There is a law of nature that governs campaigning groups and charities, which is that an organisation set up to deal with a particular problem will always find a way to exist even after that problem has been addressed.
The reason is simple: by the time an issue has been solved, or almost solved, the business is at its peak. Employees’ salaries and pensions are at stake, reputations have been built and influence has been secured. And so it is that Eric Hoffer’s great insight is fulfilled: every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.
Very few causes have degenerated into a racket so completely as the former gay-rights group known as Stonewall. When it was founded in 1989, gay rights in Britain, as across Europe, had some way to go to reach equality. Back then, there was a different age of consent for homosexuals and heterosexuals, homosexuals did not have the right to marry or to have their partnerships legally recognised and, most pertinently, a Conservative government had made it impossible for young gay people to be in any way informed about their sexuality during their time at school.
There was certainly a long way to go, and Ian McKellen, Matthew Parris, Simon Fanshawe and the rest of the group’s founders faced an uphill battle for many years. But it was a battle which they helped to win.
Once most of their objectives had been achieved, though, what were Stonewall to do? There were several options in front of them. The most obvious, one might think, would have been to scale down and remain in place to deal with residual issues, such as the existence of homophobia in schools and other remaining pockets of society.
Instead Stonewall went the other way, and decided to cash in on its victory. This is, of course, unsurprising. For it is at the point at which you are victorious that you are most popular, and those who were once not by your side swiftly become your allies.
So it was with the corporate world and the machinery of government. Both the private and public sector suddenly provided Stonewall great reservoirs of cash to keep the organisation’s coffers full. Both were willing to invite Stonewall in to tell them what they could or should do better.
For instance, Stonewall had for some years been producing a list of the top employers for gay people in the UK. Yet even though the battle for equality was all but finished during the Blair and Cameron years, major companies suddenly decided that they wanted desperately to be on the list; having Stonewall’s gay stamp of approval became essential. With time, it became standard procedure for a company to invite Stonewall in to grade their commercial operations. Thus was born a relationship which was compromised from the outset and rife with vested interests.
Meanwhile, the Government became increasingly obsessed with obtaining the same gold star from Stonewall, asking the group to instruct departments what to do in their own workplaces, as well as craft policies in the wider world.
In particular, one of Stonewall’s most influential money-making programmes of recent years has been its “Diversity Champions scheme”, in which members are invited to pay a fee to Stonewall to allow the group to vet their internal policies. Among the 850 groups who have signed up are GCHQ, MI5, the Ministry of Defence, the Cabinet Office, the Department for Education and the Ministry of Justice.
Yet the degeneration of Stonewall has been evident for years; indeed, you can see it in the calibre of people involved at the top. When Stonewall started out, its leaders were prominent in the British media and public life. They were known to people who were straight, and certainly known to people who were gay.
Can the same be said today? I doubt it. In fact, I suspect if you were to visit every gay venue, you would find that fewer than one person in a hundred would be able to name Nancy Kelley as the current head of Stonewall. They would not know who she was or what she does. And that is because the group is neither at any forefront, nor any barricade. It is instead a business still running largely for the comfort of its employees.
It would be wrong, however, to assume that Stonewall is merely rich and benign. Far from it. For it is at just such a moment, when the coffers are full and the beneficiaries are content, that an organisation is liable to take a wrong turn. And that is what Stonewall has done in recent years. It says that its job is to advocate for LGBTQ+ rights. But in reality, the first three letters of that acronym slipped off Stonewall’s radar at least six years ago. That was when Stonewall decided to sustain what campaigning impetus it had by arguing — along with a number of other legacy organisations — that nobody who is gay will be free until all TQ+ people have the same rights as everyone else.
And there are several problems here. Firstly, it is not clear that trans rights have any intersection (to borrow a popular term) at all with gay rights. In fact, they run very distinctly counter to them. It is, for instance, perfectly possible that boys and girls who do not conform to gender stereotypes may grow up to be happily straight or gay.
Surely a group which protected gay people would recognise that there is a need for nuance here? It would certainly not jump on the increasingly dogmatic bandwagon that claims — running against all the progress made by the gay rights movement — that such children are most likely of the opposite sex.
Yet what is worse is that rather than being open to a discussion with gay people who differ on these issues, Stonewall has decided to undermine them — and in some cases actually persecute them.
