PM welcomes equality rights group

Jul 4 2009

The Prime Minister will welcome equality rights campaigners to Downing Street before the annual Pride march through central London.

Gordon Brown's wife, Sarah, is expected to join the colourful celebration of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender culture.

This year's theme is Come Out and Play and a host of flamboyant floats will bring a party atmosphere to Oxford Street, Regent Street and the West End.

Some of the festival's organisers and patrons, including comic Rhona Cameron, will meet Mr and Mrs Brown in their garden at Downing Street.

In his message to Pride London, Mr Brown described the creation of civil partnerships as one of a set of "massive strides towards equality" for the gay community made under the Labour Government which were made "often in the face of fierce opposition".

"This Government is committed to standing at your shoulders in the fight for equality and we are guided by one very simple principle when it comes to LGBT rights: you can't legislate love," he said.

Pride founder and prominent gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell, who is expected to march alongside Mrs Brown, described civil partnerships for same-sex couples as "a form of sexual apartheid" because they institutionalised different marriage laws for heterosexual and homosexual people.

He said he hoped to persuade Mrs Brown to talk to the PM about it.

The celebration follows a political row which saw Labour accused of "poisonous mudslinging" by Alan Duncan, the shadow leader of the House of Commons.

Mr Duncan said two senior ministers, both openly gay like him, were engaged in a co-ordinated attempt to stir up hatred and reopen old divisions.