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Remember me talking about how we are excluded from harassment protection in certain circumstances in the new Equality Bill? Lynne Featherstone asked Ben Summerskill of Stonewall - the representative organisation for UK "gay men and lesbians" - about this. His response:

I can certainly say on the issue of harassment we are not convinced that there is a need for protection in this area.

Letter sent to my MP about supporting the Equality Bill. As I have not received a reply whenever I've used WriteToThem, I daren't trust the EqualityBill.com e-mail your MP feature so this is being sent by regular snail mail.

Dear Ms Southworth,

Thank you for following up on my comments on the Digital Britain Interim Report. Following those comments I contributed further to the consultation on the proposed Digital Rights Agency and have included a copy of those notes for your own reference.

This is the third part of my discussion of The Equality Bill. My discussion starts here.

There is a point I feel particularly important towards the end of this article - exceptions to the rules on discrimination, harassment and victimisation.

3. Discrimination, Harassment and Victimisation

This is the second part of my discussion of The Equality Bill. My discussion starts here.

2. Protected Characteristics

The Bill provides several "protected characteristics" split into several categories (Section 4):

• age
• disability
• gender reassignment
• marriage and civil partnership
• pregnancy and maternity
• race
• religion or belief
• sex
• sexual orientation

On Friday 24th April, the Government introduced The Equality Bill to the House of Commons for its first reading. Lord Alli has launched a site to drum up public support and discussion for this bill. I have downloaded the two volumes of this bill with interleaved explanatory notes and am slowly reading through all 552 pages of it... I've already put some comments on twitter (@penwing) but this is the first of my longer comments on the bill.

1. Introduction