The Wardman Wire

This one really surprised me.

One of the major themes of the current administration has been the pursuit of the Equal Rights agenda.

This commitment was to the extent that they have been willing to invoke the Parliament Act for only the third time in half a century (Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000) to equalise the age of consent.

[Edit. I have had a query about the previous para. The source was Wikipedia. "Equalise the age of consent" referred to the Act in 2000 to change the male homosexual age of consent from 18 to 16. The second reading debate is here in Hansard.]

Here is Gordon Brown’s voting record on Gay Rights votes in the House of Commons since 1997.

Talk about Macavity.

For those looking for some consolation, I did manage to find one vote where Mr Gordon voted in favour, and that was the Sexual Orientation Regulations on March 19 2007.

Data quoted from They Work for You .

Relevant section from Wikipedia about use of the parliament Act:

The amended form of the 1911 Act has been used four times.[2] These were:

1. War Crimes Act 1991, which extended jurisdiction of UK courts to acts committed on behalf of Nazi Germany during the Second World War (the only time that the Parliament Acts have been used by a Conservative government).
2. European Parliamentary Elections Act 1999, which changed the system of elections to the European Parliament from first past the post to a form of proportional representation.
3. Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 2000, which equalised the age of consent for male homosexual sexual activities with that for heterosexual and lesbian sexual activities at 16.
4. Hunting Act 2004, which prohibited hare coursing and (subject to some exceptions) all hunting of wild mammals (particularly foxes) with dogs after early 2005.

Since Tony Blair’s Labour government came to power in 1997, there has been repeated speculation that the government would rely on the Parliament Acts to reverse a check from the Lords, but it has not proved necessary. The Parliament Acts were not required to enact, for example, the Criminal Justice (Mode of Trial) (No 2) Bill in 2000[2] (which originally proposed to give magistrates, not defendants, the choice of where an “either way” offence would be tried) because the government abandoned the bill after a wrecking amendment in the House of Lords. The Parliament Acts cannot be used to force through legislation that originated in the House of Lords, so they could not have been used to enact the Civil Partnerships Act 2004 or the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.

Tags: gordon brown, gay rights, lesbian rights, sexual orientation regulations, age of consent, sexual offences, sexual equality, equality agenda, civil partnerships[tags]gordon brown, gay rights, lesbian rights, sexual orientation regulations, age of consent, sexual offences, sexual equality, equality agenda, civil partnerships[/tags]