GALHA’s secretary, George Broadhead, said: “When Ruth Kelly was given this job of looking after the interests of the various communities that the present Government has created, there was a strong suspicion that she would not be even-handed as far as LGBT people were concerned. We raised the alarm at the time of her appointment that there would be a conflict between her allegiance to an extreme wing of the Catholic Church and her ability to serve the interests of LGBT people fairly. These latest events indicate that she is putting her loyalty to Opus Dei first.

“We fear that Ms Kelly is going to grant large-scale opt-outs for religious groups from these new regulations. The pressure for these opt-outs has come from – among others – the Catholic Church, which has been agitating more and more against LGBT rights. LGBT people are getting a raw deal from this woman, who should never have been given this sensitive post in the first place considering her membership of Opus Dei.”

GALHA says that Ms Kelly should resign immediately and her place should be taken by someone who can at least look at the issue objectively.

Mr Broadhead also commented that the large number of protests that have been generated against the proposed regulations have been orchestrated by evangelical religious groups. “They have now got this down to a fine art,” Mr Broadhead said. “They have created a highly efficient network of church-based protestors who can be invoked to write letters and send e-mails by the tens of thousands. This was demonstrated during the Jerry Springer – the Opera controversy, when 60,000 protests were received by the BBC, and more recently over the Gay Police Association’s advertisement, which resulted in 45,000 protests being received by the Metropolitan Police.

“These are not spontaneous protests,” said Mr Broadhead. “Almost all of them were solicited by groups such as the Christian Institute, Christian Action Research and Education (CARE), the Evangelical Alliance and the Lawyers’ Christian Fellowship.”

***

Founded in 1979 in the aftermath of the Gay News blasphemy trial, GALHA is the only autonomous national organisation worldwide for gay and lesbian Humanists. It has members in many parts of the UK and in other countries.

Affiliations
GALHA is affiliated to the International Humanist and Ethical Union, which has consultative status at the United Nations, UNESCO, UNICEF, the Council of Europe, the European Union and the European Parliament. GALHA is also affiliated to Amnesty International, whose UK section has its own active Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Network. In addition, GALHA is an associate member of the US-based Council for Secular Humanism.