On Friday, we finally launched LobbyALord.org, something I’ve been working on frantically since the Marriage (Same-sex Couples) Bill passed third reading in the House of Commons. It’s very simple really – it allows you to lobby Peers to support equal marriage, keeps a count of how many times each peer has been lobbied, their previous voting record and whether or not they’ve come out on either side of the debate. There’s also a handy sortable table to aid with your lobbying.

However, not every Lord has an email address. That’s right. You, the taxpayer, give them a generous amount of money simply for turning up to the House and signing in, yet they’re not obliged to keep an email address for which you can lobby them from. Luckily, BBC Democracy has a good list of Peers that *do* have a direct email (and good for them).

So how do you contact a Peer by email if they don’t have a direct address? Well, you have to use the House of Lords’ central email: contactholmember@parliament.uk

But as Lords don’t have a constituency and you may want to lobby a number of them on a certain vote, what happens if you try emailing that address a lot? Well, you get the following email:

Thank you for your email.

This email address is strictly for contacting individual Members of the House of Lords.  The address cannot be used for bulk mail shots or to forward one message to multiple Members.  Any identical messages sent to more than six Members of the House of Lords will be deleted.

For Information about Lords membership, work, role and function please email hlinfo@parliament.uk<mailto:hlinfo@parliament.uk> or phone 0207 219 3107.

Freedom of Information requests to the House of Lords should be sent to hlinfo@parliament.uk<mailto:hlinfo@parliament.uk>

Any sales promotions, advertisements or duplicate lobbying emails will be deleted.

That’s right. How dare you lobby the Lords who decide legislation on your behalf.

This essentially meant that people were getting this email a lot, because the Lords were generated entirely randomly. We’ve rectified this today by pointing out where we have a direct email for that Lord, both on the Lord generator on the front page and on the Peers table. This means you can now sort Lords by whether or not they have a direct email address and avoid worrying about the ridiculous deletion problem.

In the longer term, I’ve started a government e-petition for every active voting Lord to have a Parliamentary email address. You can sign it here: http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/51076

If you’re unaware of SPUC, they are the “Society for the Protection of Unborn Children”. A Catholic pressure group that pipes up about the “science” behind abortion rather regularly. Fairly recently, they stepped into the equal marriage debate. But, I hear you ask, what on earth does gay marriage have to do with abortions? Well, don’t you know? Gay marriage will increase the incidence of abortion, according to the leaflet SPUC circulated not so long ago.

That’s right fellow homosexuals. You and I, by wanting marriage, are responsible for more abortions. It’s clearly all those unwanted pregnancies we keep having.

Today, however, I was contacted by my good friend Lara (who tweets as @lbulut) whose housemate is a teacher. Today, he found one of his pupils in possession of this:

Gay marriage will result in a 27% increase of smashed photo frames.

Considering the constant cries from conservative Christians that gays are indoctrinating children, it’s worth remembering that we rarely leaflet schools. Indeed, unlike them, nor do we run them with state funding. Anyway, if you’ve finished admiring the emotively neutral front page, peruse the back:

So, let’s not spend too much time on this, but…

“Children and teenagers at school will quickly learn about “gay marriage”, as teachers will have to teach them the new definition of marriage”.

This isn’t the 1980s. Children and teenagers today have access to a wealth of news and knowledge called the Internet. They will already know about gay marriage because, if they haven’t heard the many news articles about it, they’ll have picked up your leaflet. Poll after poll suggests they’re less likely to throw up about hearing the news than you folk are – young people are increasingly more liberal and the country is all the better for it.

“Gay relationships will be promoted to primary school children via storybooks.”

As far as I’m aware, there are already such storybooks. Marriage won’t change this. Children are more likely to be accepting of gay relationships because they haven’t been exposed to the same prejudices as you and, as you like to argue consistently, they won’t have been taught about the birds and the bees yet. Therefore it’s not about sex, it’s just about love – y’know, that famous value your religion talks about. Whilst I know you yearn for a return to Section 28, the country has moved on. Nobody with the slightest modicum of intellect believes that you can be taught sexuality – for a start, the Catholic Church failed to make me straight. Also, your kid might be gay, deal with it. If they are, such environments mean they’ll grow up thinking they’re not the monstrosity you suggest they are.

