GAY rights activist, actor and politician Baron Cashman of Limehouse called for ‘decent people’ to deliver equality for minority groups on his visit to Jersey this week.
The peer, who was the guest speaker at Thursday’s commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, last visited the Island 30 years ago to support reform of the age of consent.
Baron Cashman said that, in spite of progress in many areas of the law, he regularly saw evidence of discrimination against minority groups.
‘Sadly, I see it on the increase in the UK and that’s pretty depressing when you think you’ve won the arguments. It’s a reminder that the enemy never goes away.
‘I don’t enjoy fighting but I will fight on.
‘The thought of getting up in that debate when I know I’ve got to oppose something takes everything out of you but what drives me is that what’s happening is wrong – it’s the sense of injustice and when it’s supported by power – whether it’s religious organisations like the Church or politics – it’s even worse,’ he said.
Baron Cashman, founder of the human rights charity Stonewall, said that organisations needed to protect the rights that decent people had secured.
He said that he could see the struggles which took place over the controversial Section 28 of the Local Government Act – which prohibited the teaching of the acceptability of homosexuality as a family relationship – taking place again today.
‘Now I see it being visited on others, and you can’t remain silent, that’s part of what I said [on HMD] – that if you remain silent about the rights of other, ultimately your rights are next’, he added.
- Baron Cashman is the subject of today’s Saturday Interview on pages 10 and 11.
