Posted on 02/12/2006 8:40:48 PM PST by presidio9
Francis Maude, the chairman of the Conservative Party, has said that the homophobic attitude of the Thatcher government contributed to the death of his brother from Aids.
Mr Maude, who served as a minister under Margaret Thatcher and John Major, said he regretted voting for the now-repealed Section 28, which banned councils from promoting homosexuality. "In hindsight a mistake, I voted for it, I was a minister," he said.
In an interview with the gay news website PinkNews.co.uk, Mr Maude said: "We've been seen for a long time as a party which hasn't been very open to gay people. That's wrong." Asked if it was morally wrong, he replied: "Yes, totally."
Mr Maude, whose brother, Charles, died of Aids in 1993, said: "This is all informed by my family, my wonderful, intelligent, beloved brother.
"The gay scene in London in the 1980s was quite aggressively promiscuous and I think if society generally and the government I served in had been more willing to recognise gay people then there would have been less of that problem."
He added: "A lot of people like my brother would not have succumbed to HIV and lost their lives."
The former Treasury and Foreign Office minister is trying to build bridges between the Conservative Party and gay people as part of a drive by the Tory leader, David Cameron, to modernise the party and broaden its appeal.
Mr Maude, a Thatcherite who became one of the party's leading modernisers and ran Michael Portillo's 2001 campaign for the party leadership, said: "I've been conscious that too many gay people who are Conservative-leaning have not felt comfortable to support us."
He insisted there were some genuine reasons for adopting Section 28 in 1988. "Some local authorities were actively promoting homosexuality to school children at a time when gay sex under the age of 21 was illegal. However, times have moved on and the Conservatives should have moved on with it much, much earlier and we didn't. A big part of our problem more generally was that we have failed to keep pace with change in society."
Mr Maude rallied to the defence of Simon Hughes, the Liberal Democrat leadership candidate, who was criticised for telling The Independent he was not gay and then admitting he was bisexual. I thought Simon's explanation for his secrecy was so real. He didn't want to rub his sexuality in the nose of his elderly mother. I can appreciate it," he said.
"We shouldn't criticise, that will change as time will go on. I hope we're becoming a society where all of this matters much less and the sooner it happens the better. People should be able to be more at ease with themselves."
The Tory chairman said Nicholas Boles, the party's candidate in the target seat of Hove at last year's general election, was told by a voter he canvassed: "I can't vote Conservative because I'm gay." Mr Boles replied: "I'm gay too." Mr Maude added: "The man appeared perplexed and claimed we're an anti-gay party, but that sort of perception is intolerable. However, we've begun to redress it."
In 2002, Alan Duncan became the first openly gay Tory MP, which Mr Maude said was a necessary move forward for the party. "Being a Conservative MP was by then virtually the only work environment where there were no openly gay people represented," he said. "It is a shame that people can't be open about sexuality but I don't think any of us should underestimate how hard it is to come out. Chris Smith [the former Labour cabinet minister] came out way back, more than two decades ago. That was a bloody brave thing to do especially in the 1980s."
So she thinks promiscuity is caused by social disapproval? How stupid can someone be?
Someone in Britain has been promoting homosexuality, not suppressing it. I don't think anyone needs to make it any easier for young Nigel to take a shine to other boys.
Then he ought to ask himself why that might upset her.
L
What? Wrong Maude?
Oh, never mind.
LOL! Seems so!
Huh? I don't get the connection.
AIDS advocates, er- I mean activists would not be satisfied with less than Reagan and Thatcher going on live television to demonstrate the proper placement of a condom over a banana. Because they didn't, they killed gay people.... Get it?
"The gay scene in London in the 1980s was quite aggressively promiscuous and I think if society generally and the government I served in had been more willing to recognise gay people then there would have been less of that problem. ...A lot of people like my brother would not have succumbed to HIV and lost their lives."
This ridiculous asssertion makes no sense, as it is obvious there is no connection whatever between a supposed 'suppressing' of open homosexuality and gay promiscuity - which appears to be the norm for their lifestyle - and the resultant increase in AIDS. However, in that old, old book that the left debases and derides as long irrelevant to our 'modern' culture - the Bible - there is, I believe, a very clear and, in light of AIDS, compelling connection made between homosexuality and its medical repercussions:
"In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received IN THEIR OWN PERSONS the due penalty for their perversion." - Apostle Paul, Romans, Chapter 1, verse 27.
Ben:
Francis Maude is a guy, despite the name. One more of those very wet Tories which have caused them to be in the wilderness for the last 13 years and quite a few more.
Roy
You just have to believe that Thatcher made his brother bend over and degrade himself for the story to work, really.
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