Letter to the Independent: Cameron "evasive, dismissive and dishonest" on gay rights

12.00.00pm GMT Thu 4th Feb 2010

Johann Hari found David Cameron by turns "impressive, mediocre and worrying" on gay rights (Let's talk about sex, 4th February). When it came to the record of his ECR European Conservative group of MEPs, Cameron was also evasive, dismissive and dishonest.

The Tory Leader believes - wrongly - that all Polish political parties are equally homophobic. If that were the case, it would be preferable for Mr Cameron not to form a group with anyone from Poland! But it is not so, and in fact he has chosen to ally with one particular party which - along with some other parties in this ECR group - holds particularly unpleasant views about gay people.

These were on show last September when MEPs from that Group refused to back a Liberal Democrat motion condemning Lithuania's 'Section 28' law:

a law banning material that "agitates for homosexual or bisexual relations" or "defies family values".

Mr Cameron also needs to have a word with British Tory MEPs. One, Roger Helmer, has written on his own website that charges of homophobia are nothing more than a "propaganda device designed to denigrate and stigmatise those holding conventional opinions".

It has long been a conventional opinion that the Conservative Party has a nasty streak of homophobia running through it. David Cameron's denial of this is the propaganda device.

Yours sincerely,

Sarah Ludford MEP

(This letter was sent to The Independent on 4 February 2010 but was not published.)