With regards to your article on three gay candidates standing for the Hove seat (The Argus, March 5), we'll only have reached a worthy milestone once a candidate's sexuality fails to make headlines at all.

However, while this is still a newsworthy subject, I implore my fellow gay voters in Hove to look beyond the candidates' sexuality and study the policies they represent.

I was surprised at Nicholas Boles's statement that the Tories have made progress in this area because, if he is elected, he will work for the very man who, as local government minister, brought the insidious Section 28 regulation onto the statute books.

Now as leader of that party, he continues to fight in the corner of intolerance.

Let us not forget the following comment made by Michael Howard during the debate over equalisation of the age of consent: "Although current medical opinion seems more rather than less certain that sexual orientation is fixed in both sexes by the age of 16 in most cases, there will still be some young men for whom homosexual experience after that age will have profoundly influential and potentially disturbing effects.

"It is also still unquestionably the case that most parents expect their sons to follow a heterosexual lifestyle and hope in due course they will build a family life of their own."

Compare these sentiments with the monumentally sensible approach of the present government, which has repealed the ban on gays serving in the armed forces, equalised the age of consent, extended rights to long-term gay couples and also allowed immigrant gay couples the same rights as straight couples.

In addition, the stigma attached to being gay in public life has all but disappeared as this government has appointed gay people to high office without embarrassment from day one.

Celia Barlow may not be gay, but there's no doubt in my mind that, when it comes to issues of equality and social justice, she'll be best placed to take Hove's diverse needs right to the very heart of government.

-Dr Peter Kyle, Hove