On Wednesday 21st March 2007, the Equality Act (Sexual Orientation) Regulations 2007 made it through the House of Lords with a vote of 168 to 122. From the 30th April 2007, it became unlawful for anyone concerned with the provision of goods, facilities and services to the public to discriminate against another because of their sexual orientation. Great…but what has it really done for the gay community?
So far, on a limited scale and within Cornwall, I have found that few people outside the LGBT community have actually heard of this addition to the Equality Act, including businesses that supply financial services. Far more money has been spent advertising the smoking ban in public places. At the time the Act was being passed, much of the publicity in the papers circled around the debate about catholic adoption agencies having to consider LGBT applicants to adopt children, than the actually scope it covers.
3 comments:
Do you suffer a lot of homophobia in your area?
Honestly, there is the occasional joker here, but nothing big. This is a pretty liberal community.
Not much in our area, we're lucky. My sister who lives in London has had quite a bit of harassment on and off over the years.
There's a lot of reports at the moment about homophobic bullying in schools, which is worrying.
Just a few years ago about 2000 Somalians and their children moved into the city all at once (part of some immigration program) and over 25% of them recieve welfare money, so I think the resentment of them has caused people to be discriminatory toward them, and lessened all the other prejudice's in the city. People don't care if you're gay, as long as you're not Somalian...
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