"Brown on the other hand has done nothing positive for the gay community - he can't even be bothered to vote on half of the measures. Can't see much improvement when he's PM."

Brown has such a low attendance record that he hasn't brothered to vote in many things. It doesn't mean he opposes or supports them. If he had a 70% attendance record and he would have missed all those votes on that aspect, well, I would be cynic enough to think there's a reason. But with his voting record (20.5% in this Parliament, 11.1% of divisions attended in the 2001-2005 term), it would perfectly possible to have missed them at random.

Btw, it was a Brown's budget that allowed civil partners to get the same tax rights of married couples (ok, in some aspects it's not always an advantage, but IMO it was right to give them the same treatment of married couples, positive and negative aspects)

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While Cameron allows Cornerstone Tory MPs to act as Shadow Ministers and Chairs of Committees, noone who believes in gay rights should delude themselves that the Conservatives would do anything other than regress our hard work!

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I broadly agree BUT by not giving the status of marriage to civil partnerships the government, intentionally or not is stating that heterosexual and homosexual partnerships are not of the same status. Now we can debate whether that's a tangible difference, whether public opinion is quite there in terms of accepting gay "marriage" or not and whether this is a problem of itself, but that's what it does. Far better in my view for the State to get out of the marriage business altogether: that is, to provide civil and legal rights to partnerships regardless of sexuality (and actually, I'd personally favour some measure of commitment for everyone seeking this recognition so that it demonstrates commitment) but for "marriage" to be left entirely to institutions that want (and can be licensed) to offer such ceremonies - church and civil institutions, principally.

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