Five years, five pledges

The new left-right coalition's Programme for Government document has been published today, including a number of pledges on queer issues. The document sets out the agreed programme for the five-year coalition government so they have until 2015 to get it all done.

Those on-the-ball Delga folk say it includes the following:

The Government believes that there are many barriers to social mobility and equal opportunities in Britain today, with too many children held back because of their social background, and too many people of all ages held back because of their gender, race, religion or sexuality. We need concerted government action to tear down these barriers and help to build a fairer society.

• We will stop the deportation of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation or gender identification puts them at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution.

• We will use our relationships with other countries to push for unequivocal support for gay rights and for UK civil partnerships to be recognised internationally.

• We will change the law so that historical convictions for consensual gay sex with over-16s will be treated as spent and will not show up on criminal records checks.

• We will promote better recording of hate crimes against disabled, homosexual and transgender people, which are frequently not centrally recorded.

• We will help schools tackle bullying in schools, especially homophobic bullying.

The first thing that strikes me is that as the world has moved on, central legislation on LGBT issues increasingly looks beyond the UK to issues of equality worldwide.  Which is great, and timely: we needed to put our own house in order first.  Ten years ago Labour and Tory legislators had seen to it we had plenty to do here, and pressing for change overseas invited reasonable charges of hypocrisy.

The second is that awful line "hate crimes against disabled, homosexual and transgender people" - a copy and paste job from a mangled line in the Lib Dem manifesto.  As a bi activist, I have railed about it before: I trust that when it comes to the legislative stage it will be turned from what they say into what they mean.

The third is that the trans and genderqueer stuff out of the Lib Dem manifesto didn't make it through.  This is a damn shame, for all that the abolition of ID cards and the identity register removes two of the pressing issues around non-binary gendered identities.

But after those Labour governments which kept LGBT stuff out of the manifesto for fear of scaring the horses, and then deployed a string of delaying tactics over acting on equality, what a refreshing thing it is to have a clear idea of what is on the government's mind to implement in the years ahead. 

We have to make sure they deliver on it, and press them to do the other stuff, too. Write to your MP, and write often, folks!

Downtime

I made a bit of a booboo and broke BiMedia for 48 hours. Doh. I think it's the same mistake a friend made with her Wordpress blog a year or so back.

Must. Make. More. Backups.

However, it's back in action, nearly finished, and I think (...or I flatter myself...) that it looks a tiny bit slicker after the rebuild. But nonetheless, I'd welcome people who had problems with it loading in the past giving it the once-over in case those problems have returned.

In the process I have finally worked out how to send news stories direct to twitter, which is For The Win :) - decided to feed them to the BCN twitter feed rather than a separate one for bimedia, as much the same people would want to follow each.

More out MPs than ever

That's the election over - well, nearly over, barring the pending bit of the election in Thirsk.  We have a new swathe of gay and lesbian MPs, with an influx of new out MPs on the Liberal Democrat and Conservative benches and quite a few out Labour MPs holding their seats.

About 20 out MPs out of 650 seats is, er, three per cent or so.  Halfway to the government statistic of 6% being gay or lesbian; they never tried counting the bis properly.

But still - unless someone knows better - on the green benches at Westminster we have just the one out bisexual.  There are more of us than there are lesbians and gay men put together, but we have a twentieth of the open representation in government that they do. 

Idle wossnames

I've been looking at the upcoming NUS LGBT conference.  As ever, NUS is a source of despair if you're an activist interested in getting things done rather than furthering a career in centre-right politics.

So we have an order paper for the weekend of the various weighty motions to be debated.  Given the B in LGBT is the least well supported strand in mainstream LGBT work, what do they have to say about it?  What proposals, opinions, and tasks for their executive and huge membership in the coming year?

Erm... not a lot.  The 'b' word does crop up, but the only place where it is meaningfully used is in a motion that sucks up to biphobia, redefining the remits of the bi space at conference, and it would seem to be doing so in capitulation to the biphobic "bi=binary" myth.

Conference resolves: The Bisexual Representative may may define as bisexual, or otherwise define as being romantically/sexually interested across the gender spectrum.

