Seeking a "Minister for Women and Equalities"? Pick Someone Hostile to Gay Men and Women, Of Course

That's what the new Tory government has done in choosing Theresa May.  N.A.T. Coleman (Michigan), who flagged this issue for me, summarizes the case against her in response to a column in The Guardian claiming that the petition against her "perhaps helps illustrate how you often get little respect for changing your mind". Coleman writes:

On the contrary, there are three reasons why this petition quite rightly continues, in spite of her professed change of mind. 

First, she changed her mind on gay adoption, and her professed reasons for doing so had nothing to do with a belief in equal gay rights. They had to do with the welfare of children in care.  (Cf. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peAmygbh7CQ) Why should this particular change of mind, for this particular reason, give us any cause to think that Theresa May now believes in equal gay rights? 

Second, while I welcome the fact that, in 2004, she voted freely for civil partnerships, this is not evidence that she had, at that time, changed her mind on equal gay rights more generally. For, only a year prior, in 2003, she didn't bother to turn up to vote for the repeal of Section 28, and, earlier in 2004, she didn't bother to turn up to vote for the Gender Recognition Bill. Moreover, as recently as 2007, she didn't bother to turn up to support the Equality (Sexual Orientation) Regulations Bill. Furthermore, in 2008, when she was given a free vote by her leader, she voted against the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, thereby denying, to those same couples she had previously agreed could be civilly partnered, any rights of access to fertility treatment. 

Third, at a moment when LGBTQ Malawians face 14 years imprisonment, LGBTQ Ugandans face the death penalty, and a lesbian Iranian asylum-seeker is about to be deported from Britain to face torture, the public perception of the Minister for Equalities will make or break our ability to push for equal gay rights around the world. Indeed, the Foreign Secretary, William Hague, said as much to Eddie Mair on BBC Radio 4's PM last Thursday: "if we are going to win over other countries to our own values, we have to increasingly inspire them with how we represent those values ourselves". 

Theresa May does not represent those values. She does not inspire them. Whenever the gauntlet of equal gay rights has been thrown down, Theresa May has invariably either run into hiding or paraded her homophobia. We need an inspirational champion of equal gay rights, not someone who begrudingly concedes them. Theresa May remains unfit for the role of Minister for Women and Equalities.