According to the website Breitbart, The Coalition for Marriage, an organisation which opposes same-sex marriage, is mounting a campaign to stop a Tory MP supportive of the LGBT community, who took a high-profile role in pushing same-sex marriage legislation through Parliament, from being re-elected as the MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven.
THE website reports that the Coalition for Marriage has 1,500 members in Brighton and they will be telling their supporters to vote for anyone other than Simon Kirby, the Conservative MP for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, at the coming national election in May, because of his support for LGBT issues.
However, it seems the Coalition for Marriage have not done their homework. All candidates presently intending to stand in the Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven constituency support same-sex marriage, including the UKIP candidate Ian Buchanan, who says that while he originally opposed same-sex marriage, now that the law is in place he won’t seek to remove it.
The constituency is home to a number of areas with large gay populations, including Queen’s Park, Kemptown, Saltdean and Peacehaven, where LGBT people are moving to in large numbers to get better value for money when buying property.
The constituency also includes the much more traditional Tory town of Peacehaven, where Breitbart reports “many voters are thought to be toying with UKIP as a result of their anger at David Cameron.”
A Coalition for Marriage spokesperson said: “We would encourage our supporters and more generally all eligible adults to attend hustings and other political meetings and to vote. We hope they will back those candidates, Conservative, Labour, Lib Dem, UKIP or other mainstream parties who backed traditional marriage, or who back meaningful safeguards to protect people like Adrian Smith, the former housing manager from Trafford, or Brian Barkley, the former Red Cross volunteer.”
Davey Jones, the Green parliamentary candidate for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, said: “It is outrageous that Simon is being targeted by bigots on this issue.
I totally support gay marriage.”
Paul Chandler, the LibDem candidate for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, said: “I am intensely proud that the LibDems in Government achieved equal marriage and I fully support it.”
Nancy Platts, the Labour candidate for Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven, added:
“I have been a strident supporter of Marriage Equality for as long as I can remember, and let’s not forget it was Labour votes that got it through parliament.
“I am proud that Labour has long been committed to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans Equality. We have led the way by achieving an equal age of consent, introducing civil partnerships and giving LGBT individuals and couples the right to adopt children.
“Although the Tories introduced Section 28 we repealed it and in 2015 Labour wants to introduce compulsory Sex and Relationship Education into schools and take a tougher stance on homophobic bullying in schools.
“We’re also proposing ‘Turing’s Law’ to offer posthumous pardons for gay men convicted under historic indecency laws.
She continued: “I am proud of Brighton’s place as one of the LGBT capitals of the UK.”
According to the Breitbart report: “A senior unnamed activist in Kemptown” said that same-sex marriage had cost Mr Kirby a number of supporters without gaining him a large gay following in the ward. The journalist Andre Walker gives no evidence of where he got his statistics from.
He wrote: “It would be unbelievable for the party that brought in gay marriage to pay for it by losing Kemptown but I’m afraid that is what’s going to happen.”
The two independent candidates intending to stand in the constituency, Matt Taylor and Joe Neilson, have also confirmed their support for same-sex marriage as has the Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition candidate Dave Hill, who said: “I fully support gay marriage.”
James Ledward, editor of Gscene, commented: “It is encouraging that all parliamentary candidates from all parties intending to stand in Brighton Kemptown and Peacehaven have nailed their colours to the mast in support of same-sex marriage remaining on the statute book.
“It is election season and we must expect these mischievous reports by right-wing media outlets.
“The bottom line is that the Coalition for Marriage might well have 1,500 members in Kemptown and Peacehaven, but in the city there are more than 35,000 LGBT voters who will not allow our hard-won gains to be rolled back.
“The days when right-wing organisations could exert pressure on our elected officials to discriminate against us are over but it is important we remember those from all parties who helped enact those changes which now benefit us all.”