I thought I’d take the LGBTQ’s blog virginity by reviewing the discussion event, held this Thursday 28 February, for LGBT History Month.  I can’t think of any better way of relaunching our website presence than by talking about something that we did so successfully to raise the profile of politics, equality and the LGBTQ community.

A panel discussion was held in the Rosa Parkes Room at the Guild of Students between

  • Mark Gettleson, the Chair of Liberal Democrat Youth and Students
  • Ryan Castle, Vice Chair of Birmingham University Conservative Future
  • Lucy Brookes of NUS LGBT Committee
  • and me, Gary Hughes, Labour Students candidate for NUS LGBT Officer. 

Political LGBTQers all.  We were discussing whether the LGBT community had achieved equality, exactly how we’d know whether we had, how we were going to achieve equality and (the exciting political bit) who we believe to be responsible for all of it.

The most exciting thing for me was the turnout.  Bear in mind that it was a self confessed political event for gays and therefore was unlikely to bring in huge crowds.  To my great and joyful surprise, 32 (that is thirty two.  Three-two) gays of the University of Birmingham rocked out for this event.  Astonishing.

We discussed the fact that its largely undeniable that the Tory government before 1997 had a pretty appalling record on LGBT rights.  Many of the Tory Party’s great and good spent a lot of time and effort trying to install new barriers to equality in fact – like Section 28.  We then agreed that a huge raft of equality legislation has emerged since 1997.  Things like

  • civil partnerships
  • the abolition of section 28
  • adoption rights for LGBT people
  • gender recognition
  • outlawing of discrimination in goods and services provision
  • allowing LGBT people to serve openly in the military
  • equalising the age of consent
  • outlawed discrimination of LGBT people in the workplace

among other things.  Isn’t the government amazing? ;-)   But then, I would say that…

I really hope that we can have more discussions and events like this.  From discussion about whether giving LGBT people adoption rights is equality at all, because it makes us operate like heterosexuals, to whether the LGBT community should work to finish our battles in equalty in law first, or focus on popular perception, the level of discussion was intellectually high and I loved doing it.  LGBTQ people don’t do this sort of thing enough.

A huge congratulations to Emma and the rest of the Committee for making it happen.  Hopefully, I’ll see you next year for the bigger and better sequel!