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Six years ago, when I was Equalities Minister, I was due to attend a celebration of #IDAHOBIT with Ministers from a dozen EU countries (THREAD) #FlashbackFriday 
My colleague @lfeatherstone , who was leading the efforts on the Same Sex Marriage Bill, had initiated a document that called for action on LGBT+ rights, which was to be signed by the Ministers at this event.
The Conservatives were copied in all along as the doc was drafted & didn’t bat an eyelid. Then, suddenly just 3 days before I was due to travel…
…I was told the UK could no longer sign the statement. No reason given. I asked if there were any changes we could make at this late stage so that we could sign?
But I was just told no. Our advisers got involved, and we even tried to get Nick to speak to Cameron, but the PM was out of the country and we just didn’t have enough time.
A few days later, the Same Sex Marriage Bill came back to the Commons for Report Stage, so I thought the Conservatives were just trying to avoid another row with backbenchers at a difficult time. So I asked if we could sign the statement later in the year, with less fanfare.
The answer was no, again. And the following year, when I was on maternity leave, Jenny Willott was not allowed to go to the same event again.
8.Same Sex Marriage Bill was one of the proudest Lib Dem achievements from Coalition. For us it was a big step toward equality with recognition that more needed to be done, in the UK and around the world
For the Conservatives, same sex marriage was all they needed to do to be able to say they’d done something for LGBT+ rights. For them, it was another box ticked & they didn’t want to upset their backbench dinosaurs any more for equality
But we know there is still so much to do so that every single person in the world can love and be with whoever they want. #LoveIsLove #IDAHOBIT