Now, that's changing the definition of the bisexual rep so that - unlike the other specific positions NUS sets aside - the holder need not identify as bisexual, and is an amendment that is entirely in response to biphobic nonsense.

Will it make a difference though?  NUS LGBT doesn't have a great track record on having bi reps who ever seem to do anything related to their remit.  The bi place seems to be treated more as a way onto the national exec and a springboard to other positions rather than a position from which to enable work, communication and change targeted at and for bi students or bis in general. There have been exceptions to that rule but in ten years of watching, they seem to happen about once in five years...

That's not what you mean

The Lib Dem manifesto has been launched. All good lefty stuff, the only coherent programme on the table, and may they win a swathe of seats not least as the only party consistently on side with LGBT issues, etc.


The Lib Dems do have one weakness on their manifestos, and it's the B word. Now it's peculiar that the 'third option' party should have such a persistent blind spot on the 'third option' sexuality but there it is. 

The manifesto includes:

Liberal Democrats will continue to encourage more openly gay and transgender people to stand for Parliament

How many times do I have to spell this one out?  I'm not gay.  I'm no more gay than I am straight.  Saying bis are a type of gay because they're not straight is like saying Germans are a kind of Egyptian because they're not Spanish.  You can reasonably shrink gay and lesbian down to just gay; you can't do that with the B strand of LGBT.

The manifesto also says a Lib Dem government would

Require better recording of hate crimes against disabled, homosexual and transgender people, which are frequently not centrally recorded.

Now, you can see how they got there.  Someone sub-editing things down sees a reference to hate crimes against disabled people, and a reference to homophobic and transphobic hate crime. "How can I put these together?" they think. "What's the -phobic word for disability? Erm. OK I'll do it the other way... homophobic hate crimes happen to homosexuals, and transphobic ones to transgender people".

Except of course they don't.  Or rather, they don't just.  The venn diagram has a big overlap between, say, being gay and being a victime of homophobic attacks.  But these things happen to bi people, to straight people, to cis people, too. 

I think it's pretty clear what they mean.  It's not quite what they said, and if they get in, or even if they don't and are advocating these things from the opposition benches, we need to make sure they get it right in the legislative print.

Just a slip o the keyboard miss, honest

Stonewall say that not including bisexuals in half their questions on LGB equality for MPs was an unintended mistake.  You know, in the best part of two decades of reading stuff from them, I've never noticed a publication where they unintendedly and mistakenly missed out the word 'gay' but remembered the 'b' word. 

Stonewall and NUS

They haven't replied to last week's email yet, but their "questions for parliamentary candidates" page has been changed - it no longer just talks about "lesbians and gay men".

Result ~:o)

In other news, ahead of this year's Town Hall LGBT Day, I've dropped the local uni bi rep a note asking for any input from the student population. Would be good to get that alternative take on it...

Stonewall General Election blooper

Stonewall have published their list of questions for candidates at the general election:

Schools

If you're elected at the next election, what will you do to ensure
homophobic bullying is tackled in our local schools? 

Hate Crime
Homophobic hate crimes are on the increase across the country. What will
you do to ensure lesbian and gay people can feel safe in their local area?

Equality Act
Will you - and your party  - commit to ensuring full implementation of
important measures in the forthcoming Equality Act, which would benefit
lesbian and gay people? 

Public Services
All too often, gay men and women face second class treatment by the public
services their taxes help to fund. What do you propose to do to address
this?

Asylum
What steps will your party take to ensure that those seeking asylum on the
grounds of their sexual orientation are assessed fairly and compassionately?

International
Will your party ensure that the UK continues to promote LGB equality
internationally through British embassies and High Commissions?

Civil Partnership Recognition
Will your party take steps to ensure recognition of UK civil partnerships
by other European states? 

Blood donation
Do you support the current life ban which bars all men who have ever had
sex with another man from donating blood?

That's quite a lot of "lesbian and gay" without any reference to bisexuals in the first few questions, so I've dropped them a note to enquire about the whys and wherefores.