Word: gayness
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That was music to the ears of many Tories, straight and gay, who have been trying for years to modernize their party. In 2000 Christina Dykes launched Absolutely Equal, a conference event that ran for a number of years and was supported by several minority-rights organizations, in an attempt to broaden her colleagues' focus. "After the bad defeats in 1997 and 2001, the party closed in on itself," she says. "We were just talking to ourselves." Matthew Parris, now a prominent writer and broadcaster, served as a Tory Parliament member during the Thatcher era and remembers when organizers...
...church fete or a sedate evening of sherry and nibbles. It was May, in her former job as Conservative chairwoman, who coined the epithet "Nasty Party" in 2002 to warn her colleagues that their moralizing traditionalism was turning off the wider electorate. The rift between the Tories and gay-rights supporters was especially wide following the passage of legislation by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's government in 1986 to bar the "promotion of homosexuality" in schools, an act that was repealed only after the Labour Party came into power in 1997. Adrian Rogers, a Conservative who ran unsuccessfully in that...
...Cameron's top team turned out for the Pride festivities on Tuesday, Oct. 6, they wanted to demonstrate that such homophobia has been banished from the Tory ranks. Earlier this year, Cameron apologized for the 1986 legislation, known as Section 28, and even predicted that Britain's first gay Prime Minister would be a Tory. "If we do win the next election, instead of being a white, middle-class, middle-aged party, we will be far more diverse," he said. (Read "Q & A with David Cameron: Why Britain Needs a 'Compassionate Conservative...
...Iain Dale became the first openly gay Tory candidate to be selected for a winnable seat. (He lost, however, to the incumbent, a Liberal Democrat.) Now a blogger and publisher and hoping for another crack at Parliament, Dale co-hosted the Pride event. In his view, sexual orientation has become "a nonissue in the Conservative Party." He adds, optimistically, that equality will soon be so firmly embedded in the party that "in another 10 to 15 years there will be no need for Pride to make a statement." (Read "British Spies: Licensed to Be Gay...
...equality. Celebrities including actor Patrick Stewart and comedian Stephen Fry signed an open letter to Cameron on the eve of Conference Pride, challenging the Conservatives' decision to join the right-wing Polish Law and Justice Party in a new grouping in the European Parliament. "Your new Polish allies oppose gay marriage and adoption," read the letter, which demanded that Cameron call upon the Polish party "either to change their views or quit your new European group." Meanwhile, Ben Summerskill, director of the gay-rights group Stonewall, boycotted the event. Demonstrators accosted revelers arriving for the party, and a transvestite dressed...