GenQ - For the not so straight individual

The great thing about being young is that although we can remember Maggie Thatcher, we never really had to deal with her. We may remember the poll tax, miners strikes and Section 28, but most of us were too young to actually comprehend what they were, much less what they meant.

Thatcher did a lot of good for this country, she dealt with over-powerful unions, she stuck it to Europe for us and she wasn't afraid to stand up to America ? but for all the good she did, she will be always be remembered as a monster to the gay community.

She oversaw the introduction of ?Section 28?, a clause in the Local Government Act 1986 which forbade the promotion of homosexuality as a valid lifestyle choice by education authorities. At the time there were large scale protests and a general feeling of unease with such an invasive, homophobic statute from many people.

The section remained on the statute books for 17 years until it was repealed in 2003 by the New Labour government in a vote where 73 out of 96 voting conservatives out of to maintain the statue.

The legal impact of Section 28 was in fact tiny, very few education authorities took notice of the clause, and there was never a prosecution brought using the section ? however the impression that it left was that of a government and in particular a Prime Minister who was deeply homophobic, so much so that she wanted to ensure that homosexuality was not even discussed in schools, let alone talked about in anything approaching a positive light.

The Conservative Party have been besmirched with this reputation ever since. Their opposition to the equal age of consent; there mixed support for so called ?gay-adoption? and there historic lack of support for civil partnerships, all of which are recent issues have made the Conservative Party steadfast enemies of the gay community. But are things about to change?

David Cameron was elected leader of the Conservatives last year in what appeared to be a break with tradition. The party had had right-wing hard-line leaders since Maggie (with the exception of possibly John Major who failed to leave any impression on the nation at all), but David Cameron was fairly liberal in his campaign for leader of the party. He espoused the need for discussion of ?green-issues? and pledged to make the party more representative. The first leader to be born after the decriminalisation of homosexuality in Britain, he promised to make us no longer ashamed to vote Conservative.

After being leader for 7 months, just how far has he achieved his aims, and have the Conservatives changed for the better? Just how compassionate is the man who claims to be a ?modern compassionate conservative??

The party itself has a number of figures who are out. Alan Duncan, the Shadow Trade and Industry Secretary, came out on 2002 and was the first Conservative MP to come out of his own free will whilst in office. Cameron himself has masterminded an ?A-List? of candidates to stand at elections who are more representative of the communities they will serve. Margot James, a Vice Chair of the Party and lesbian businesswoman and Nicolas Boles, an out-gay man who stood at the last election as candidate for Brighton and Hove are both rumored to be on this list.

Just having the right faces in the party isn't enough; the party must support the issues that matter to gay people. Most of the party supported the recent Civil Partnership Bill, and Cameron's recent comments about the extension of benefits and tax breaks to same-sex couples was very well received.

However it isn't all sweetness and light in the new ?all round lovelier? Conservative world? Cameron himself voted against the second reading of the Adoption and Children Bill, which gave equal rights to homosexual potential adoptive parents, this was one the few gay-rights votes that he actually attended. The party rejected the most liberal candidate, and the only one to be open and upfront with his support for gay issues, Ken Clarke.

The most important factor facing Cameron is that he himself is not the be-all-and-end-all of the Conservative Party. It is a grouping of 196 MPs and countless other blue-rinse brigade members.

Contained in the party are some of the most homophobic bigoted people imaginable. The voting records of certain Tory MPs speak for themselves. Many of them are relics from the 80s when Maggie ruled, and seem to have become stuck in that time; espousing views that are even more repugnant to the rest of the country now than they were then.

Cameron will only have managed to separate from the past, when the party appears to do the same. Before he tries to convince the gay community that his party isn't the same homophobic party of 15 years ago, he needs to convince his own party to change.

When they can wholeheartedly support bans on discrimination, support homosexuality as a valid grounds for asylum and tackle the problem of homophobia in schools; Cameron will have succeeded; until then, the ghost of the 80s remains large and looming.