Once gay candidates were demonised – or forced to hide in the closet. Now Westminster boasts 32 LGB MPs, more than any other country. But, as gay politicians past and present confirm, the battle is not over yet

As turning points go, it was hard to beat. A young Labour MP claimed the scalp of a senior Tory cabinet minister; the look of surprise and excitement on his face mirrored the mood of the country. After 18 years of Conservative government, everything was to be turned on its head. But that night in Enfield in 1997 was symbolic of more than just the first Labour landslide in a generation. Stephen Twigg was gay – a “practising homosexual”, to use a formula still popular at the time – and though rumours about Michael Portillo’s sexuality had been swirling for years, he was most definitely not. In fact, Portillo was the opposite: a buttoned-up member of a ruling class for whom discretion had long been the rule. His slaying felt like a cultural watershed.

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Habits built up over decades, the instinctive default to repression, quickly began to melt away. The day after Twigg’s victory, Chris Smith, an MP since 1983 and out since 1984, became the first openly gay secretary of state – culture, naturally. Later that year, Angela Eagle came out: the first openly lesbian MP since Maureen Colquhoun, who had been deselected in the 1970s. The years rolled by and anti-gay legislation was rolled back. The despised section 28 was ditched, and civil partnerships then equal marriage made it on to the statute books. Now Britain finds itself with the queerest legislature in the world: 32 of the United Kingdom’s 650 MPs calling themselves gay, lesbian or bisexual. At 4.9%, this pretty closely reflects what researchers believe to be the sexuality of the population as a whole: an impressive achievement, still to be matched in matters of gender or ethnicity.

So who are the LGB MPs? (The T, for transgender, is still missing, since none of the four trans candidates who stood in 2015 won their seat.) Twelve are Conservative, 13 Labour, the rest Scottish Nationalists. Among them are veterans such as Eagle, Chris Bryant, Alan Duncan and Crispin Blunt. Newcomers include former NUS president Wes Streeting, who follows in the footsteps of Twigg, also an NUS man. Overall, on 7 May, there were 155 out LGBT candidates. And in two constituencies last week – Lancaster & Fleetwood and Milton Keynes South – both the Tory and Labour candidates were gay, lesbian or bisexual. At the end of the last parliament, the Conservatives had the most LGB MPs, ceding that position to Labour this time around. Proportionally, though, the SNP is now by far the gayest party in Westminster, with 12% of its MPs chalking themselves up as sexual minorities.

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We may scratch our heads as to the meaning of these numbers: is it a surprise that there are so many out Tories? What is it about the SNP? But there’s a bigger question: how did we get here? How did a country raised on tabloid scandal end up so at ease with gay public figures? Homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales in 1967 by reforming home secretary Roy Jenkins (Scotland had to wait until 1980, and Northern Ireland until 1982), but prosecutions for sexual offences continued to snare many gay men into the 90s. In addition, a vicious press culture of blackmail and exposure made life difficult for gay people who wanted to participate in government and politics.

Peter Tatchell, who stood as the Labour candidate for Bermondsey in 1983, was the subject of a notoriously homophobic campaign by his Liberal opponents. He remembers the 80s as “the heyday of tabloid fabrications and smears. It was impossible for any candidate or MP to be openly gay without the fear of being demonised by the tabloids.”

That didn’t mean parliament was any less lavender-hued than it is today, however. “There were lots of gay MPs,” he says, “but they were all in the closet, either because they were insecure about their own sexuality, or because they feared vilification in the papers and deselection by their party.” So it wasn’t just the press, but the party machines that failed to treat gay and lesbian people with respect, cowed by Fleet Street’s ferocity. “When Maureen Colquhoun was outed in the late 70s, she got a very frosty reception from the Labour party and ended up being deselected,” he says. And things weren’t much easier for him even after he had managed to win the selection for Bermondsey. “I was pressured by the local and national Labour party to not discuss my support for LGBT rights and my sexuality. I insisted on being open on the doorsteps and at public meetings when the issue was raised. Hence the backlash. Constituents and rival parties said: ‘Not only is he gay and wants gay rights, he’s open and brazen about it.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Peter Tatchell (in red shirt) joins the celebrations after MPs voted to cut the homosexual age of consent to 16 in 1998. Photograph: Tony Harris/PA

Still, Tatchell says there was “public revulsion” against the homophobia he experienced, which he believes made the tabloids more reluctant to conduct anti-gay witch-hunts, for a time, at least. As a result, Chris Smith had an easier ride when he came out in 1984.

The Conservatives’ relationship with homosexuality was equally uneasy. The writer and former Tory MP Matthew Parris has recalled a meeting with his boss Margaret Thatcher. “I told her I was gay when I went to say goodbye to her and she put an arm on my wrist and said: ‘Matthew, that must have been very difficult for you to say.’”

Gay MPs were tolerated, so long as discretion ruled. The mid-90s, however, saw Conservatives among those leading a battle for equal rights. It was Edwina Currie who tabled an amendment to bring the age of consent for gay men down from 21 to 16 – there was famously no such law dealing specifically with lesbianism. Her amendment was defeated, but another one to bring the age down to 18 was supported by the prime minister, John Major, and home secretary Michael Howard.

