Foster to be first DUP leader to attend a gay rights event

The DUP leader last week told her party executive about her decision to attend a Stormont summer reception hosted by LGBT publisher PinkNews, but the development only emerged publicly yesterday.

Mrs Foster, whose predecessors Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson campaigned in the late 1970s and early 1980s against the legalisation of homosexuality, will join other political leaders at the event which “recognises the immense contribution of the LGBT+ community in Northern Ireland”.

The move follows Mrs Foster’s visit to a Belfast Islamic Centre event to mark the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan and a meeting with Fermanagh’s GAA team.

However, Mrs Foster made clear that the first attendance by a DUP leader at a gay rights event should not be seen as a signal that the party is about to drop its opposition to gay marriage being extended to Northern Ireland. The Belfast Telegraph reported that Mrs Foster told senior party colleagues that she wanted to “recognise the reality of diversity among our citizens”.

She said: “I believe I can hold to my principled position, particularly in reality to the definition of marriage, while respecting the diversity across our society and recognising that sexuality is a matter for the individual...just because we disagree on marriage does not mean that I can’t say that we value those who are LGBT in our society, and they should not be the subject of hate because of their sexuality.”

Mrs Foster went on to claim that some gay people were voting for the DUP, something which was backed up by Jeff Dudgeon, the man whose 1981 European Court of Human Rights case led to homosexual acts being decriminalised.

Mr Dudgeon, who is now a Belfast councillor for the Ulster Unionist Party, told BBC Radio Ulster’s Talkback that although he was concerned that the DUP moves seemed to be “largely about PR”, he knew gay people who voted for the DUP because they saw it as the strongest unionist voice, even though they knew that seemed “a bit odd” to others.

In 2016, Mrs Foster faced down internal dissent to tell her MLAs to vote for pardons for those convicted under the old law which made homosexual acts a crime, a development which Mr Dudgeon said was significant because it was the first time that the DUP had endorsed a piece of gay rights legislation.

Last year PinkNews described he DUP as “homophobic” and published an article entitled “Meet the DUP homophobes who now hold the keys to power in the UK”.

And last year DUP MLA Edwin Poots denounced as “disgusting and wrong” PinkNews article which said that many people were describing the then four-year-old Prince George as a “gay icon”. Mr Poots claimed that was making the child an “icon of sexuality”.