“NHS-endorsed websites, which promote high-risk sexual practices, will be mainstreamed in secondary schools.”

Well you’ve got me there. As a red-blooded teenager when I found time to myself at the computer, there’s nothing that turned me on more than those NHS-endorsed websites. Disagree on the high-risk sexual practices though – I got most of my promotion of that from my Catholic school telling me that using condoms was wrong.

I could go on, but I’ve already spent enough time on this. It’s worth noting however that not only is this leaflet an assault on single-parents everywhere, who are apparently depriving their children by not having an opposite sex partner; but it also seems to attack those who choose to follow the virtuous path of adoption, the direct statement that children should be “brought up by the people who conceived them”. Catholics still run adoption agencies, don’t they?

The opposition to equal marriage deviated into farce a long time ago. Now it’s in the realms of utter desperation.

[NB: I intended to write this on the night the second reading passed, but I was celebrating with a glass of vino or two and wanted to put proper thought into this. So apologies for the delay.]

Dear Kate,

It’s very easy to criticise elected representatives and cause trouble for them when they’re not doing something you want to; but conversely I never want to be the type that can’t acknowledge and express gratitude when they are. I wrote a blunt open letter to you after my partner and I visited your surgery; so it’s therefore only right that I write an open letter of thanks.

Your vote on 5th Feb has meant that we are one step closer to marriage equality. For that, I’m deeply grateful. I look forward to the Bill’s progression through both Houses and hope it can continue to enjoy your support.

Many thanks

Chris Ward

I’m normally very pragmatic about tactical voting. In fact, I have to be. For a good eight years I delivered Focus leaflets with the famous barchart. “Labour can’t win here”; “It’s a two horse race”; “It’s so close here”, etc. It’s a sad indictment of our political system that more often than not, your vote has to be used to stop someone you dislike more than it is to help someone you like. If only we had a system like AV…

Those who attended the Guildford Borough Council debate on equal marriage will recall that the primary opposition to my petition was engineered by the then Conservative leader of the council, Tony Rooth, and the then (and current) leader of the Liberal Democrat group, David Goodwin. Initially the motion against the petition was proposed on the basis that the council does not have any powers regarding marriage and therefore should not take a view – it also explicitly stated that views on equal marriage were a matter of personal conscience. Do note that down, because it’s important. The Lib Dem leader wasn’t concerned about equal rights, he was insisting that such rights where at the whim of “personal conscience”.

The notion that the intent behind this motion was because the council had no powers was exposed as nonsense during the debate. In my opening remarks, I challenged Cllrs Rooth and Goodwin on the fact they’d both enthusiastically supported/opposed similar motions in the past, most notably the motion against the council tax re-bill and the motion supporting a Tory white paper in the previous Parliament. The former was entirely out of the council’s control and the latter was regarding something that would become an Act of Parliament – nothing to do with the council’s powers. On both those occasions, neither Rooth or Goodwin moved an amendment to kill off the debate on the grounds that the council had no power.

That’s all fine, except Goodwin had a response to it. He moved to a different argument – that he wasn’t sure his residents would support it. Once again, do note this down – a case of not doing the right thing, but doing the most popular thing. There are certain situations where one does not poll their residents and simply uses their conscience. When I was a councillor, I’d have found it remarkably odd to ask residents who weren’t in my local care home their views on services for that care home. They have no stake in it, they are not affected by the decisions made – so why on earth should they have a say in it? The same goes for a marriage that many of Goodwin’s residents will not be affected by (the straight ones I presume, he decided to ignore the many LGBT ones who had turned up in the public gallery to support the petition). Sometimes you’re just expected to do the right thing.

I’ve been quite disdainful of the Guildford Lib Dem response to this. I’ve had faux outrage from activists in the local party; indeed the Guildford Dragon reported that Goodwin’s position was in question with his colleagues after he proposed such a motion without consulting them. Yet he still leads the council group and the local party Executive saw fit to approve his selection to restand in the May elections for his County Council seat. So for all the noise and anger at his part in scuppering a petition that simply asked for support in the pursuit of equal rights, Guildford Liberal Democrats have not only done nothing, but they have put him back on the ballot paper.