The recent case of Allison Bailey is instructive. Bailey is a criminal defence barrister, a feminist and a lesbian who, in response to Stonewall’s “trans agenda”, helped to set up the LGB Alliance. Stonewall, as a result, attempted to get Bailey into severe trouble at work, not least by helping to get her barrister’s chambers to put her under investigation because of her views on sex and gender. All of this and much more reveals the despicable bullying tactics deployed by Stonewall. It has, to put it simply, turned into an organisation that hounds gay and lesbian people who dare to disagree with them.
This week sees the group celebrate its 32nd anniversary — a landmark which nobody but its employees could possibly celebrate. Yet even they will likely do so with a sense of profound unease; in recent days, one of its founders, Matthew Parris, publicly urged Stonewall to stay out of the trans wars, while the Equality and Human Rights Commission announced that it would not be renewing its membership.
And quite right, too. No taxpayer-funded entity should be funnelling money to Stonewall. And private companies who continue to do so should be made aware that they are supporting a group which has stopped looking out for gay people and started hounding them in their workplaces instead.
So happy 32nd birthday, Stonewall. And no offence, but I hope you don’t make it to 33.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeWhy is it getting any tax money at all? It’s supposed to be a charity. And inasmuch as it is conducting any political lobbying it shouldn’t be anywhere near taxpayers money. It is bad enough when taxpayers money is used by the civil service to push agendas. And why the hell does MI5 want to be a diversity champion? Shouldn’t they be profiling people the better to be able to weed out the types that might murder innocents for a cause? In fact, any one of those government departments ought to be subject to oversight such that it doesn’t need an unaccountable pressure group handing out merit badges.
Exactly. All these fake charities need to be defunded, as has been obvious for many, many years.
They provide well paid jobs £100,000 + for the ‘Carrie’s’ of this world. They have lovely all expenses jollies to other countries. The good cause is lucky if it sees a penny. Since 1945 the well heeled middle classes have increasingly created a state run world for themselves , charity , arts , heritage etc.
Hey, it’s just another fake charity. Like Christian Aid and OXFAM and CAFOD. The name of the game is to extend government control at minimum expense. A charity which honestly relies on a wide spread of small donors has financial restraints, but can pursue helping the needy in the way it independently sees best. Once the government gives you even a few percent, it is the 800 pound gorilla and you do whatever it says.
That is on top of whatever malign influence it can exert in other ways. And these fake charities’ accounts show government contributes 30 to 40% of their income. It makes governments look so generous and caring.
And once you control a religious charity, you effectively control any associated churches as they don’t want their visible good works hurt.
That is not the reality. Large fake charities straddle the charitable status dividing line in political lobbying for their particular, never-ending cause. Effectively, the government pays fake charities to oppose its policies.
The charity racket needs serious investigation. It’s not just that we have so-called charities like Shelter, which calls itself a “housing charity” but which in fact has never housed a single person (its activities consist of lobbying and of wheezes to make it easier for scrotes to occupy property without paying for it).
The issue is that lots of charities spend constructively all their income on salaries for their staff, or they conceal what they so spend. Nowhere on the RNIB website, for example, is there an intelligible set of accounts that shows what they pay their staff (although they did last year add £2.5 million into their staff’s final salary pension scheme). Guide Dogs For The Blind admits to having spent £38 million raising £122 million last year and to paying its CEO £173,823 but does not disclose much else.
Unless the salary directly produces the public good, such as the salaries of teachers producing education, these scams are simply ways of conning the public or the state into funding sinecures for lefties. They need to be stripped of charitable status.
Guide Dogs for the Blind is a joke, as only 2% of visually impaired people use a guide dog. So income exceeds necessary expenditure. And a glorious combination of sentimentality about both animals and disabled people ensures a never ending income stream and minimum scrutiny.
Yep. PDSA reckons the lifetime cost of owning a medium-size dog is £17,000. PDSA is about the same size as Guide Dogs – they spent £31 million raising £113 million, and of the £82 million left, they spent £57 million on “Treatment at Pet Hospitals and by contracted services”. That’s about 70% of their net receipts that appears to have gone on actual charitable activities.
Guide Dogs doesn’t want to state what the equivalent number is, although it’s obvious that it can be only a fraction of the PDSA amount. If they were spending 70% of £84 million on the 4,800 guide dogs in the UK, they’d be spending over £12,000 per year per dog, which is not possible.
It’s a racket.
Including the Church of England, Oxfam & Save the Children, three of the very worst in reverse order.
How about if a charity pays salary it is stripped of of it’s status. A charity is defined as an organisation which only accepts volunteers?
I’d first gross the salary up pro rata according to how much of the charidee’s income goes to a demonstrable public good. If it’s only 10%, then the salaries are taxed as though they were 10x higher. If it’s 20%, then 5x higher, etc.
