Historic moment as woman becomes DUP’s first openly gay candidate to be elected

Alison Bennington has become the Democratic Unionist Party’s first openly gay candidate to be elected.

Bennington hugged supporters at a Belfast count centre for Antrim and Newtownabbey Borough Council north of the city.

She attracted 1,053 votes as part of her campaign for the pro-union and Christian party and praised her supporters’ ‘good, hard work and good teamwork’.

But despite Bennington’s supporters celebrating her historic triumph she has also faced opposition from some within her own party.

The election results have attracted the criticism of its sidelined former health minister and staunch Christian Jim Well, who describer the moment he learned about her nomination as ‘the lowest in his 44-year membership of the party’.

Another party colleague said her nomination was ‘not in my name’.

The DUP’s founder, the late Rev Ian Paisley, once led a campaign to, in his words, ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’ and prevent the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

His fundamentalist party is staunchly opposed to same-sex marriage and has thwarted recent efforts to legalise it.

Northern Ireland is the only part of the UK where it is banned, despite five attempts by the devolved administration to introduce it and calls on Westminster to bypass Stormont’s quarrelling politicians.

DUP leader Arlene Foster suggested Bennington’s election did not necessarily mean a shift in the party’s policy on same-sex marriage.

She told UTV: ‘She’s a committed unionist and that’s why she decided to put her name forward for the DUP, as many others did right across the country, and she was selected on that basis,’

‘It sends out a message that the DUP is open to everyone who signs up to the policies of the DUP, as Alison did.’

The centralist Alliance Party topped the local government poll in part of Belfast during early vote counting.

The party has appealed for support to both unionists and nationalists and is trenchantly critical of Brexit and the Stormont powersharing stalemate which was denounced following the murder of journalist Lyra McKee.