Even after this, I was content simply campaigning in Guildford South West (the division in question, which contains a good chunk of my old ward) this May, until I read this article on the Guildford Lib Dem website, which quotes Goodwin as saying:

“I am sorely disappointed Anne Milton MP could not decide whether to vote in favour or against the proposals on Equal Marriage, especially following her comments the previous week on concerns that people thought she was against the proposals.

The residents of Guildford elected Anne Milton MP to reflect judgement, not to avoid votes deliberately because she couldn’t make up her mind.

This is an issue which affects a lot of people in Guildford. I’m glad that this will enable people of the same sex make a lasting commitment to one another, finally bringing same-sex partnerships in line with heterosexual marriage. It’s a landmark decision which will also protect the interest of religious institutions not to go against their own beliefs”

So, breaking this down into points.

1. Goodwin is “sorely disappointed” Anne Milton couldn’t decide how to vote after he himself proposed a motion to council insisting that councillors don’t get to vote on the equal marriage petition.

2. The condemning of Anne Milton for a lack of “judgement” and that she avoided votes “because she couldn’t make up her mind” after he explicitly stated he didn’t want to vote on equal marriage because he wasn’t sure his residents would support it.

3. His sudden interest and support for equal marriage after his outrageous comments at Guildford Borough Council that angered and distressed many members of the LGBT community who were there.

Equal marriage is deeply important to many LGBT people. The very fact that Guildford Liberal Democrats have seen it as a political campaign (and have postured as such on varying sides of the debate) instead of a campaign for the rights of individuals speaks volumes about their sincerity towards LGBT people in Guildford. It’s not so long ago that I walked out of their AGM after one of their Parliamentarians said the local party shouldn’t support my blood ban motion because it wouldn’t be “politically expedient” and because it would upset “the Daily Mail readers”. The things said in private by members of the local party do not reflect the shiny progressive picture they plonk on their website. The very fact they think LGBT people will be duped by such a cynical article speaks volumes for the respect they have for them.

There is of course, no such thing as “no exceptions”. There are decent people in Guildford Lib Dems who have consistently supported equal marriage. Steve Freeman, my old ward colleague, came along to sign one of my equal marriage postcards only a few weeks ago; as did George Potter (LD candidate for Guildford East) and a couple of others.

Guildford Liberal Democrats have been an obstacle for LGBT equal rights progression more than they have been supportive. They do not see equal marriage as a means to an end for same-sex couples who wish to enjoy the same rights as everybody else, they see it as a stick to beat Anne Milton with. Therefore, I’m sorry to say that no matter what the barchart says about the Tories possibly getting in, LGBT individuals are not safe voting Lib Dem in Guildford.

I know I’m a tiny bit guilty of it, but far too many gay rights activists take their fight only to Downing Street, Parliament and Facebook/Twitter. Over the last year I decided to run the most local campaign I possibly could in Guildford. Why? Because the progress of gay equality will only ever be known coldly and lifelessly as “the gay agenda” until the average Joe suddenly realises that somebody he/she knows and cares about will be affected. Facebook ‘likes’ and tweets don’t bring that message to your neighbours and friends, merely to those who most likely already know and accept you – i.e. the type that’s already on our side.

Let’s not take the second-reading vote for granted. It was overwhelming, but that does not mean it can’t be overturned. If this post does one thing, I hope it’s that it convinces you to do something local – just the smallest thing that lets people know the gays aren’t just in the metropolitan suburbs of south London, but that they’re the neighbours too.

So, here’s what I did.

ONE. A goddamn petition to the local council.

Not just any petition. I was a councillor in Guildford between 2007 and 2011. During that time, I established one thing – Guildford Borough Council doesn’t do democracy. It was awful at it. Not because of the officers who work pretty hard to engage with the people, but simply that the council has on it some of the most apathetic disinterested people I’ve ever met.

