Chris Grayling

News from the UK  and a whole new political row has erupted over comments made by the Conservative  shadow home secretary, Chris Grayling,  who was secretly taped suggesting that people who ran bed and breakfasts in their homes should "have the right" to turn away homosexual couples.

The comments, made by Grayling last week to a leading centre-right think tank, drew an angry response from gay groups up and down the country along with the  other parties,  which they say only gives further evidence that the Conservative party is still the party of prejudice, intolerance and homophobia..

Grayling makes clear his views on the recording that those who run B&Bs should be free to turn away  gay guests, just because they are gay   "I think we need to allow people to have their own consciences," he said. "I personally always took the view that, if you look at the case of should a Christian hotel owner have the right to exclude a gay couple from a hotel, I took the view that if it's a question of somebody who's doing a B&B in their own home, that individual should have the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home."

He did make a  distinction between B&B's and  hotels, which he says should admit gay couples. "If they are running a hotel on the high street, I really don't think that it is right in this day and age that a gay couple should walk into a hotel and be turned away because they are a gay couple, and I think that is where the dividing line comes."

Ben Summerskill, chief executive of the gay rights group Stonewall, said the comments would be "very alarming to a lot of gay people who may have been thinking of voting Conservative".   Adding  "The legal position is perfectly clear. If you are going to offer the public a commercial service – and B&Bs are a commercial service – then people cannot be refused that service on the grounds of sexuality. No one is obliged to run a B&B, but people who do so have to obey the law. "I don't think anyone, including the Tories, wants to go back to the days where there is a sign outside saying: 'No gays, no blacks, no Irish.'"

Chris Bryant, the Europe minister, who last weekend became the first gay MP to be married in the Commons, said from his honeymoon in Edinburgh: "Anybody who thinks that the Tory party has changed should think what it would be like to have Chris Grayling as home secretary. It is impossible to draw a distinction between bed and breakfasts and hotels. It is very clear that very senior Tories have not realised that the world has moved on."

Yet looking at Grayling's view and voting record, it's believed from previous interviews that he was against the lowering of the age of consent for gay males,  that he was against in principle the civil partnership law,  and   he voted to keep a government ban on gays adopting children.

Recording of Grayling's comments is here.

More on this story on The Guardian.

Jason Shaw

Jason Shaw is GayGenda.com's UK Correspondent.

You can always read more from Jason  at his blog  The Seafront Diaries.

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