OUR LATEST ISSUE
Gay News: David Cameron has been urged to sack a member of his frontbench team after the MP wrote that the gay age of consent should not have been.
Julian Lewis
Shadow Minister: Age of consent should not have been lowered.
In a letter to a constituent, shadow defence secretary Julian Lewis argued that that lowering of the gay age of consent put teenage boys at “serious risk” of contracting HIV.
"When it comes to legalising practices that involve serious risk, I believe the higher limit should apply," he said.
"This is the reason we no longer allow 16 and 17-year-olds into frontline situations in the armed forces, for example."
The gay age of consent was lowered from eighteen to sixteen in 2000, to bring it in with the heterosexual age of consent.
The Conservative Party responded that Mr Lewis was expressing his personal views.
“These are not the view of the Conservative Party, and the terms in which he expressed them is wrong,” a spokesman for the Party said
"Under this Labour government we have seen a massive increase in HIV infections and STDs across all the population – straight and gay."
Mr Lewis’s comments come just a fortnight after shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling said that B&B owners should be allowed to refuse accommodation gay couples