Lobbying for a political cause would not qualify as a public good because most people would disagree with the politics, so it’s not a net good. If the charidee gave nothing towards a public good, then no salaries would be allowed at all.
The government pays Stonewall for the Stamp of Approval. Not tax money, blackmail money.
From some stories I have heard, the Tories should be paying Stonewall all the money in the Universe for protection.
I read that they receive £3 million just for the diversity schemes-nice work if you can get it. Without wishing to be too trivial where does it end? I read about a woman who believes she is engaged to a chandelier. Can she sue her work place if they omit the candelabra from the invitation for +1 events? The public sector probably don’t care , as its public money but what sort of provision are private firms supposed to make? It sounds like catering for those children who are fussy eaters ,
Your post is chandelierist and you will be cancelled.
Probably say the only fools & horses chandelier scene should come with a warning
Once you have paid him the Danegeld
You never get rid of the Dane.
Danegeld for the woke
Check if your local county council has signed up. Most universities have.
…. the most obvious, one might think, would have been to scale down and remain in place to deal with residual issues, such as the existence of homophobia in schools and other remaining pockets of society.
Stonewell’s decision not to scale down its activities may have been for more mundane and personal motives.
Twenty or more years I was introduced to a key figure in the anti-fur trade charity Lynx, to whom I suggested that now they had effectively wiped the business out in this country, they might also scale down because the key aim of their work was done. I was being deliberately disingenuous because I knew that they operated from nice offices near Covent Garden and I daresay people like the one I was talking to enjoyed a good salary and perks, like getting to hang out with celebs. He looked at me aghast insisting that there was much to do as Lynx was now turning its attention to the trade in fake fur. Seeing my raised eyebrows, he said: “Because it keeps alive a dangerous appetite for the real thing”. Could it be possible that having worked themselves out of a job Stonewall sought out new challenges just to keep the show on the road and the money coming in?
It is the Guardian/Labour Party/BBC definition of charity, which is quite different to that understood by everyone else:
You think that a charity is a private, voluntary organisation, run by volunteers to raise money for good works.
Their definition of charity is an organisation that employs salaried lobbyists who lobby the government to give them taxpayer money in order to lobby the government to change the law according to their political ideology.
This is part of a wider problem I think, in that there is a massive oversupply of professional left wing activists and not enough need for them, so they are constantly needing to give themselves reasons to exist, usually by vastly exaggerating the amount of bigotry minorities face. We live in a society that is almost obessively tolerant, and yet from the rhetoric of the left you would think it was 1960s Mississippi. I think it’s far more dangerous on the racial front, where activists seem to be trying to recreate racial divisions that have not really existed for decades. However it is disturbing the way trans ideology has in just a few years expanded from gender studies departments to governments and police forces, with no debate, despite there being absolutely no science behind it. It’s the equivalent of me saying I’m a teapot and you being arrested for refusing to pour a cup of tea from me.
Would you say Trump was a tolerant person?
What’s Trump got to do with this debate.
He says “We live in a society that is almost obessively tolerant” – that society elected Trump as a president in the most powerful nation in the world. Was that president an example of this tolerance?
Maybe if the elites of that country hadn’t sold out their working classes, overseen massive increases in inequality and – for large parts of the working population – absolute declines in their standard of living, and deplored them for asserting their basic constitutional freedoms, maybe just maybe that wouldn’t have created the environment in which a shallow narcissist like Trump could ever get any where near the office of president. Maybe this pursuit of tolerance is actually itself intolerant of those who have other priorities, such as remaining alive, well, and looking after themselves, their families, their friends and neighbours the best they can. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
An oft-repeated quote, but one that I think fits quite neatly here:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.” – CS Lewis
Absolutely spot on. We’re creating generations of people with a higher education qualifications that nobody wants, save for the ‘charity sector’ that are not charitable and simply big businesses. It’s in their interest, nobody else’s, to fuel a non existent demand. The charity commission should set a tough limit on salaries to ensure those wanting to be part of a charity are there for charitable reasons.
I always find Douglas spot on but am concerned about this assertion:
“ most pertinently, a Conservative government had made it impossible for young gay people to be in any way informed about their sexuality during their time at school”
Once this was changed in regards to sexuality it opened the door in schools to children (sometimes infants) being ‘informed’ about trans and gender theory. It looks now as though schools will have to be ‘informed’ about racial theory and decolonisation.
As Douglas explains in his book The Madness of Crowds, all of these three areas are disputed and not based on clear science. It makes education become divisive and indoctrinating instead of nurturing minds to think for themselves.
