Natalie Bennett: My first experience of gay people was playing cricket with lesbians
Green Party leader Natalie Bennett has said that her first experience with LGBT issues was playing cricket with lesbians.
Ms Bennett, who discussed her party’s LGBT policies at the PinkNews Debate last month, made the comments in this month’s issue of Gay Times magazine.
Explaining her first encounters with LGBT people, she said: “I played a lot of women’s cricket… and it’s true, there were a lot of lesbian women playing cricket.
“What tended to happen is that women who went off and married men, they tended to do different things on the weekend.
“Whereas women cricketers would form a relationship with eachother so they could both play cricket on the weekend.
“That was my first awareness of these issues. And some of my school teachers who I played cricket with outside school, they weren’t out in the school, but that became obvious.”
The Green leader also said that she supports sex and relationship education from an earlier age – claiming that “some of the chemicals we’re putting into water” are responsible for kids maturing faster.
Last year she surprisingly had positive words for David Cameron – claiming the PM “showed some real leadership and some courage” in driving same-sex marriage through Parliament.
Ms Bennett, a former journalist at the Guardian, took over from Caroline Lucas, the Green PPC for Brighton Pavillion, as leader of the Green Party in September 2012.
Read the full interview in April’s issue of GT, which is available to buy at www.gtdigi.co.uk or in shops.
