ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 examined the relationship between British party politics and ethical issues such as abortion, stem cell research and euthanasia. This chapter has a similar remit, but with a slightly different emphasis, examining the impact of equalities policy on the lifestyles of British voters, rather than ‘sanctity’ of life issues, that is, human sexuality, gender rights and policies related to the family, often grouped together under employment and education legislation. Clearly, there is an overlap with this chapter and the last one, but what we see very quickly is a quite different power dynamic existing between the parties and the churches. In Chapter 6, we saw how influential the Christian lobby is, and how parties and politicians do everything they can to avoid controversy, by allowing free votes and generally taking the advice of church repre - sentatives as experts in the field of ethics. In the area of equalities, however, we see a rather different picture – here, the balance of influence is effectively reversed, with the relevant issues very much taking on a partisan dimension, and the churches effectively powerless to do very much in the face of an irreversible tide of equalities and civil liberty advances.1