But sexuality is not gender. And seeking equality in age of consent was not equivalent to the pushing of gender theory (or its assorted gormless cousins, like queer theory) onto minors. To conflate the two would be a grotesque category error.
And unfortunately, it was a conservative administration who were to blame for section 28. Probably time to admit that we can all be wrong sometimes.
Hi Richard, I agree sexuality and gender are different. The time about which Douglas was writing had the understanding of sexuality. It looks now as though activists are attempting to replace sexuality with gender with bizarre implications. Perhaps the Government will get schools to be sensible about this stuff in the same way they are tackling free speech in unis.
The question for me is – did it have to be this way? Did the revocation of Section 28 really lead inevitably to the explosion of children on puberty blockers post-2010? The justification for the law in the first place was a response to “looney left” councils pushing an agenda in schools (not agreeing with it here, this is just my understanding of how it came about). Having grown up in the 90s, I am pretty sure this was flouted by my school anyway.
Instead of allowing a free for all, could we have revised the legislation or guidelines? I remember when the age of consent was equalised, they increased the age of consent from 16 to 18 if the adult was in a position of responsibility for the minor – independently of whether the minor was of the same of opposite sex of the adult.
The key thing is to allow children to develop naturally and take a neutral stance to what their sexual orientation (and even “gender identity”) might be when they become adults. This seems to be too hard to achieve with our society though.
Very good and important article. I’m writing from Germany. Stonewall doesn’t concern us directly, but their gender ideology also starts threatening our community. Especially young gender non-conforming people who are pushed by their peers into believing, they were the opposite sex and should transition.
I came out in 2007 at 19. Back then we hated labels, we considered ourselves individuals. Now it’s the opposite so it seems, and everything we’d consider a mere attribute of personality is pushed into a category. How many imaginary genders do we have now? It’s hard to keep up. I wouldn’t care, if it wasn’t so dangerous to young people’s sense of self and also to gay people’s rights. They’re trying to take away the sex-based concept of homosexuality by claiming same-sex attraction was merely a genital preference and that gender (what someone/anybody identifies as) was the true defining factor.
I remember when guys hit up on lesbians with the same cringy line, that sometimes bordered on verbal sexual assault. Now any guy can come on to a lesbian with his di** , and by Stonewall’s playbook it’s totally appropriate as long as he claims his di** was “female”. LOL
Same with gay men having to be into female anatomy, as long as that female imagines to be a man, no matter what she actually looks like. It’s comedy.
Tragi-comedy, I fear.
Back then we hated labels, we considered ourselves individuals.
I hope you appreciate how fortunate the timing of your birth was. Today, we’re mired in group identity. Some adult would see you and suggest that you’re not really someone attracted to people of the same sex, that you’re actually the other sex and in need of puberty blockers, maybe even surgery instead of just letting you grow up into what you have become.
It must be enormously destabilizing to young people who live in some measure of confusion as it is in discovering who they are. It must be doubly so for gay youths. My youngest is gay but he’s always been clear about being male. I shudder at the thought of him being in the hands of today’s Dr Frankensteins insisting that he’s really a girl.
I learned yesterday from a friend that her granddaughter living in Northhampton Mass – google it for what is going on there – announced she has a “boyfriend” with a beard etc who wants to be identified as “she”. When I posited that that was nuts, I was taken to task by one of the Wokest of the group for not understanding this young “man’s” choice of identity and the pain it would cause him if I didn’t have the “compassion” to adhere to his wishes. After two seconds, I moved to the back since with her there is no discussion.
But then, this IS Portland where. in honor of the first year anniversary of Floyd’s death, a bridge was blockaded by a firetruck and protesters making it impossible for commuters to get home. When one of those commuters complained in the neighborhood newsletter, SHE was taken to task for worrying more about her commute than the achievements of BLM.
Of course the crime rate is rising daily often in broad daylight since there are no cops but thank God the Floyd family now has 27 million dollars and Floyd is buried in a gold casket.
The young man’s choice is just that – his choice. I’m not required to go along with it and until beards on women started becoming a biological norm, my compliance with a delusion is not compassion, it’s the enablement of destructive activity. These folks have the most curious way of casting coercion as something positive.
You are correct that rational discussion is not possible. Largely because these are irrational people. I don’t care how this young man chooses to identify. I care quite a bit when he insists that I go along with something that on its face (pardon the pun) is not true.