“Major issued guidance saying it was OK for senior civil servants to be gay and that changed the atmosphere a bit,” says former Labour spin doctor Lance Price. “He met Ian McKellen at Downing Street and so on and, by the time Labour were in power, it was clear that society had changed dramatically.”

If society had changed, the press still had a way to catch up. Price recalls: “When I worked for Blair, we had the Sun rampaging around asking if we were being run by a Gay Mafia.” But it backfired, gaining little traction among readers. David Yelland, the editor at the time, has since said how much he regrets the story.

Blair, who once famously asked Price, “When you see a beautiful woman, doesn’t it do anything for you?”, was laidback about his gay MPs. “When the tabloids tried to get up various scandals about ministers, [he] took the view that ‘I will treat everyone equally in this. If it was a so called-scandal involving a man or a woman or two men, then that’s all the same to me.’”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Angela Eagle: deciding to be open about her sexuality ‘wasn’t easy’. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

Eagle, who came out in September 1997, says that, despite support from “Tony Blair down, and particularly from my local party”, deciding to be open about her sexuality “wasn’t easy. There was only one woman before me – Maureen Colquhoun. She had been outed by Nigel Dempster at the Daily Mail in very nasty circumstances, to mass ridicule. It wasn’t exactly a great precedent. But I had decided to move in with my partner and I was ready to do it. It does free you up to be yourself. I think, in politics, you have to be yourself. It just makes you a better politician.”

Eagle then found herself burdened, to an extent, by her status as a pioneer. “The media think it’s the only thing about you. I was happy to talk about it, but not ad infinitum. We have a pile of views on a load of other things. The only thing the media wanted to know about was who else was gay and I didn’t think that was very fair.” Still, she is grateful to be seen as a role model, and “quietly proud” of having blazed a trail for others.

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What is clear is that the very presence of LGB MPs can have profound effects on people far beyond parliament. Trans activist and writer Paris Lees says: “I kind of hate to say this, but it’s really important to have validation by the state. It was a huge deal for me just to get a British passport that said I was female. And, also, finding out that Christine Burns had got an MBE for her work on gender, just knowing that she had been honoured by the Queen. Where I came from, I just felt like I was a freak, something to be ashamed of, so to have people who are different actually respected in public life – to have them actually voted in – is really important.”

Lees is disappointed that there are still no British trans MPs and frustrated that Labour candidate Emily Brothers, who announced she is transgender before the election, failed to win. But she thinks future candidates won’t have mountains to climb. “When people meet you, you’re not a transgender person, you’re a person,” she says. “If it were me going round on doorsteps, I think they’d like me. Once somebody’s met someone who is transgender, they realise it’s not such a big deal.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Crispin Blunt, the Tory MP who had a battle with his local party over his sexuality. Photograph: Anthony Devlin/PA

Gay MPs don’t necessarily mean gay rights. Tatchell remembers that “in the 80s, a lot of gay MPs voted against equality, and many straight ones – Gavin Strang, Jeremy Corbyn, Dawn Primarolo – voted in favour. I’ve always prioritised getting MPs who are supportive of LGBT rights, regardless of their sexuality.” And there’s no reason to imagine that the era of the closet-case is definitively over. Constituency parties can still balk at the idea of a gay MP. Crispin Blunt faced deselection as recently 2013 after having spoken about his sexuality (he eventually won a postal ballot of party members). Despite this, some will undoubtedly have the courage to come out during the course of this parliament. Others may decide to keep the secret for their entire careers.

With the battle for legislation more or less won, is the good news about representation in the Commons mere icing on the cake? Now gay couples are able to marry and are protected from discrimination, is parliament still the key battleground it once was? Gay rights group Stonewall’s current focus is on bullying, which suggests that attitudes, rather than legal obstacles, are the final frontier of LGBT rights. Its research shows that 55% of gay young people experience homophobic bullying. How will the new phalanx of gay and lesbian MPs change that?

Maybe just being there helps. “It really matters that parliament reflects the population,” says Eagle. But she, like Tatchell, sounds a note of caution. “I won’t say how progressive this parliament is on LGBT rights until it’s met and we see what it does.” Given that Cameron has just appointed Caroline Dinenage, who voted against gay marriage, as minister for equalities, it seems wise to be vigilant. “It’s a good thing that we’ve made progress,” says Eagle. “It’s important we never take that progress for granted.”

• This article was amended on 15 May 2015. An earlier version said that in Lancaster & Fleetwood and Milton Keynes South both the Tory and Labour candidates were gay or lesbian. To clarify, the winning Labour candidate in Lancaster & Fleetwood, Catherine Smith, is bisexual. The article also referred to “Liberal Democrat opponents” in a 1983 byelection, where “Liberal opponents” was meant, and said homosexuality was decriminalised “in Britain” in 1967, where it should have said “in England and Wales”.