LGB politicians re-elected to Scottish Parliament

By Tony Grew • May 4, 2007 - 15:55

With 97 of the 129 seats declared, Mr Harvie is the only MSP not from the SNP, Labour, Tory or Lib Dem parties.

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Out gay politicians were re-elected to the Scottish Parliament in yesterday's election.

Patrick Harvie, who is bisexual, faced a challenge from the Scottish Christian Party.

He was re-elected on the Glasgow regional list for the Green party.

He told PinkNews.co.uk about some of the slurs and abuse levelled at him during the election:

"I am very pleased that we held onto the seat despite a vicious homophobic campaign, including allegations that I have been distributing pornography to children.

"I will not be letting these allegations lie."

He thanked the many people who had written to express their disgust at the tactics of his opponents.

"I have had a lot of emails from supportive people in the LGBT community and others who were outraged at the homophobic material they got through the letterbox. It has been vicious."

With 97 of the 129 seats declared, Mr Harvie is the only MSP not from the SNP, Labour, Tory or Lib Dem parties.

Scottish Christian Party leader George Hargreaves came fifth in the Glasgow Baillieston constituency, with 588 votes (3.4%)

In the Glasgow regional list, the SCP got 2,99l votes (1.4%)

Gay MSP Iain Smith held on to Fife North East for the Liberal Democrats with a 15.9% majority.

Lesbian MSP Margaret Smith is contesting Edinburgh West. That result has not yet been declared.

The Scottish elections have been beset by problems, from badly designed ballot forms to malfunctioning electronic counting equipment.

"The whole election seems to have been a complete shambles, from postal votes going astray to security systems failing - 100,000 people have had their votes ignored - it cant be allowed to happen again," said Mr Harvie.

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