Gay Rights Leader Seeks Seat In UK Parliament
Posted by Gay News Desk at 10:32 AM. Filed under: Gay News
(London) Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell is hoping to become the first Green Party Member of Parliament.
Tatchell has won the party nomination to run in the riding of Oxford East, currently held by Labor’s Andrew Smith.
Smith was elected by a slim majority and is considered vulnerable.
Oxford is considered one of the most likely ridings to elect a Green candidate. Eleven members of the local council are party members.
It is not Tatchell’s first foray into politics. Twenty years ago he ran for the Labor Party in London and lost.
“Parliament needs a strong gay and green voice to promote queer human rights and to press for action to halt climate change,” Tatchell said after winning the nomination.
Reaction around Oxford to his candidacy has been mixed. None of the negative reaction has centered on his gay rights advocacy - he is a leader in Outrage. Rather it has centered on the London resident being parachuted into the riding, and that he was born in Australia.
Tatchell said that if he wins the seat he will move to Oxford.
He was highly critical of the Labor government of Tony Blair when it brought in civil partnerships, rather than full marriage.
“The Greens are the only party that is committed to repeal the ban on same-sex marriage. All the other parties back the ban,” he said.
Tatchell also has been a major spokesperson for international LGBT rights.
Through Outrage he has been a vocal opponent of the UK-US backed regime in Iraq for not protecting gay Iraqis who are reportedly being rounded up by militias.
The total number of people suspected of being gay who have been murdered by militias will likely never be known but Outrage has said it believes it to be in the hundreds.
He also has been a constant thorn in the side of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe who frequently calls for the jailing of gays.
Tatchell has on several occasions attempted citizen’s arrests of Mugabe.
In 1999, he and other activists from the gay activist group OutRage! ambushed Mugabe’s motorcade and attempted to seize him in a London street. In 2001, he swooped on the President as he was leaving the Hilton Hotel in Brussels. Tachell was beaten unconscious by Mugabe’s bodyguards.
In 2004 a British court refused to issue an arrest warrant for the Zimbabwean leader.
Tatchell presented a 52 page brief that outlined a regime of brutality, homophobia, and repression of civil rights. It detailed accounts of political opponents being rounded up and imprisoned and quoted extensively from reports made by more than a half dozen international human rights groups and contains interviews with victims of the regime.
Last year Mugabe accused Tatchell of being behind an alleged coup plot.
Source: 365gay.com