Date: Tue, 5 Jul 1994 15:19:54 +0100 (BST)
From: Andrew Parkin <ap23@leicester.ac.uk>

Last week in the uk saw two events marking lesbian / bisexual / gay 
rights.

One was the publication of a report by the civicl rights group Liberty 
call ed _Sexuality and the State_.  This claimed that Britain has the 
worst record of human rights abuses against lesbians, bisexuals and gay 
men in Europe. Liberty plans to lobby the UN Human Rights Committee about 
the government's "disgraceful" record. The Independent newspaper reported 
Andrew Puddephatt, general secretary of Liberty, as accusing politicians 
of "widespread homophobia." He claimed that homosexuals sufferd severe 
discrimination if every area of their lives, in contravention of both UN 
and European human rights conventions. These include the unequal age of 
consent, section 28 of the Local Government Act (which bans the 
"promotion" of homosexuality in schools) and lack of sanction for gay 
marriages.

The second event was a ruling by a high court judge in Manchester, Mr 
Justice Douglas Brown which granted a lesbian couple joint recognition 
as parents of a 22-month-old boy born to one of them. The court hearings 
lasted a year. The order was granted under the Children Act 1989 and means 
that the biological mother's partner has parental rights, eg over decisions 
in schooling and healthcare, etc. It also means that if anything happened 
to the biological mother, then the child would remain in the care of her 
partner rather than go in to social services care.

The judge made his decision "with the child's welfare as his first and 
paramount consideration and that the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to 
the making of an order."  Sadly, the proselytising right wing couldn't 
resist comment: "I'm immensely unhappy when adult sexual behaviour inflicts 
a distorted lifestyle on children. Every child is born of a mother and a 
father and I beleive strenuously that every child deserves a mother and a 
father" said Emma Nicholson, Tory MP for Devon West and Torridge. I think 
she needs to go bakc to school and bet herself a good education. Sadly, 
that's not possible in this country until section 28 is repealled.....and 
on and on and on and on.........


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Andrew Parkin: Greenwood Institute of Child Health, Univ. of Leicester, UK.
email: ap23@leicester.ac.uk