Debates within the Conservative party on LGBTQ+ issues have become “toxic”, a Tory MP has said in an interview marking the 10th anniversary of equal marriage becoming legal in the UK.
Speaking to PoliticsHome, the former equalities minister Mike Freer said he hoped that in the future, issues regarding LGBTQ+ rights would no longer be seen as a debate.
“It’s a difficult thing to say, but within another 10 years, what I want is simply to stop having these heated toxic debates about inequalities. Human rights really are not debatable,” Freer said.
Reflecting on the long political campaign for same-sex marriage legislation, Freer said that the change “didn’t happen overnight”.
He added: “Sometimes you have to work with the grain, stop, consolidate. Sometimes you push and then let people catch up, and that’s a hard thing to get right. Sometimes we push too hard and you get too much of a reaction against you.
“Politicians do have to set the agenda and try to bring society with us, but also know when to stop and consolidate. I appreciate that those outside parliament don’t always like it because others want to go further and faster, but inside parliament you have to know how to work with the grain.”
Reflecting on the campaign for equal marriage, Freer said part of its success was that it humanised why the legislation would be so important to many LGBTQ+ people across the country.
“Where we make the biggest progress, particularly on more contentious social change, is by actually making it human so members of parliament really understand the human cost of acting or not acting,” he said.
“The big learning from the equal marriage debate was when colleagues stood up and explained their personal circumstances and why equal marriage was important to them – that is what shifted the dial.”
Freer’s comments come 10 years after the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Act achieved royal assent on 17 July 2013, allowing same-sex couples to marry and convert civil partnerships into marriage. Freer converted his civil partnership with Angelo Crolla to marriage in 2015.
In 2022, he resigned from his role at the Department for International Trade in protest at Boris Johnson’s leadership, saying his government had created “an atmosphere of hostility for LGBT people”.
