Victory for tolerance and fairness

This, after all, was the same parliamentary body which stubbornly insisted on homosexual practices remaining as crimes on the statute book long after they had been legalised elsewhere.

It is tribute to the more liberal and tolerant outlook of today’s politicians that the necessary legislation was passed not just readily but unanimously, with Chief Minister Ian Gorst describing it as long overdue.

The civil partnerships law is a natural development from the spirit of complete acceptance now enjoyed by homosexual men and women in all but a few irrelevant corners of society, a phenomenon which is itself in remarkable contrast to the oppressive attitudes of half a century ago.

Today’s young people might be both surprised and appalled to contemplate the stigma, stress and misery suffered by homosexuals forced to conceal their natures for fear of social ostracism or criminal prosecution.

Many, of course, did not live to see the more enlightened age we now inhabit but their experience of persecution provided much of the ammunition with which reform was eventually won.

To take one poignant illustration of the scale of this shift in public attitudes, there is a touch of bitter irony in this year’s international centenary celebrations for computing pioneer Alan Turing, who made a major contribution to victory over Hitler and to the foundations of the modern world but ended his own life after being chemically castrated for the crime of homosexuality.

Closer to home, it is likely that the heroic acts of anti-Nazi resistance by artist Claude Cahun during the Occupation would have been much more widely celebrated much earlier had she not been a lesbian.

This week’s States debate was rightly described as ‘an important day for equality and tolerance’ by Treasury Minister Philip Ozouf, who has himself made an important contribution to changing attitudes by his honest, and initially difficult, public presentation as a gay politician.

It can now be only a matter of time before the legalisation of civil partnership is followed by official endorsement of full marriage rites for same-sex couples, a development which can surely continue to be opposed only on the basis of dogma and prejudice rather than rational sense.