Newly appointed member of the House of Lords Michael Cashman: ‘Unless we set ourselves a goal, we cannot hope to achieve it.’
Lord Michael Cashman has said, if Labour is elected in the next UK government, the party will set itself a goal to achieve decriminalization of homosexuality worldwide by 2020.
Speaking at the Gay Star Travel Expo on Saturday (17 January), the newly-appointed member of the House of Lords said he is determined to help end inequality for LGBTI people.
‘I was appointed by Ed Milliband as the LGBTI Global Envoy, and we are absolutely determined that global envoy will not sit in a closet in the back of Whitehall, but will have a position within the Cabinet Office,’ he said at the panel debate.
‘The global envoy will have an overarching umbrella not just in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, but in culture, media, sport and education.’
He added: ‘HIV has become an excuse and is still an excuse to deny gay men but equally lesbians and bisexuals equal rights in communities.
‘We need to address that in the UN. We need a declaration that we will seek to achieve decriminalisation, the end of the death penalty and equal age of consent in 2020.
‘Unless we set ourselves a goal, we cannot hope to achieve it.’
Crispin Blunt MP, for Conservatives, and Baroness Liz Barker, for Liberal Democrats also attended the panel debate chaired by Gay Star News editor Tris Reid-Smith at Heaven in Charing Cross, London.
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