Liberate met with Guernsey’s Chief Minister, Deputy Jonathan Le Tocq today (Tuesday 27th May 2014). The meeting was friendly, frank and pleasantly surprising.
The full joint media statement issued can be found below the presentation video that Liberate’s Chairperson gave to the Chief Minister.
You can watch the presentation below. Please note that the initial part of the presentation has no voice-over, so you won’t hear any sound until the video from the United Nations, Free & Equal campaign is played.
PRESS RELEASE
Today representatives of LIBERATE met with the Chief Minister to discuss key challenges facing Guernsey’s Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender and Questioning community.
LIBERATE is a charity formed this year championing the equal treatment and rights of Guernsey’s lesbian, gay, bi-sexual, transgender and questioning community. Following a petition launched this month by LIBERATE, this meeting was arranged to give representatives of the group an opportunity to discuss these issues directly with the Chief Minister.
Martin Gavet, honorary Chair of LIBERATE said:
‘We very much welcome today’s meeting with Chief Minister, Jonathan Le Tocq. The meeting was friendly, frank and we were pleasantly surprised by the willingness of the Chief Minister to work with LIBERATE.
Article 1 of the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights states that everyone is “Born Free and Equal in dignity and rights”. Children do not know prejudice until they are taught it. This was very much the main theme of our meeting and how we could work together to achieve that within our society here in Guernsey.
Although we are disappointed at the length of time issues such as equal marriage have taken to move forward locally, we are heartened to see a real commitment by our government and that progress is finally being made.
LIBERATE is an inclusive group and we are keen to promote equality across the board in Guernsey, whether it is on the basis of your gender or sexuality, or indeed your age, belief, race or disability. We are pleased to see the States taking time to focus on these important Social Policy issues and are committed to working with government to achieve fairness and equality for all’.
The Chief Minister was equally as pleased with the tone of the meeting:
‘We’re very keen to work together with groups such as LIBERATE, who have taken a very constructive and intelligent route to raising awareness of those issues important to the gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender community of Guernsey. I feel it’s important that together we promote an environment where we feel free to express our views in a constructive manner and I look forward to working with LIBERATE and other similar groups to move this work forward.’
