Trimble’s U-turn on gay marriage after daughter’s wedding
A FORMER Ulster Unionist leader who voted against gay civil partnerships has changed his tune – after meeting his daughter’s lesbian lover dressed only in a duvet.
Nobel Peace Prize winner David Trimble, an ex-first minister of Northern Ireland, told Parliament that his daughter Vicky had married partner Rosalind Stephens.
He was not only happily present at the ceremony, but walked his daughter up the aisle to give her away.
Yet in 2004, he had voted against the Civil Partnership Bill, which went on to give homosexual couples the right to be legally unified. Full gay marriage has since been introduced across Great Britain.
Lord Trimble, 74, told peers that a change in his views was ‘forced upon me’ when his daughter married another woman.
But daughter Vicky, 35, has now revealed that her father had been relaxed about her sexuality long before the ceremony.
She said: ‘ I’m a little surprised at Dad’s wording as he has been supportive of our relationship ever since he encountered Rosalind coming out of the bathroom wrapped in a duvet!’ She added that Lord Trimble had been ‘very happy’ when she announced her engagement to photographer Miss Stephens, and was a key figure at their wedding in Achnagairn castle in Scotland.
Miss Trimble, who lives with her wife in east London, said: ‘It was really just like any other marriage.
‘He played an active role and gave a very touching speech. I think a lot of people who think they are against same-sex marriage may never have encountered someone who is gay. [My father] was against samesex partnerships and now he has had that personal experience, he realises it is just like any other relationship.’
Miss Stephens said of coming face to face with the politician while wrapped in a duvet: ‘That was a moment I will never forget.’
Lord Trimble revealed his conversion over gay rights in a parliamentary debate on same- sex marriages being legalised in Northern Ireland. He told fellow peers: ‘Those are delicate matters. I have found myself taking a particular position with regard to same- sex marriage, which was forced upon me when my elder daughter got married to her girlfriend.
‘I cannot change that, and I cannot now go around saying that I am opposed to it because I acquiesced to it. There we are.’
Lord Trimble was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace for his involvement in ending the Northern Ireland Troubles through the Good Friday Agreement.
‘He gave a very touching speech’