So I started a petition on their e-petitions website. I had less than two weeks to gather the signatures because of the imminent closure of the government consultation. It was, is, and will most likely remain vastly the most engaged-with e-petition Guildford BC has ever received. Anyway, as we amassed over 500 signatures, we became the first (and last) e-petition to trigger a debate at Full Council. That’s been covered a fair bit here, so I won’t go over old ground. What did we get out of that? The chamber was packed full of supporters – not a single opponent and the local press coverage was pretty bon (see photo). This was the free newspaper delivered to every house in Guildford.

TWO. Go and see your MP. If you have a partner, bring him/her

I did this twice. Once with my new local MP in Vauxhall (who has since decided she’ll vote for the legislation for which I’m very grateful) who wasn’t too receptive to begin with so I wrote her an open letter; and I had various chats with Anne Milton, Guildford’s Conservative MP. As a councillor, I worked with/against Anne on a number of things, so the contact was already there. I met with her in Portcullis House and asked her to support it. She said she needed more pro-equal marriage people to write to her because of the sustained campaign from opponents.

I cannot stress more the importance of seeing your MP face to face. If they’re wavering, they need to see exactly who it is that is affected by the legislation. My partner and I went to see Kate Hoey at her surgery. We wanted her to know that when it came to deciding how she voted, we weren’t this nameless entity that she hadn’t met before. Meeting your MP humanises the legislation for them and this can tip the balance. If you haven’t seen your MP about it yet, do!

THREE. Leaflets and/or postcards.

As it came closer to the vote, it became clear that (as normal), only the fanatics had emailed Anne regarding equal marriage. A number of people who want marriage frankly, like many normal people, aren’t as clued up to the political process as the sustained and organised campaigns by the Churches.

I knocked together a very simple postcard using the branding from Coalition for Equal Marriage. I decided it was important to use that branding because otherwise the message becomes fragmented. Although I don’t usually recommend commercial services on here, I used a printers called Vistaprint. The price was reasonable, as was the speed of delivery and the quality of the final print. I made sure the MP’s name was in big bold type on the front – it needed to be clear that this was a deeply local postcard.

We managed to get 169 signed in just over six hours. The scale of support for equal marriage is massive – it just takes somebody to go out there and ask people.

If you don’t have the means to print full-colour postcards, knock together a simple leaflet/letter. Tell people why you want marriage. Print it out on the cheapest paper you have and go out with a friend to deliver it to your street. Make it personal, make it local, and make sure the person who reads it knows they need to speak to their MP.

[If you need the high-res image produced to print your own postcards, just give me a buzz on christopher.j.ward@gmail.com]

They were signed by same-sex couples, mixed-sex couples, married couples, couples with civil partnerships, single people, a whole variety. I took photos of some of them which I’ll produce below. The impact is high for such a small amount of work….

The fight isn’t over yet. Be inventive. Be creative. But most importantly, be local!

Dear Kate,

A few weeks ago you’ll recall that my partner and I visited your surgery to ask for your support in the equal marriage legislation. I will be blunt and say we were quite shocked at how dismissive you were – you told us that your surgery was for other issues and you didn’t have much time to talk to us about marriage. The reason you gave for doing so was that it wasn’t urgent; that no Bill would be presented for what you described as a long time yet. Well, that’s now changed, and I write this in the public domain in the hope that we get the undivided attention from you that we failed to attain last time.

We were disappointed to hear you attempt to manage expectations by telling us you had “many gay friends who don’t want marriage”. Although it would be crass to compare apples and pears, similar arguments have been given in the past when it comes to equal rights. When women were given the vote, some used the very same point to illustrate why they shouldn’t have the same rights as men. Not only is the evidence anecdotal, it suggests that the wishes of those you know should dictate the rights received by the rest of us. By voting for equal marriage, you are not forcing your gay friends to get married, you are giving all gay/bisexual men and women a choice to get married. That includes the choice not to.

