“The party’s strident anti-gay agenda led to its MPs voting in the House of Commons against every LGBT law reform of the last 16 years. The DUP fought against the partial decriminalisation of gay sex in 1982 spearheading a vicious “Save Ulster From Sodomy” campaign that demonised and vilified LGBT people. ““For more than 40 years, DUP politicians have enforced discrimination against Northern Ireland’s LGBT community.”They backed the total criminalisation of homosexuality, with a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. “The DUP has four times blocked the legalisation of same-sex marriage denying Northern Irish gay couples the right to marry the person they love. But senior party figures hold sway and they dictate an anti-gay agenda. Even within the DUP, there are people who would not discriminate on the grounds of sexual orientation or gender identity. “Many Northern Irish people are not homophobic.
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We support their campaign for dignity, respect and equality,” he said. “We stand in solidarity with our LGBT brothers and sisters in Northern Ireland. Mr Tatchell helped organise the UK’s first lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) Pride in 1972 and he has marched in every parade since then. Its policies on gay issues echo the homophobia of the BNP and European fascist groups,” said Peter Tatchell, Director of the human rights organisation, the Peter Tatchell Foundation. This prejudice is stirred by the dominant Democratic Unionist Party. “Northern Ireland is the most homophobic region of the UK and one of the most homophobic regions of the EU. The Peter Tatchell Foundation is in the lead bloc of the parade sixth from the front.
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Varadkar’s visit comes a day after the British government for the first time ordered a rainbow gay rights flag to be flown above its main office in Belfast - Stormont House - to coincide with the Belfast Pride Festival.Peter Tatchell Foundation will highlight DUP discrimination at PrideĭUP echoes the policies of the BNP & European fascist partiesĪt this Saturday’s Pride London parade, the Peter Tatchell Foundation will highlight “legal discrimination against LGBT people in Northern Ireland: the ban on same-sex marriage, the lifetime prohibition on gay blood donors and the planned ‘conscience’ Bill which would permit religious people to discriminate against LGBT people in the provision of goods and services.”
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There was no official statement from any senior DUP member on Saturday and the party did not immediately respond to a request for comment. will find it odd if he starts to interfere, as in some ways he already has done, in what is a social issue in Northern Ireland around the redefinition of marriage,” Nelson McCausland, a senior DUP party member and former minister in the Northern Ireland executive, told the Irish News newspaper last week. Several DUP members last week voiced concern about Varadkar’s plan to attend the event, with some suggesting it was inappropriate interference in the politics of a neighboring country. Saturday’s breakfast, in the The Northern Whig pub in central Belfast, was also attended by Michelle O’Neill, the regional leader of Northern Ireland’s largest nationalist party Sinn Fein, and by a number of gay rights activists from the Irish and Northern Irish police forces.