LGBT+ History Month

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 13th February 2025 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

It is a pleasure and an honour to follow the hon. Member for Luton North (Sarah Owen). I concur with everything she said about the work being done by the Women and Equalities Committee.

It is important to recognise where we stand in history, because when we talk about LGBTQ rights, women’s rights or racial equality in this place, we often talk about the journey that we have been on and what we have achieved. Yes, we have achieved a lot, but we face enormous challenges at this moment in our history. Our country’s LGBTQ community need to look at us today and know that we will stand up for them and that we will fight for their rights, including their right simply to be who they are.

But we have faced challenges before, and we have overcome them. I think of Scotland, particularly my home city of Glasgow, where I was brought up. In the 1970s, and when I was a student in the 1980s, it had unfortunately garnered for itself the unenviable reputation of being one of the worst places in Europe to grow up gay. Attitudes were somehow more polarised in Scotland than anywhere else in the UK. In 1957, a poll showed that more than 80% of Scots did not want homosexuality to be decriminalised; the figure was 51% in England.

In preparing for this debate, I found an article in a 1982 student newspaper from the University of Liverpool, whose student union disaffiliated with the University of Glasgow because it refused to allow a gay society to form. According to the union president, that refusal was on the ground that the age of consent for homosexual sex was 21 and, given that most students were younger than 21, the union did not want to

“give the impression that the Union in some way bestows an unofficial blessing on their activities… many members of the Gay Society are not interested in a constructive approach to changing the membership’s attitude…but using this as a ploy to gain momentum to destroy the character of the Union as we know it.”

We hear an echo of that language today, but imagine how young LGBT people must have felt hearing and reading it. That was the kind of attitude they faced on a daily basis.

And imagine if we had been able to tell them that, 40 years later, Glasgow would be in the top five places in Europe for LGBT people to visit and enjoy and that, despite those attitudes, a long, rich history has developed of the community across Scotland coming together to support each other. We have improved so much, as those figures show.

Edinburgh Befrienders, later known as the Lothian Gay and Lesbian Switchboard, opened in 1974 and was the UK’s first bespoke helpline for gay and lesbian people—beating Switchboard, which still exists, by just one day. Edinburgh was also home to Scotland’s first LGBT bookshop, Lavender Menace, and in 1995 welcomed 3,000 people to Scotland’s first Pride march. It is now huge, the event of the year, and I have been privileged to speak at it twice.

Of course, much of this change has been possible only because of public figures, including: former MPs such as Robin Cook, who equalised Scots law and English law on homosexuality; Val McDermid, whose 1987 novel “Report for Murder” featured Lindsay Gordon, Britain’s first fictional lesbian detective; and award-winning author Jackie Kay, the second woman and first lesbian to hold the post of Makar, Scotland’s national poet, and whose work has dealt with race, gender, transgender identities and her own sexuality. Thanks to such people and places, so many attitudes, laws and the understanding of LGBT+ people have changed for the better.

The age of consent was finally equalised for gay and straight people in England, Scotland and Wales in 2000. Same-sex couples were recognised for the first time in 2004 with civil partnerships. In the same year, trans people gained formal recognition in law for the first time with the Gender Recognition Act. And 20 years ago, same-sex couples gained the right to adopt. My party, its politicians and activists played a key role in that fight. As for me, the fight for LGBT+ rights is not just another political issue but, like the fight for all human rights, is part of who I am, what I believe and what my party stands for.

As has already been mentioned, it was thanks to the allyship and hard work of my noble Friend Baroness Featherstone that, in 2013, hundreds of thousands of campaigners and activists across the country finally had their voices heard with the achievement of marriage equality for same-sex couples. However, I sometimes think that focusing on the successes of the LGBT rights movement in the UK leads us to think that everything has been easy, that progress came without any great effort, and that it was quick and natural. We forget the negatives. We forget the fights we had to go through, and our country’s moments of shame. Shame is the only word for the treatment of gay men like Alan Turing, who was imprisoned, chemically castrated and shamed for his sexuality. Shame is the only word for the fact that, before 2000, anyone could be dismissed from the armed forces simply for being gay. Shame is the only word for the public distrust—indeed, hatred—that many gay men faced during the AIDS crisis. I grew up during that crisis, and the fear and stigma was sometimes palpable and, despite the public solidarity and support from many lesbian groups, it continued. And, of course, shame is the only word to describe the lasting impact of section 28 on a whole generation of young LGBT people who were not allowed to see themselves represented in schools or have appropriate protection from homophobic bullying.

We may think that these negatives are all in the past, but in recent years we have seen horrible debates on LGBT rights, particularly trans rights, and they have become increasingly toxic. Many trans people see their identities denigrated, their experiences ignored and their lives sidelined in debates about their own rights and their own lives. Too many people forget that at the centre of these culture wars are real people who simply want to live their life and be left alone to be who they are. It is time that we moved the debate forward. It is time that we thought about the people and not the politics, by focusing on the solutions to the issues that the LGBTQ community still faces. We must tackle the growth in hate crime, the misogyny and objectification faced by lesbians, and the intersectional issues faced by black and minority ethnic or disabled LGBTQ people. I am delighted that we will hear about the Government’s draft conversion practices ban Bill soon.

How can we support schools and businesses in eradicating homophobic and transphobic bullying and harassment? We have to think about how we can support trans people in accessing better support, and how we can help non- binary people to gain recognition in law. I hope that the Government will address all these points, and today I am more confident that they will.

The hon. Member for Luton North mentioned her daughter as hope for the future. My daughter is considerably older—in her 20s. A couple of years ago, we went to Edinburgh to see a play, “Everybody’s Talking About Jamie”, about a young cross-dressing guy who wants to wear a dress to the prom, which causes all sorts of hassle. We went because I had seen the film and loved it. About halfway through the play, I began to find the audience more interesting. I realised that everybody under the age of about 35 or 40 was totally engaged in what was happening, cheering for Jamie and booing his opponents. It was great. Everybody over the age of about 60 looked stunned. They were looking round, thinking, “What’s going on?”. My daughter Mhairi and I came out and, as we walked along the road, I said, “Your generation really don’t care, do they?” . She said, “No, we don’t get it. We don’t know why it’s a problem, and we don’t know why politicians don’t see that.” I thought to myself, “This toxic argument, which we all want to end, will end, because the younger generation will not allow their peers to be punished for being who they are in the way that mine were.”

I thank the Government for having this debate, and I thank everyone who is here. Please let us send the positive message that we will stand up and make sure that acceptance comes sooner.