We are aware of your strong links with the church and that is something we both do our utmost to accommodate, despite our atheism. We accepted that no Bill should prevent any religious organisation from believing whatever horrific awful thing they wanted to believe, even if such a thing is unpalatable to anybody with a sense of conscience and compassion. You talked about the Biblical definition of marriage, but you didn’t specify which one. My strict Catholic upbringing meant that I could summon, off the top of my head, at least two points in Genesis where incest and polygamy are invoked and promoted. As has been stated on a number of occasions, including by Maria Miller today, marriage is an institution that has evolved with the times. It is no longer the union of misogynistic servitude to males it once was; it is a union of equality by which two people who love each other can express that under the same institution many people have done, long before religion claimed marriage as a sacrament of its own.

No one seriously believes that, even without the quadruple lock announced by the Culture Secretary today, that a challenge under the European Convention of Human Rights will be successful. This is because every challenge so far under Article 12 with regards to same-sex marriage has been rejected. As mentioned numerous times this afternoon by the Culture Secretary, the ECtHR are insistent that same-sex marriage is a matter for individual sovereign states to take a line on. Article 12 is very specific in its wording and the rights of religious organisations are enshrined in Article 9. In addition to these protections, the Culture Secretary has announced additional shielding for religious organisations – unnecessary from a legal point in my view, but clearly necessary to nurse the wild hysteria surrounding a practically non-existent risk.

Although my partner and I are not formally engaged, we have of course discussed the future and we are agreed on one thing. If we ever were to pursue a civil union, we want marriage. We want marriage because that’s what those around us have enjoyed. We want marriage because the very existence of an institutional barrier that tells two consenting adults in love that they are different from everybody else sets a precedent within society that we are not to be considered normal. Until two men or two women can get married, how can they be considered equal? You argued to me that civil partnerships and marriage give the same rights – something I put to you may not necessarily be true when you cross borders to other countries; but that misses the point. If you truly believe the difference between marriage and civil partnerships is the mere word, you would be perfectly content in giving us that word. The fact such opposition exists counters any suggestion that we should just be content with civil partnerships.

We implore you again to vote for same-sex marriage, especially in light of the fact your previously-demanded assurances for religious organisations have been met by the Culture Secretary. This matters greatly to us, and greatly to many other LGBT (and non-LGBT) constituents in Vauxhall who I’ve spoken to on this matter. It is only a matter of conscience in that those who oppose it will exemplify that they have none.

Our support, both as Labour members and voters in Vauxhall, depends on your vote when it comes to this legislation. If you don’t support our rights, do not expect us to support you when you may need it.

Kind regards

Chris Ward

There were a variety of responses to the infamous Prince Harry photos. Amusement, disgust, anger and, of course, simple apathy. Until the last couple of days, my mind rested on the latter. Frankly I couldn’t care less what a 27 year old gets up to in his private time. Yes, from a PR perspective, if you’re third in line to the throne, Mr Clifford probably would advise against you photographing your naked frolics in a Vegas hotel. Some of the responses seem to affirm that notion. It’s these very reactions that have inspired me to jump off that rather comfortable fence and rant, albeit briefly.

Much like the Assange situation, it’s been rather interesting to see the split within the factional republicans and monarchists. Certain Tories on Twitter have found it all rather confusing – we must absolutely defend the royal family, but he did get his arse out for the camera and that’s naughty. Republicans have swung between a mild level of admiration for the renowned black sheep of the royal family tearing up stuffy etiquette and acting like “you and I”, before reminding themselves that this is a man born into privilege and that “you and I” are paying for that Vegas hotel room.

Let’s entirely dismiss the nonsense view that the royal family should be immune from press interference. They have their own many royal correspondents, the Palace often issues press releases and they rely greatly on the positive publicity red-top newspapers consistently shower them with. For the Palace to make a complaint when newspapers publish images already placed in the public domain is deeply hypocritical. Although David Dinsmore’s assertion that it would have been “perverse” not to publish the photos evokes more than just a wince in this Leveson media age; it is not as if News International employees took the photos themselves or hacked into a device to retrieve them. Well, not on this occasion anyway. It would have been far better to let the story run and eventually die, much like previous Harry escapades. So when people like John Prescott (for whom, despite my recent membership of the Labour Party, I find impossible to synthesis the slightest level of respect) say The Sun acted with “utter contempt” accusing them with “clearly an interference of privacy”, I have little sympathy. Not because Mr Prescott’s own indiscretions give him the teeniest bit of bias on the matter, but because whenever these sorts of revelations involve Tory MPs, he leaps on it like there’s no tomorrow.

