The people of Northern Ireland will eventually endorse gay marriage, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson, has told an LGBT pride festival in Belfast.
Davidson said that despite consistent unionist attempts to veto legislation aimed at legalising gay marriage, the “time is coming” when the public will demand marital equality in the region.
“With public support and a parliamentary majority the waters are building and the dam will burst. I truly believe that the tidal wave is set to overflow and that you will, in short order, change history,” Davidson said during Belfast’s Gay Pride annual lecture on Tuesday night.
Sinn Féin and other parties have tried to force through new laws to lift the ban on gay marriage in five separate votes in the Stormont assembly. However, moves to introduce gay marriage have been blocked by opposition mainly from the Democratic Unionist party.
Davidson, who is a Scottish Protestant unionist married to an Irish Catholic woman, urged her audience to be moderate in persuading opponents of gay marriage to change their minds.
“I might not always agree with every intervention churches make in politics, but I defend their right to do so. In Scotland, we made sure that as we passed equal marriage, we also protected the rights of religious groups. We owe it to those who have taken an opposing view to engage and explain, to discuss and persuade,” the Scottish Tory leader said.
Davidson added: “You don’t effect change by shouting down your opponents, whose votes you need.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Davidson visited a new mural called “Love Wins” in the Cathedral Quarter of central Belfast, which depicts a lesbian couple about to kiss. The painting is part of a campaign across the city to raise the issue of LGBT rights in the only region of the UK or Ireland where gay marriage is still illegal.
