Tory switch over legal rights for gay couples

The Conservatives are preparing to demonstrate a shift to a more inclusive approach under Michael Howard's leadership by allowing a free vote on legislation giving same-sex couples similar legal rights to married partnerships.

A year ago, Iain Duncan Smith, the former Tory leader, triggered a damaging revolt within the party by ordering his MPs to vote against moves to allow unmarried couples, including homosexuals, to adopt children.

The Queen's Speech opening the new session of Parliament on Wednesday will include a commitment to introduce legislation to legalise civil partnerships in England and Wales - the most far-reaching change to laws relating to homosexuality since gay sex was legalised in the 1960s.

Gay and lesbian couples in long-term, stable relationships will be able to register at a register office, benefiting from inheritance, tax and next-of-kin rights.

They will receive a certificate and be able to call themselves "registered civil partners" obliged to support each other "financially and emotionally throughout their lives".

Partners will gain rights over property, social security, benefits and pensions - both state and private. There will be a procedure for "divorce", with maintenance claims.

In a further sign that the Tories are prepared to show a greater acceptance of homosexuality, the party's response to the legislation will be led by Alan Duncan, who last year became the first sitting Conservative MP to admit that he was homosexual.

Mr Duncan, the party's spokesman on constitutional affairs, said the Bill would be treated as a conscience issue on which Tory MPs would be allowed a free vote.

He said the Tories would also want to look at whether two relatives living together in a non-sexual relationship - such as sisters sharing the same house - should be able to qualify for the new rights.

But he indicated that the party was likely to oppose any suggestion that the partnerships would amount to "marriage" - which he described as a religious term.

Lord Carey of Clifton, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, said yesterday that there could be a case for same-sex civil partnerships as long as they were not called marriages.

He told BBC Television's Breakfast with Frost programme that Christians should not assume there was necessarily anything "sinister" about same-sex relationships. But he said they should not be blessed in church.

"As long as we don't call it marriage, because marriage for me and for many people is a relationship between a man and a woman for life. It is not to do with same-sex relationships. But there may well be a case for looking sympathetically at civil partnerships," he said.

The Tories' decision to allow a free vote will be seen as a significant victory for the party's modernisers - and an indication that Mr Howard is seeking to reunite the party's warring factions by leading from the centre.

Peter Hain, the Leader of the Commons, said the Queen's Speech would outline a "radical, exciting" legislative programme - focusing on "big picture" themes, including the fight against terrorism, moves to tackle illegal immigration, reform of pensions and student finance.

Under proposals for tightening immigration laws, asylum seekers whose claims have been rejected would be told to take a "voluntary" flight home or lose their benefits. Any children would be taken into care by the authorities to save them from destitution.

The Home Office yesterday defended the plans against criticism from refugee groups. A spokesman said it was the only logical way to deal with people who had no right to be in the country and therefore no right to public funding or accommodation.

Just what the Tories needed to get back into power, a strong gay-rights plank. Maybe they can start supporting a strong EU and nationalizing businesses next. /sarcasm

No f'in wonder they can't get back into power. What a bunch of nancies! I hope Lady Thatcher is planning her comeback.

Thank GOD they've put a Major clone in charge. THAT's what the party needed, a return to moderate idiocy! I wonder if anyone else has noticed that both sets of parties in the U.S./U.K. sphere are melding into clones. I had hoped the U.K. Tories would work their way into a isolationist conservative group so that the U.S. Pubbies would have an example of how it's supposed to be when Blair finally has to run again and the Brit economy's shot, but it's obvious their real aim now is to play neocon Jr. and hope for Labor scraps.

Huh? The Tories have always been pretty gay-friendly. Mike Harris, who was Satan Incarnate to Canada's far left, had a number of openly gay people working for him, and whenever some high court ruling came down in favor of gays, he would simply reply to the effect that although he believed in the traditional concept of the family, the law is the law.

Conservative does NOT mean anti-gay. And although they are being represented as a loss, we conservatives may still enjoy a form of triumph, albeit a hollow one. For years, one of the aims of the Left has been the destruction of the institutions of marriage and family, and they nearly succeeded in the sixties and seventies. Now, the only way they can claim a "victory" is by affirming the importance of marriage, monogamy and committment, the very things they tried to destroy in the name of "free love" and sexual "freedom". We might have lost the battle, but we are winning the war.

Television and the movies set the mores for society and no party can stand up to their influence in the long run. Thus you see this homogenization of politics (mostly, but not exclusively, to the left) throughout the West. I really believe that you cannot have democracy and television at the same time because the technology of modern mass-media puts too much power in the hands of an unelected and unaccountable few. Television will destroy freedom in the end.

UK local conservative groups are dominated by the elderly who have traditional British conservative views. Many of their political views were formed back when Britain was still a great imperial power. On the other hand, you have the MPs, parliamentary Conservatives, who want to form a government. They have their eye on people who are currently voting Labour, but to get enough of those to switch back, many of them believe that they need more libertarian social policies to counteract the still widespread perception that the Tories are the 'nasty party' and still stand for all the things that caused Mrs Thatcher to fall and Major to lose to Blair. They need to attract younger voters badly, and this kind of stuff is an indication of just how badly.

This is the basis of a split in the parlimentary party. Some want to stick with their traditional agenda, others want to move to a socially libertarian, but economically conservative agenda, which their polling tells them might be their best way to get elected in 21st Century Britain.

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