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4.48 pm
Ms Oona King (Bethnal Green and Bow): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on Second Reading.
The Bill is about two important matters: equal protection and equal treatment. I ask Members of Parliament not to encourage law breaking. First, there is law breaking by our own country. We have been found to be in breach of European law because we have evidently been discriminatory. Secondly, MPs should not encourage law breaking by those unsavoury individuals who prey on vulnerable young people. As the law stands, it encourages that.
How could any decent-minded person not want a change in the law? I have been wrestling with that question. At the root of the question lies a genuine belief--sometimes lurking in the further recesses of some people's minds but sometimes at the forefront--that gay men are inherently unequal and should be treated unequally under the law, as indeed, currently, they are.
Over the past 200 years, there has been a struggle for progress--a struggle to recognise one simple, basic premise, which is enshrined in article 1 of the United
Nations universal declaration of human rights: all human beings are born free and equal in rights and in dignity. However, the past 200 years have also been marked by the proclamations of those who are against change--who believe that they are entitled to inalienable rights, but that such rights are not transferable to other human beings. We have heard some of those views expressed by Opposition Members.
Those views are familiar because they were heard 200, even 100, years ago. It was said that black people were inferior to white people, so they could not be treated equally under the law. It was said that women were inferior to men, so they could not be treated equally under the law. If we read Hansard from 80 years ago, we will see the names of hon. Members who argued passionately that women should not be granted the vote and that, if they were, it would be the end of society.
When we read those comments today, we can scarcely believe them. We recognise in them the antediluvian, atavistic, primitive and bigoted views that they represent. We might even forgive those ancient Members of Parliament some of their bigotry--perhaps for cultural reasons or because of their sheer ignorance. They lived in an age and in a society that was primitive in its understanding of equality.
That is what we are discussing--a simple inescapable matter of equality. Unfortunately, we do not have to search through 200 years of Hansard to find bigotry and ignorance. We only have to listen to recent remarks. For example, we cannot forget Baroness Young. Several years ago, she said:
Lord Longford, a colleague of Baroness Young, said:
Mr. Gerald Howarth:
I have been tempted to intervene.
The reason why some of us take the view that we do is that it is perfectly natural for a boy and a girl to engage in a physical relationship. We feel that there is something less than natural about a relationship--anal intercourse--between two men. I am sorry, but that is how we feel.
Ms King:
That is precisely why I was trying to place the debate in the context of history, because in that context, I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman must
The idea has been expressed that one catches homosexuality like the pox. I find that very offensive--although I would say that hon. Members are entitled to prejudice and prejudicial views in the privacy of their minds. What really concerns me is when hon. Members allow their prejudice to maintain a law that indisputably discriminates against young gay men.
I would welcome the hon. Gentleman's comments on the following issue. There is evidence that the current law actually protects rapists in some circumstances, and no doubt encourages them. I refer colleagues to the debate initiated by Lord Tope in October 1998, in which he read out a letter from a 16-year-old male Londoner who said:
It is not just the morality of those who want to maintain an unequal age of consent that bothers me, but their stupidity. It is an unfortunate fact of life that some men--a minority--rape. If they rape a 16-year-old girl, that young girl can go to the authorities and get the authorities behind her, but if a rapist rapes a 16-year-old boy, that young boy can go to the authorities and go straight to jail. We can see where the prejudice is, but we cannot discern the logic. In 1957, the logic of the Wolfenden report, which recommended a different age of consent for gay men, was that young men should be actively discouraged from choosing a way of life that might have the effect of setting them apart from society. First, as Stonewall has pointed out, that is a circular argument which relies on prejudice to justify prejudice. Secondly, I would hope that, in 40 years, we have made some progress.
