A Wirral MP who feared her parliamentary career would be "over" after coming out has called for "more work to be done" to promote LGBTQ+ equality.
Times have changed since Wallasey MP, Angela Eagle, came out in 1997 but despite the progression and debatable steps of LGBTQ+ progression, the Labour MP recognises we still have a long way to go for equality.
She told the ECHO : “The good thing is we do have what's known as the gayest Parliament in the world at the moment in Westminster. And there are LGBT Tories who are very good at trying to tell the government how they ought to be.”
READ MORE: Man stabbed outside Liverpool ONE dessert shop as six teens arrested
The parliament which we have now is one that is miles away from when Ms Eagle first came out. The Wallasey MP came out in a newspaper interview back in 1997 - making her one of the first-ever Members of Parliament to come out in office. Before she could come out publicly, Ms Eagle had to first tell her bosses - and even let Prime Minister Tony Blair know what to expect. However, it was her constituents' amazing response to the story that really struck a chord with the Labour MP.
The only other ‘out' lesbian MP before Ms Eagle was Maureen Colquhoun, who was deselected and in Ms Eagle’s words “dragged out” for her sexuality a few years after being cruelly outed by a “gossip columnist”. Ms Eagle has been in a civil partnership with her long-term partner Maria Exall since 2008. She explained how her decision to come out was initially prompted by the fact she wanted to move in with her girlfriend and “get on with her job”.
She said: “When I came out, I remember thinking, if this is the end of my parliamentary career, that will just have to be what it is. Loads of people have come up and told me how I inspired them and it made them feel that they could have a parliamentary career if they were gay. Some current MPs have told me that. I just think that’s quite a powerful effect of just being. Being visible is important.
Despite the progress, Ms Eagle recognises that there is still a long way to go for LGBTQ+ equality. She added: “Well, I think part of the difficulty is the context in which LGBT people have to live their lives. It became much better when we were in government, and when we equalised the law. But since then it has actually darkened.”
When Labour was in power between 1997 and 2010, the group passed a lot of legislation to promote LGBTQ+ equality, including bringing the age of consent for homosexual men and women in line with that of heterosexual sex, ending the ban on LGBT people serving in the armed forces, extending adoption rights to LGBT individuals and couples, and creating civil partnerships.
She said: “Some of this is about the government and its culture wars on 'woke' or whatever they insist on calling it. And that's a kind of backlash against people being able to be themselves and an attempt to force people back into hiding. We can see that this is coordinated internationally by the right-wing working with each other, funding anti-woke campaigns and that has led to an increase in hostility against LGBT people.
“It's evident throughout Europe - if you look in Hungary or what Putin says, what is happening with the rise of populist right-wing governments - in its own way has played its way through some of our politics here. And the people that suffer for are LGBT people out on the streets getting attacked.”
Recently, Liverpool’s LGBTQ+ community called on the government to do more to protect people in the community, something which Ms Eagle agrees with. Their call to action came after figures from the Home Office highlighted that hate crimes in some areas across England and Wales had hit a new record high in 2022. The statistics detailed at least 155,841 recorded hate crimes between March 2021 and March this year. According to the report, hate crimes rose by about 26% from the previous year, making it the most significant increase in reported hate crimes since 2016/17. Transgender hate crimes, though the least in overall quantity, saw the biggest percentage increase, rising by 56%.
Similar to national reports, Liverpool’s transphobic-related hate crimes have also increased with more incidents being reported to police in the first eight months of 2022 than in any other year since 2019. The number of people being charged in relation to hate crime incidents remained low . Out of the 1642 homophobic hate crimes reported in the past three years (both violent and non-violent) only 79 resulted in a charge (4.8%). Whereas of the 162 transphobic hate crimes reported, only three resulted in charges (1.8%).
Ms Eagle added: “There is no LGB without the T in my view. I'm a very proud feminist. I happen to be a lesbian and I'm also a trans ally, and I think the way that the trans community are being portrayed as a danger, all of these tropes that we, those of us who are my age, remember from the 1980s when the AIDS crisis was happening. So we've got an irresponsible government who don't seem to think about the consequences of the actions that they're pursuing for their own narrow party political advantage. The trans conversion therapy ban is important, and to try to say you can have a ban without them being involved is ridiculous.”
Receive our weekly LGBTQIA+ newsletter by signing up here .
READ NEXT:
- Man left with £1,500 damage to luxury mansion after handyman fitted shelves in the dark
- Teen walked free from court for bottling ex then shot 15-year-old a month later
- Cabbies helped snare taxi rapist in biggest manhunt in Merseyside history
- Pregnant women living among cockroaches as Liverpool hits crisis point
- City centre restaurant manager caught with £60,000 cannabis farm in his loft
