Making gay rights a issuer

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From the moment we arrived on Sunday and started distributing our four Page statement of our case, and our "Gay 16 OK" stickers - shorthand for our demand for an age of consent for gay men identical to that for het men -until the Thursday evening when we made vigorous efforts to sell the special Party Conference edition of Gay News, delegates could memben. members, at least, regarded not: deny that some Party gay rights as a Party issue.

On the Saturday before the conference, the Sun published another of its attacks on Peter Tatchell, this time alleging - wrongly, - that he had been to the Gay Olympics in San Francisco.

The News of the World affected that delegates had been "shocked" by the "obscene" articles in London Labour Briefing -particularly the expression by Mary Evans that she was glad to be a lesbian.

On the Monday, the Daily Mail published a somewhat similar piece. As Peter Tatchell said, 'Papers like the Sun, the News of the World and the Mail are using this campaign not merely to discredit individuals, not merely to ridicule and destroy gay rights as a serious issue, but also to try and discredit the left within the Labour Party."

Comrades on the platforms of Labour Herald, London Labour Briefing and the Women's Rights rally referred to the issue. Our allies talked about it to •their comrade delegates.

Thus by Tuesday evening when we held our own fringe meeting, we were no longer raising what many might have seen as a fringe issue. By the BBC's count, we had 250 present in a room booked for an audience of 100 - and that was after we had ejected reporters from the Sun, News of the World and Mail.

Our • platform included Joan Lestor, Jo Richardson, Ken Livingstone, and Peter Tatchell. Tony Benn cancelled an engagement to attend in solidarity with us when he read of press attempts "to hound and harass in a disgusting way"

The issue also reveals the ünderlying politics of those who debate it. When we lobbied him after an NEC meeting, Neil Kinnock told us that the fact that the next Labour government would be committed only to 18 as the age of consent wouldn't prevent it from reducing the age to 16 once it was in power. But he felt that 16 would be an electoral liability.

By contrast Tatchell said at the meeting: "As long as we pander to what we think are people's prejudices, they will be reinforced, they will never change. For. socialism is not just about economic and pointof-production struggles: it is also about liberating us from all the different forms of oppression, whether it be sexual or racial, whether it be the oppression of class or the oppression of sexual orientation. If we seek power at any price, if we compromise on those fundamental principles then we necessary to act heterosexually, "to sit in a bar with heterosexual servicemen, who are looking for _a woman"

He had been forced to have sex with a woman not simply because of social pressures but because to be discovered as gay would lead to dismissal and possibly a jail sentence.

The Labour Party's LCGR, 618 Bloom St, 1; Gay You Movement BM GYM, London WCIN 3XX

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balist Organiser no.104 October 14 1982 Page 12 kaseine loů a'