Let's start with the positives. Openly gay Lib Dem MP David Laws is back in government; he resigned as Chief Secretary to the Treasury after just 17 days in the post after it emerged he'd been claiming for his boyfriend's house on expenses. This time, he's not in the treasury, but is a Schools Minister, which should be good for trying to beat homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools. He can also keep our 'right honourable' Education Secretary Michael Gove in check, make sure he's not doing anything too stupid with our schools. Sadly, Gove didn't lose his job in the reshuffle. Maybe Cameron's logic is that we're a lost generation anyway, so if Gove absolutely has to be in the cabinet, then at the top of the Department for Education, where he can't do any real damage...
After this point, I'm having trouble thinking about the positives about the reshuffle which concern the gay community, I really am. You see, when you discover that Chris Grayling, the former Shadow Home Secretary who lost out on a cabinet job last time round because he said that Christian b&b owners should be able to deny gay couples a room on grounds of their sexuality, has become Justice Secretary, you really begin to question the sanity of the big cheese in No. 10. A homophobic, non-lawyer Justice Secretary, who'd have thought? Oh, and when I said non-lawyer, did I mention he's the first non-lawyer Justice Secretary since the Tudor times?
However, Good Sirs and Gentle Ladies, my biggest worry on what this new cabinet means for the LGBTQ community is this: allow me to introduce you to your new Equalities Minister, Maria Miller. In the past, she has voted:
- Against Gay rights, including adoption.
- Against a bill which I forget the name of, under which lesbian couples would have been able to undergo fertility treatment.
- Against the religious and racial hatred bill
- In favour of defining the terms "homophobia", "racial hatred" and "prejudice" as merely being somebody's 'Freedom of Speech'.
Shocked? I am. Maybe I shouldn't be; after all, this is a Tory led government, but I had hoped that Britain would be taking a step forward towards equality for all, not backwards, as Miller's appointment seems to indicate. They certainly seemed to be doing that; David Cameron has announced his support for marriage equality, and a public consultation on the issue went out, the results of which are to be published soon...ish. Hopefully we're still going ahead with getting equal marriage (or, as some people like to call it, gay marriage) by the end of parliament in 2015, despite this questionable appointment to the Equality office.
I think Cameron has certainly made a few mistakes in his reshuffle; certainly the appointment of Maria Miller as Equalities Minister is something which will linger in the minds of minority communities, such as the LGBTQ one, when we get to the election in 2015, regardless of any possible future reshuffles in which the equalities brief may go elsewhere. Clearly it'll be a while before we see how well Miller does her job; I for one will be keeping a close eye on how well she is or isn't doing, and she and the government would be well advised not to underestimate the importance of continuing to move towards greater equality and doing more towards eliminating homophobia and transphobia in schools and in the workplace, and in our society in general (yes, I know the Equalities Act 2010 forbids discrimination on grounds of sexuality or gender identity, by no stretch of the imagination should we assume that it's been eradicated completely).
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