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Gay News: Voters at the Lib Dems' party conference have supported a motion calling for barriers to equal marriage rights to be removed.
By: Nigel Robinson
Gay marriage is about equality
Gay marriage is about equality
Lib Dems vote overwhelmingly for gay marriage
21 September 2010
The motion which said that discrimination on the grounds of sexual orientation was “unconscionable” was passed by an overwhelming number of the voters at the party’s annual conference in Liverpool.
Speaking to conference, Brian Paddick, the Liberal Democrats’ candidate in the 2008 London Mayoral election, said:
“We are not talking about forcing religious institutions to marry same-sex people. What we are saying is that there should be equality.”
He referred to the symbolism and importance of his marriage to his partner, a Norwegian, in Norway where gay marriage has been legal since 2009.
“If I want to marry my same-sex partner, then I should be allowed to,” he said.
Speaker Ed Fordham from London said: “The marriage laws are two hundred years out of date, and we have the responsibility to drag them out of the closet.”
The approved motion would also allow straight couples to convert their marriages into a civil partnership.
Liberal Democrat leader and deputy Prime Minister, Nick Clegg, is in favour of gay marriage, but it seems unlikely that the Coalition will introduce equal marriage rights during the term of the five-year Government.
