Stonewall (charity) - Accomplishments

Accomplishments

Stonewall's most high profile achievements have been in parliamentary lobbying. Under Director Angela Mason, it saw amendments to the 2002 Adoption and Children Bill which treated lesbian and gay couples in the same way as heterosexuals, and Mason was awarded an OBE "for services to homosexual rights". Under its current Chief Executive Ben Summerskill it was in successful parliamentary campaigns to:

• repeal Section 28 of the Local Government Act (2003),
• recognise anti-gay hate crimes, through the Criminal Justice Act 2003,
• introduce the Civil Partnership Act 2004 giving gay and lesbian couples a legal framework equivalent to civil marriage,
• introduce the 2007 Sexual Orientation Regulations, protections against discrimination on grounds of sexual orientation in the provision of goods and services secured through the Equality Act 2006.
• equalise treatment of lesbian parents and their children in the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 2008
• introduce an offence of incitement to homophobic hatred in the Criminal Justice and Immigration Act 2008, matching existing protections around race and religion.

Earlier high profile work was backing legal test cases in the European Court of Human Rights. These included:

• Teenager Chris Morris and Euan Sutherland, who successfully challenged the unequal age of consent laws, which were higher for gays than heterosexuals.
• Duncan Lustig-Prean and John Beckett who successfully challenged the ban on homosexual people in the armed forces.
• Lisa Grant, who (unsuccessfully) sued her employer, South West Trains, for equal pay and benefits.