Royals, politicians, public figures are all human beings. The public consistently demand that the Royal Family act more like the rest of us, yet when they do, there’s faux-outrage at the inappropriateness of a possible (but unlikely) future head of state engaging in such activities. I like my politicians to be human. In fact, if they had never made mistakes on this level in their lives, I’d most certainly not vote for them. If they contended to have never made such mistakes, I’d consider them liars. We all mess-up in life sometimes and, frankly, I don’t consider Harry’s “mess-up” to actually be one. He had a few too many, got naked and didn’t realise somebody was holding a camera. Of all the family members within the monarchy, at the very least he doesn’t make a futile and embarrassing attempt to conceal his humanity.

If and when this country becomes a republic, Prince Harry has my vote.

It won’t take the most insightful of people to know that I’ve been deeply considering standing in the Corby & East Northamptonshire byelection as an independent.

I’ve always said to myself that if I ever stood for Parliament, it’d be in a place where I feel a level of affinity to. Corby brought me up. I went to St Patrick’s School, then later Our Lady & Pope John School, eventually closed down for failing standards amongst other things. I studied my A-Levels at Prince William School within the East Northamptonshire side of the constituency in a lovely market town called Oundle. My Grandad was a teacher, headteacher and governor in the town for many years and four generations of my family live there.

So when the opportunity to stand in this byelection came up, I took it very seriously. I was one of a handful of Corbyites who made it to university and experienced moderate levels of success in my career. If I ran, I’d have done so on a platform of education and training – no child or individual should be left behind simply because of the circumstantial raffle of where they were born and brought up. Further and higher education remain the habitat of those with fortunate enough upbringings to get them there with relative ease. That’s simply not good enough.

The cost to me of standing in this byelection would have been great. Although I grew up in Corby, unlike other candidates, I do not currently live there. Having a London address underneath my name on the ballot paper would have undermined my assertion of affinity to Corby & East Northants and I refuse to be one of those dishonest people who fraudulently claim to live in the constituency for the duration of the election. Simply scraping together a £500 deposit after recently moving flats would have been a hit in itself and, frankly, I’m rather enjoying the evenings when I get home and enjoy a drink with my partner. Although I believe that the Lib Dem vote will collapse and that they’ll lose their deposit (regardless of what they say, I know their more realistic private thoughts will be similar to mine), I would be mildly mortified if one of the local Tories walked the seat because I split the centre-left vote. And believe me, local Corby Tories are of a different breed – they do not share the more socially liberal views of Ms Mensch.

I deeply wanted to give the people of Corby who, like me, feel disillusioned and dispirited at the same old promises being broken and the same old people making the decisions something different to vote for, even if I was unlikely to win. As the hyperbole above has indicated, I will not be standing in the byelection.

I don’t know Andy Sawford enough to rate him. I know his background and I know his father was the Kettering MP beforehand. I am cynical about his motivations for doing it, but perhaps that’s a product of my default dislike for politicians who appear to be following in daddy’s footsteps as if government is a hereditary process. I am willing to give him a chance. More poignantly, a Labour win in Corby in the byelection would take 1 from the Tories and add 1 to the opposition. This brings the possibility of a breakup in the calamitous Lib-Con coalition more feasible and, if nothing else, will make Cameron considerably more nervous if his junior coalition colleagues seem to have more of an alternative. This will help justify more concessions from the Tories in coalition negotiations.

I realise I won’t make any friends in my former party by coming out for the Labour candidate (not that I had many left anyway), but if Lib Dem voters and supporters believe in doing what’s right for the country, as they assert whenever they justify entering the coalition, then they will realise the opportunity such an amendment to the parliamentary numbers can bring them, particularly in a by-election where they truthfully know they have no hope in winning.

So, to progressive voters in Corby & East Northamptonshire, I strongly suggest that you vote for the Labour candidate, Andy Sawford, in the upcoming byelection.