purchase and they will sustain it, I think they are very
determined to. Once politicians work out there are 60 people on their doorstep
talking about something, they start to poke their noses in, so bringing the
debate right into parliament has been very good.
And the [equal marriage] bill has
been helpful, because there has been a reason to talk about it in terms of what
does it mean in terms of how public policy impacts on people’s lives.
Actually Britain’s legislation is already ahead of a lot of Europe on
transgender issues...
I had a woman politician from
Poland come to see me – the only trans MP and she was describing with relation
to both same-sex relationships and transgender issues just how much more
difficult it is for her to get these issues taken seriously. She is a lone
voice as far as I can tell in the Polish legislature. There is much more of a
block in the policy system on taking them forward.
In some countries, and Poland is
one, the Catholic Church has a very strong hold on public opinion and is deeply
opposed. You have got some countries that are much more socially conservative
and it is much more difficult to even talk about these issues, let along make
progress on them.
So what role can politicians play in influencing the debate beyond
making legislation?
You are right they are the sharp
edge of public opinion. If you look at where public opinion has moved,
particularly on lesbian and gay relationships, civil partnerships, over a
period of only 10 years it is politicians who have led the way.
I know from the correspondence I
get and the stuff I see on Twitter, I get a lot of response, including from
constituents, saying ‘we are glad you are talking about it, it has enabled us
to talk about it’. Politicians as public figures can mainstream the discussion
and that is very important.
And for politicians who are
fearful, who think they are going to lose votes, this is not a vote-loser. In
five, 10 years from now, certainly 25, 30 years from now, people will look at
the fact we did not let people of the same-sex marry and think ‘what on earth
was that about?’ People will look at this aghast – it will be the dark ages.
In the debate there was a lot of reference to straight people having
families and little recognition that LGBT people also had children. Should we
promote gay families more?
What an interesting and good idea.
There is absolutely no evidence to suggest children fare worse in families
where they have two parents of the same sex. They will often be very wanted
children. We want to make sure we celebrate those successful families.
It is really important for the
children we celebrate and promote really positive stories about same-sex
parents because those children otherwise are going to be stigmatized.
We should be building the
acceptability of those families in the public’s mind and I think we can do that
really well. We can have really positive stories.
And can we be tougher on schools failing to tackle anti-LGBT bullying?
One of the difficulties we are
having is a lot of schools are becoming academies and free schools and it is
becoming a lot harder to have a grip on the policies they adopt.
But we want to use the inspections
regime, use local authority intervention where they are maintained schools,
really to be very clear about the standards we expect.
It is about teacher training, it is
about leadership, it is about the whole ethos of the school, it’s about respect
for children. I would like to see a child rights-and-respect model becoming the
norm for schools
In workplace diversity, the big hurdle for women and gay people and
other minorities is getting to the top of organizations. Will we ever break
through this glass ceiling?
It is not just the top. A lot of
the block in companies is middle managers who are sometimes quite prejudiced in
some of their assumptions and attitudes. People think ‘I wouldn’t like to be
managed by a woman or by a gay person’. Well tough.
I think we need to do pay audits
and they are a proxy for getting people in to senior positions. We regret the
government hasn’t decided to go ahead with that.
But public procurement is a big
tool for driving corporate behavior and we should make much more use of it.
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