This morning I received my copy of Equal Ever After by Lynne Featherstone. As one of campaigners from the LGBT+ community from one of the political parties that pooled resources to achieve great things in the arena of same sex marriage I wasn't going to hang around to get reading this book.
Of course I have great praise for Lynne and the role she had in making same-sex marriage happen in England and Wales, but her telling of the tale omits one very important part of the tale both of her party's and the nation's move towards that goal. The fact that before the May 2010 election Liberal Democrats in at least one part of the country were able to answer to answer questions on this that is was party policy where they were standing and they hoped that if elected they would pursue it across the UK. Two of those the candidate for Falkirk and his agent, who also happened to be the candidate next door in Linlithgow and East Falkirk, were even able to talk about the role they had played on creating that policy.
Sadly the fact that the Scottish Liberal Democrats had debated, voted and passed a policy on equal marriage and equal civil partnership in the run up to the 2010 election does not appear to warrant a mention, not even as a footnote to history of Lynne's history of the fight for same-sex marriage. \It is one significant footnote in our party's fight for LGBT+ equality, as well as footnote in the history of LGBT+ equality in our nation that is missing.
Obviously as somebody who was there on that platform helping to propose that Scottish policy motion to conference who now finds himself back home in Northern trying to close the circle in that "corner of our United Kingdom" that has "set its face against marriage equality" my fight goes on, waiting for us all to be equal ever after.
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