Tag Archives: pride

A letter to Pride

I sent this letter to the Pride organisers yesterday.

I was proud to be described as an LGBT+ ally some years ago at a Pride event – indeed I have been supporting LGBT issues all my adult life at both a personal and institutional level.

I have also been proud of what my party, the Liberal Democrats, has achieved in this area – from opposing Section 28 to proposing the Alan Turing Law, bringing in equal marriage and championing trans rights.

I was therefore deeply shocked and unhappy that political groups are being banned from Pride marches this year. In our case LGBT+ Lib Dems have been in the forefront of the party’s campaigns. It feels like a terrible snub for them to be banned from an event that they have always enthusiastically supported. Without the Lib Dems some of the freedoms that are now enjoyed by people on Pride marches would not have happened.

I should also add that all of us, of whatever political party or none, should also be encouraging LGBT+ groups within other less supportive parties. For some it is a deeply uncomfortable place to be, but their groups are essential to bring about a change of culture from within.

I would therefore ask you to reconsider the decision to ban political groups from Pride events this year.

They have just replied to say:

“We are currently in talks with your colleagues on the way forward.”

Let’s hope the ban is lifted.

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Wendy Chamberlain at Pride: Let’s go high, stand for our values and build bridges.

Mary wrote yesterday about her lifetime as an LGBT ally. 

She mentioned the virtual Prides that were taking place at the moment.

I went to the Scottish Lib Dems virtual Pride event last Sunday, which was run by LGBT+ Lib Dems and Scottish Lib Dem Women. It was a marathon, but well worth every second.

The day started with a rally with speeches by Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP and Wendy Chamberlain MP. It ended almost 12 hours later with a Eurovision watch along of the 2014 event, won by Conchita Wurst. I had forgotten so many of the delights of that night. Watch here if you need cheering up. In between there were a couple of panels – on queering our policy and on being a better ally. The penultimate event was a quiz won by Wales’ Callum Littlemore who seems to have a brain full of obscure song lyrics and who got almost full marks in the Gay or Eurovision round.

Alex spoke off the cuff like he always does but was as passionate as you would expect from him about how we as a party should not shy away from speaking up for LGBT people.

Wendy had her remarks written down and I’m delighted that she has shared them with us.

I’m privileged to be asked to address today’s rally
But, as I mentioned in my maiden speech, I may be the first female MP for North East Fife, I’m well aware of my privilege in other areas – my class, my ethnicity, my sexuality, my gender identity.

My life experience to date, also, if we are looking to make generalisations, perhaps, on the surface, doesn’t suggest that I’d be a natural ally. Having been a police officer for 12 years brings its own assumptions I suppose, particularly of late.

But, other than friends at university – no one at school was out – from colleagues in Tesco (Grant and I bonded over Eurovision and mourned Michael Ball’s 2nd place) and friends in the Edinburgh University Footlights (I had a couple of dates with a guy who told me that the last person he had seen was a 36 year old man – I was fine with that, but I did meet his parents a couple of times as his ‘friend’ as he was clearly struggling to be honest with his Dad (I’m pleased to report he’s now happily married to a man and still working in the theatre), the police was the first workplace where I had a number of colleagues who were gay.

The first trans women I knew was through the police – Jan, a traffic warden. She had transitioned later in life, her marriage had broken down and she had been ostricised by her family and children as a result.

I know that Jan experienced direct discrimination from some colleagues at work, but I also saw the service trying its best to support Jan, and provide the facilities that she required.

A friend met her on the bus last year – she still has no contact with her family, and in the main keeps to herself – her bus trip was an exception and not the norm.

Not long after returning to work after maternity leave, I attended 3 days of diversity training, as did all police officers in the UK, as part of the police response to the Lawrence report, where the police’s institutional racism was called out.

I was pleased that the training was not restricted to racism, but covered all of the diversity strands.

I’ll be honest, the last day, was the toughest – the majority audience of white heterosexual men, really struggling with their prejudices in relation to the trans activists delivering that part of the training.

