British Cabinet Minister resigns after being ‘outed’.

Interested to hear any views on the resignation yesterday of the Cabinet Minister David Laws. He’d only served in David Cameron’s new coalition government a couple of weeks before being revealed as being gay and becoming involved in the controversy of parliamentary expenses.

http://anonym.to/?http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/mps-expenses/7785296/David-Laws-desperate-act-of-an-MP-scared-of-being-outed.html

Basically, he’d claimed £40,000 in expenses to pay his partner James Lundie rent. Although they’d been in a relationship since 2001 he said he didn’t regard Mr Lundie as his partner because they had separate social lives and separate bank accounts.

Personally, having met Mr Laws through work a few years ago, my impression of him was that he was a thoroughly honourable man. I think it’s a shame for him personally and for the new government that he felt he had to resign.

Though he may have misrepresented his personal arrangements, he wasn’t stealing. In truth, if he’d been open about his relationship with Mr Lundie he would have rightfully been entitled to more money than he actually claimed. Rather than dishonesty, his motivation was really a desire to protect his privacy and hide his homosexuality.

This has nothing to do with his sexuality at all.

I have no doubt he was honourable and it is a great shame this happened, but hopefully he will return to this or another high position once it's all blown over. It would have been completely impossible for him to stay in his post doing the job he was doing after this.

I respect his desire for privacy but nobody can go into public life and really expect it to remain totally that way in this day & age.

I'd tend to agree with that. His sexuality is utterly irrelevant. It's no less thieving for the sex of his partner. And like the rest of them, nothing will come of this, I expect. ¬_¬

What he did was wrong and stupid but I don't think he should have resigned. He isn't "a corrupt, self serving, career politician" as you claim. He did something very stupid and now his career has gone because of it.

On a simplistic basic level, he claimed money for which he was not entailed. For that he should have to return the money, apologise and be punished by the parliamentary standards authority. But to say that he should resign is to hold him to a higher standard then other politicians.

Unlike every other politician he didn't do it to personally profit from it. (the fact that by listing James Lundie as his partner he would have been able to claim his house as his second home and get more money proves this). He did it because he wanted to keep a private matter private. Take Alistair Darling, he flipped his second home 3 times in order to renovate properties then sell them on at a higher price and avoid capital gains tax, he also hired and accountant to do his personal finances which was paid for by the public. He didn't have to resign over that, why? surly that's worse he did it with and intent to profit from it unlike Mr Laws.

I am in no way condoning what he did but I do not think that it helps anyone, least of all the public, to punish a decent person and a hard working parliamentarian more than he deserves.

I'm astonished at the way this discussion goes. Is it just normal in common sense to use the state as a self-service shop? It doesn't matter being gay - nobody should streetwisely take taxes to increase his asset. But as we are gay we know we had to be the ideal.
What he did was simply stupid and to resign should be the way such stories go.
I wondering being gay is a scandal for Bristish politicians. Berlin's major started his election campaign saying "I'm gay and that's as well as good." The german minster of foreign affairs is companied by his boyfriend abroad.