Many studies, some of which have been alluded to, have shown that choice does not come into the matter in the way that some hon. Members might have thought it did. Most reputable medical organisations recognise that homosexuality is not a choice--a point on which my hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Kali Mountford) expanded convincingly. In recent research by the Medical Research Council, 74 per cent. of gay men said that they thought that they were sexually different before they first had sex with a man. Of course, there is also plenty of anecdotal evidence. I have many gay friends. I was talking to one of my gay friends the other day, and he said that every single one of his 40 or 50 gay male friends had thought that they were gay by the age of 12. When I was 12 I used to dream of getting married and having children: but he and his friends knew at the age of 12 that they were gay.
Dr. Julian Lewis (New Forest, East):
The hon. Lady knows that I much admire her views on many subjects but
Ms King:
My first reaction is that I hope that the hon. Gentleman fully supports the repeal of section 28 to prevent such bullying. The second and more general point is that most people recognise that people cannot transfer their sexuality if they violently attack someone. People either have a proclivity, or they do not. It is ludicrous to suggest that, had I been attacked and sexually assaulted by another woman when I was a 16-year-old girl, I would suddenly have thought, "Whoops, you know what? I am not a heterosexual: I'm actually a lesbian." Such arguments are ludicrous.
I want to return to the theme of intolerance, which has run through the debate. If we start from the premise that one group should have less protection under the law than another, we end up with the outcome that one group is worth less under the law than the other. That is the foundation stone of intolerance. Obviously, there are degrees of intolerance. For example, a little bit of intolerance is when people say that they do not like homosexuals and that homosexual relationships are worth less than heterosexual relationships. A lot of intolerance is when someone says, "Homosexuals are worthless, they have no right to life and I am going to blow them up."
The one thing that the bombs last year taught us is that intolerance is a danger to us all. My hon. Friend the Member for Brentford and Isleworth (Ann Keen), in an eloquent account of the devastation that resulted from the bombs, told us how they had affected her and many of her friends and family. I am sure that the bombs affected many people personally.
When the first bomb, targeting the Afro-Caribbean community, went off in Brixton, I, as a black MP, was terribly concerned. When the second bomb, targeting the Bangladeshi community in Tower Hamlets, went off in Brick Lane, I was naturally, as the local MP and as someone who has lived and worked in the area, terribly concerned. When the third bomb, targeting the gay community in Soho, went off, I was very, very concerned, not least because I was standing 60 yards away at the moment of the explosion. I realised, as I watched someone having shrapnel picked out of their back, that homophobia threatens everyone, including straight women like me and the straight men on the Opposition Benches.
We cannot, in all conscience, give intolerance an excuse in the letter of the law. That is why I urge every Member of the House to vote for an equal age of consent. As we know, it is difficult to achieve change and it has been a difficult process. It takes courage to do that.
"If a 16 year old girl has heterosexual relations, the worst that can happen to her is to have a baby. She could lose her heart to an unsuitable man and she may be very unhappy . . . But what is so tragic for the 16-year-old boy . . . entangled with homosexuality is that he denies himself forever the opportunities for marriage, children and a normal life."
I would say that one can have a normal life with or without marriage and children. The shadow Home Secretary might want to reflect on that point.
"A girl is not ruined for life by being seduced. A young fellow is."
I fail to understand that logic: a young woman can get over being seduced, but a young man cannot. Those poor young men! It seems that they do not have the strength, the resilience or the moral purpose to withstand being seduced. Why are people so concerned about the right of 16-year-old boys to be protected from predatory men, but not about the right of girls? I do not understand that. I take great offence at the suggestion that, in that respect, a girl deserves less protection under the law.
"I was raped by a man. But because I was under the age of consent, at the age of sixteen, I thought that if I told anyone, I would be arrested and put into prison. And so I did nothing"--[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 October 1998; Vol. 593, c. 323.]
So a rapist got away with raping a young man. I ask all hon. Members, regardless of their views on this matter, to recognise that if they vote to maintain an unequal age of consent, they are complicit in allowing young people in that situation to have to withstand brutality, violence and rape. By the same token, I believe that they are complicit in allowing rapists to escape justice.
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