Gay people are not the property of any political party, and they are not “vessels for votes,” Nick Herbert, a conservative Member of the British Parliament, told a packed panel at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C., today. (His comments were previewed in a story in today’s Guardian.)  Herbert was joined by longtime political blogger Andrew Sullivan and anti-gay marriage campaigner Maggie Gallagher.  The trio discussed whether or not LGBT people have a place in the “conservative movement,” an entity whose definition was clearly not agreed upon by the panelists.

Herbert, who is openly gay, is a shadow secretary in the opposition party lead by David Cameron, who is very likely to become the next British Prime Minister.  Cameron has engaged in a high-profile effort to attract LGBT voters to the Tories, going so far as to apologize publicly for his party’s anti-gay past.  Herbert’s argument could be boiled down to one of his sound bites:  ”We have changed.”  In fact, Herbert said, after national elections are completed in the next 100 days the Conservatives could have more openly LGBT members of parliament than the Labor Party.

Sullivan gave an emotional and personal accounting of his experience as an openly gay conservative, lavishly praising Herbert and Cameron for coming around to full inclusion of LGBT people and issues in their party’s platform.  He also condemned strongly the current iteration of the Republican party in the U.S., calling it, “a religious organization, not a political party.”

Gallagher, who may have felt like a duck out of water at the gathering, said LGBT people are and always have been a part of the conservative movement, adding that several “openly gay” people worked for her organization, the National Organization for Marriage, which works to ban same-sex marriage everywhere.  Asked by Sullivan to name them, Gallagher said she didn’t want to “out” them in that setting.  ”How do you out openly gay people?” Sullivan responded.

A video of the full event is available at the Cato Institute’s web site here.

Photo:  James C. Dozier