Long after equal marriage, gender and culture wars are now key faultlines in the election campaign. This is the Conservatives' record on LGBT rightsThere is an overall feeling that Britain isn’t at the forefront of LGBT rights any more to stop sending LGBT asylum seekers back to countries where they face “imprisonment, torture or execution”. He pledged to “use our relationships with other countries to push for unequivocal support for gay rights”.
Sped up, then, the Tory record on LGBT rights over the past 14 years looks simple: they lit the torch of equality only to snuff it out. . Two great forces emerge when you examine Tory policy and rhetoric on LGBT rights since they took office: money and power. But to trace the progress made on LGBT issues over the past 14 years is to uncover a striking pattern. Each time the government inched forward it cost next to nothing. None of the above bothered the coffers much. When the ruling party stalled on further help or protection for this minority, money was often at play.
In other words, the government appeared unmoved by the issues that would have cost the most – healthcare – but more responsive to cheaper, legal concerns. Enter Stonewall. Spying an opportunity to grasp what progress might be winnable, Britain’s largest LGBT rights organisation focused more of its lobbying on legal changes, including easing the legal gender recognition process into a form of self-identification.
But ultimately power became more instrumental to policy than money. In her last year in office, May, already weakened by the calamitous 2017 election, clung on ever more shakily. The anti-trans factions in her party were more heavily concentrated in the Brexit wing, so any boldness was replaced with pragmatism. She couldn’t defy her party like Cameron did. And by July 2019 she was out.