David Cameron has issued an extraordinary apology on behalf of the Conservative Party for Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 – legislation introduced by Margaret Thatcher's government in response to evidence of Left-wing councils and schools intentionally promoting homosexuality to children.
Mr Cameron attended a homosexual joint fundraising event called ‘Pride at Paramount’ on 30 June 2009, where he expressed his party's desire to embrace the homosexual lobby.
He said to the attendees at the event:
'That's the kind of change we need today. That's the kind of change the new, compassionate Conservative Party understands. And together, as politicians and individuals, we can bring about that change. No to bigotry and prejudice. Yes to responsibility and equal rights. It's a change worth fighting for.’
He said that Section 28 had been a 'mistake' but that the party had moved on since its introduction in 1988. It is one of a series of apologies he has made for his party's actions in government. 'I’m sorry for Section 28,' he said. 'We got it wrong. It was an emotional issue. In wanting to make the party representative of the country, I think we have made some real progress.
‘The Conservatives had the first woman prime minister and we are bound to have the first black prime minister and the first gay prime minister.
‘Yes, we may have sometimes been slow and yes, we may have made mistakes, including Section 28, but the change has happened,' he added.
Mr Cameron, who admitted he did not have a perfect record on homosexual 'rights', also praised Conservative local associations for choosing more openly homosexual candidates for the positions of authority.
Ben Summerskill, the Chief Executive of the UK-based homosexual lobby group who led campaigns for repeal of Section 28, praised the speech. He said Mr Cameron's speech was 'historic', and added: ‘We have heard the leader of the Conservative Party say the words ‘Section 28’ and ‘sorry’. This is something people have waited on for many years. It is a remarkably positive step forward.’
However, Mr Cameron’s remarks were attacked by traditionalists from his party.
Lord Tebbit, the former Conservative Party chairman, said: ‘I certainly don’t think Section 28 is something the Tory party should be apologising for. I would say this apology is about focus group findings.'
Mr Cameron became leader of the Conservative Party in 2005 and has been hailed as one who would fight for traditional values. He then said that he wished to re-civilize 'our society, with school discipline, with strong families, and with cultural change.' He also added that society is not the same thing as the State, and decried Labour's 'command and control state,' which minutely regulates nearly every aspect of British private as well as public life.
In 2007, Mr Cameron voted with the Labour Government in favour of the highly controversial Sexual Orientation Regulations. Despite criticism of the rushed process to pass the regulations, the MPs voted 310 votes to 100 to enact the regulations without amendment. This new law was used to close Catholic adoption agencies for not allowing homosexuals to adopt from them.
In April 2009, Tim Montgomerie, a political secretary to the former party leader Iain Duncan Smith and the founder and editor of Conservativehome.com, reported that among David Cameron’s top five priorities will be 'more outreach to homosexual ‘rights’ groups’.
Among Mr Cameron’s leadership team, and most important 'modernisers' in the party, is Alan Duncan who made headlines in April this year for joking that he would like to murder Carrie Prejean, Miss California, for her assertion during the Miss America pageant that marriage should be restricted to one man and one woman. Mr Duncan is expected to serve as Cameron’s Home Secretary.
(See http://www.ccfon.org/view.php?id=731)
Gerald Warner, a columnist and political commentator at the Daily Telegraph, said that if David Cameron brings the Conservative party into line with the homosexualist political agenda, it could, 'in a peculiar way,' represent an opportunity for British Christians.
'It draws a line in the sand that we cannot cross. It is self-eliminating from the Christian's list of voting options at election time,' he said.
Warner reminds British Conservative voters that Cameron failed to defend the Catholic adoption agencies when they were threatened by the Labour government’s Sexual Orientation Regulations. 'His conduct is consistent. So should ours be.'
Warner said that the best weapons socially conservative Britons have are their votes and activism in ground-level politics. 'The challenge that will face Christians, pro-lifers and sincere campaigners for family values at elections over the next 20 years will be to find candidates worthy of support. That quest will partly be conducted at local level.'
(See http://www.christiantelegraph.com/issue5715.html)
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6621143.ece
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