22. BELIEVE PEOPLE WHO LOVE EACH OTHER SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO MARRY? UNSEAT CHOPE
Our Christchurch MP, Christopher Chope has voted against ALL of the major equal gay rights bills put forward in Parliament since 1998. Earlier this year he was one of just 21 MPs in the UK who voted against the new Relationship and Sex Education bill (which allows schools to be able to talk about different family models with young people).
He voted that gay couples shouldn’t be able to adopt, that there shouldn’t be an equal age of consent, and just last year blocked legislation which would allow same sex couples to marry in Northern Ireland, prompting the comment: “It cannot be right that a single MP has now been able to thwart the happiness of thousands”.
In 2013 he blocked a posthumous pardon for War Hero Alan Turing, who cracked the 'Enigma Code' and helped Britain win the Second World War. Despite Turing’s heroic act he was charged with homosexual offences in 1952 and killed himself after taking hormones to 'suppress' his sexual orientation.
In 2013 Chope was one of four MPs who camped outside Parliament to facilitate a new Queens Speech. Their proposals included holding a referendum on whether equal marriage should be ‘allowed’ but others were to ban the wearing of the burqua, bring back the death penalty, privatise the BBC, stop the subsidy of wind farms and rename August bank holiday ‘Margaret Thatcher’ Day.
As of the General Election in 2017, Chris Chope has the largest majority of any Conservative Member of Parliament. It is, by a long way, one of the safest seats in the UK.
Please, please don’t hand that safe seat back to him on the 12th December. He doesn’t deserve it.
Say #NOPETOCHOPE
Go to www.chrischope.co.uk to see our safe seat campaign and what we’re trying to do to challenge him.
For a little bit more on this topic, you could click here:
The Marriage (Same Sex Couples) (Northern Ireland) Bill was introduced to the House of Commons on 28 March 2018, and passed its first reading. The bill's second reading in the Commons was blocked by Conservative MP Christopher Chope on 11 May 2018, and again on 26 October.
