Liberal Democrat MP Layla Moran has come out as pansexual in an interview with Pink News, revealing she has been in a serious relationship with a woman for the last six months. The potential party leader recalled coming out to her colleagues, calling parliament ‘ a weird, backwards place’.
Moran, who is one of the favourites to replaceJo Swinson as Lib Dem leader, gave the insightful interview yesterday revealing that she met her current partner, former Lib Dem press officer Rosy Cobb, at work and was surprised by the relationship having previously only dated men.
‘We just totally hit it off,’ she told Pink News. ‘[We] started hanging out, and one day after a couple glasses of wine… It was really wonderful on the one hand, but also quite surprising for me in how I had identified before. It wasn’t really something I had done before or considered before, but sometimes when you meet the right person, it just kind of happens.’
Calling the relationship ‘really committed, loving and supportive’ she said that once she came out, there was a lot of pressure to label her sexuality. ‘When I’ve spoken to people about it, the first thing they ask is, “so you’re gay then?”,’ she said. ‘When it first happened, it didn’t strike me that I needed to work out which box I fit into.
‘The way I would have said it to people is, “actually I’m probably bi”', she continued. ‘Because that’s a term they understand. But when I’ve looked at the definitions of what I’m comfortable with – pan is more about the person, and less the gender. That, if I was going to force myself to have a label, that would be how I would identify.'
When asked to describe her definition of pansexuality, she told the publication ‘to me, it means it doesn’t matter about the physical attributions of the person you fall in love with, it’s about the person themselves. It doesn’t if they’re a man or a woman or gender non-conforming, it doesn’t matter if they identify as gay or not. In the end, these are all things that don’t matter – the thing that matters is the person, and that you love the person.’
Moran’s admission has made her the first UK MP to come out as pansexual, with only a handful of MPs identifying as LGBTQ+. Speaking of coming out to her colleagues, she said she was shocked by the reaction.
‘There were a few people who said, “how serious is this?”’ she recalled. ‘And some people even overtly said, “don’t you think it would be better for your career if you weren’t together?”. They definitely would not have said anything like that had she been a man.’
However, it was reactions like that that made her want to be more public about her sexuality. ‘The reason I’m speaking out is because I want to prove it’s not a detriment,’ she concluded. ‘It’s a great thing.’
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