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Lib Dem, Green and Labour LGBT organisations condemn transphobic protest at Pride

This morning I said I was excited about Pride in London today. Unfortunately, it has hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons after a small number of transphobic protesters were allowed to march at the front and hand out transphobic literature to the people lining the streets. From the Huffington Post:

Organisers of the most “diverse” Pride event in London have hit back at accusations it allowed a group of anti-transgender activists to lead the parade through the capital on Saturday.

The small group, which reportedly only consisted of about 10 people, are believed to have carried signs with slogans such as “trans activists erase lesbians” and distributed leaflets stating “a male can never be lesbian”.

And here’s some more reports from Twitter:

The idea that someone’s rights must be the expense of someone else’s comes straight from the divisive rhetoric of the likes of Nigel Farage. And like Nigel Farage, a relatively small group of trans-exclusionary radical feminists are getting a disproportionate amount of air time, much of it complaining that they are being cut out of the “debate.” There’s a lot of their rhetoric which puts me in mind of the horrid homophobia I came across in the 80s.

A recent Stonewall report into trans people’s lives found that 40% had suffered hate crime in the last year and a third had suffered discrimination in their daily lives. These figures should worry liberals and we should be doing our best to stand up against it.

There is no conflict between women’s rights and transgender rights for the very obvious reason that women can be any combination of cis, trans, lesbian, heterosexual, of all races and religions (or none of the latter). Most women just work together for the good of everyone but there are a few who want to spread hate and there should be no place for that in any organisation which advocates equality.

LGBT+ Liberal Democrats condemned the protest and Pride in London’s reaction to it:

And there was a bit of cross-party consensus:

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Enjoy this exciting weekend!

Well, there’s plenty to distract us from the awfulness of Brexit this weekend. I’m probably most excited about the sheer joy, fabulousness and sparkliness of Pride taking to the streets of London. The first time I ever came across a Pride march was in London in 1992 when I was down for a Women Lib Dems Policy Committee. It was one of the happiest things I had ever seen. So much progress has been made since then, but, like all things we hold dear, we have to keep fighting. While LGBT people face hatred and discrimination on the street, in employment, in healthcare, at school, it is the liberal way to stand up for them and change things for the better.

I’m loving that the party has changed its social media avatars to go along with the Pride flags everywhere.

So, happy Pride everyone. For the first time, the Pride flag flies proudly over Richmond, thanks to the new Lib Dem Council there.

There is also the not so small matter of some football match in Russia. I have managed to avoid almost all of the World Cup so far. I mean, if football isn’t Inverness Caledonian Thistle, I generally don’t see the point of it. However, there is hope for me yet. Belgium’s defeat of Brazil last night brought an involuntary smile to me. I won’t feel the need to watch it, but good luck to England. Hope all our readers get the result you want and that you still have fingernails at the end of it. Vince is predicting that it’s going to be tense:

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Proud of Pride in Belgrade

Belgrade-Pride-1

International Office_with textI have been working with the LDP (Liberal Democrat Party of Serbia) for a few years now through the International Office and we have been concentrating on human rights and LGBT issues for the last 18 months. The first stage of the work the International Office and I have been doing, focusing on building LGBT competency within the wider LDP and supporting them to create their own LGBT specific committee in the Human Rights Council, culminated last month when I joined the Human Rights Council and LDP leadership at Belgrade Pride.

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Ed Fordham’s Letter from Belgrade

I am sitting in a hotel here in Belgrade eating my breakfast. It’s Serbia so meat is the dominant feature.

But I have just walked around the corner of the block to the hotel where they are issueing the accreditation to volunteers stewards who are marshalling the Pride March today and in the course of that short journey I have passed over 200 riot police (I stopped counting). The roads are closed and the streets ghostly quiet.

I am fairly confident here and know Serbia pretty well – but I found myself nervous, uncertain and even tearful as I walked through the streets. I was clutching my phone, hiding my camera and very mindful that as best I try I probably look like a visitor.

In three hours I will meet other friends who are LGBT activists in the Human Rights Council of the Liberal Democrat Party of Serbia whom I will march with. In London, the UK, much of Europe we can be confident of who we are and who we love. Here people, friends, folks I know, are fighting, literally, for the right to exist and be themselves.

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