Makes Alice in Wonderland seem like an everyday tale of Victorian life doesn’t it.? The curious thing is some adults ( unfortunately some teachers) suggest to children / young teenagers that if they don’t ‘fit’ the category ie don’t like dresses that means they are a boy. Surely this is defining people in a very rigid way in itself ? Yes I saw your President rightly honouring the sacrifices of hero George who died so we can all go free, or something like that anyway-who wants to hear about the usual boring people who risk their lives to save others, who usually get to visit the White House.?.
I also feel very lucky to have been born and grown up when I did. Not that it was a utopian situation, but preferable to the current insane divisiveness. By around 10-15 years ago we were doing away with labels and breaking down barriers.
As an aside, I also appreciate my mostly analogue childhood!
Just wait till the gay lobby realise that the left will throw them under the bus the appease the muslims. Then we’ll see some fun.
Well they won’t throw them under the bus, but off a tall building.
Of course, there was that uproar in Birmingham over teaching little Muslim children about LGBTQ matters at a state primary school. One local activist declared himself 100% against both homophobia and Islamophobia. The wretched Grauniad was having a terrible job trying to talk out of both sides of its mouth.
Of course, you could be like the High Priest of Cringe and Sucking Up, Justin Trudeau. He went on a Gay Pride parade wearing Ramadan socks.
One local activist declared himself 100% against both homophobia and Islamophobia.
That is an Olympian level of mental gymnastics. Remind me which Middle Eastern nation has pride events, and which nation is also targeted by the same activist crowd as an ‘apartheid’ state.
There was my union’s annual conference in 1993 when a motion came up to affiliate to the Cuban Solidarity Campaign. Right on, comrades! Resist the evil Yankees!
Then a guy jumped up to object to Fidel’s treatment of gay Cubans……
Why can’t someone be against islamophobia, Homophobia, support the rights of Israelis and be against anti-semitism? You seem to be suggesting if you condemn islamophobia that’s anti-Israel. What sort of Olympian mental gymnastics do you have to do to get to that conclusion?
People who “condemn islamophobia” are all anti-Semites though. It isn’t necessary or logical that one follows from the other, it is just how things are in reality.
Normal people don’t use the term “islamophobia” ever – it is a dog-whistle term used exclusively by the far-left.
It’s just funny for the rest of us to watch the mental contortions of the modern Labour Party which has ended up as a coalition of woke middle-class SJWs and Islamists. It is possibly not the most stable political alliance there has ever been, even though they have one thing in common.
I too loathe the term; always have. If someone truly hates Muslim people I would call them “anti-Muslim”, not “Islamophobic”. The term implies that it’s unacceptable to fear or detest a (particular, in this case) belief system, and that it’s impossible to do so without also fearing or detesting the people who follow it. Which is nonsense, of course. People all over the world coexist peacefully with others whose beliefs they think are rubbish. Just ask a typical atheist. Or someone like me, who loathes Marxism.
“Islamophobia” is an idiot term, because it equates fearing or loathing a belief system with fearing or loathing people who practice it.
I fear and loathe Marxism, but I have known many people who were Marxists and got on fine with all of them. It is actually possible to coexist peacefully with people whose ideas you believe to be absolutely wrong.
Same with religion. Many of the more militant atheists I’ve known hate and detest Christianity (although nobody calls them “Christianphobes”.) But as offensive as they can be, I live and let live because I’m confident none of them would ever seek to harm a Christian person.
Belief systems are not people, and they do not have rights.
Indeed, he did so boast, but as Mark Stein pointed out, if he had gone on a Ramadan March wearing his Gay Pride socks, he wouldn’t have shaken off the crowd till he was in the local lake!
Yes as well as the new lgbt lego there could be the tall building lego , the teacher who said the wrong thing lego etc
I bathe, as always, happy in Douglas Murray’s cool, acerbic prose.
‘And so it is that Eric Hoffer’s great insight is fulfilled: every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.’
No doubt this was once the case. But today they start as a racket and become increasingly criminal and corrupt thereafter.
Or, like BLM, become instantly criminal and corrupt (and Marxist to boot). Seeing that the BLM activist fighting for her life in hospital was probably shot, not by white racists, but by gangstas who didn’t care if other Black Lives Mattered.
Early one morning, BBC Radio 4 announced that the police wanted to have a chat with four black men in connection with that shooting. Later in the morning another radio station had seen the grotesque error of the BBC and declared that the police were seeking four men.
Black lives only matter when the police end them prematurely. Given the list of things that the Smithsonian decreed were signs of “whiteness”, I suspect that black people killing one another is considered, in the realm of identity politics to be part of their culture, which we should therefore respect.
People who peddle that nonsense don’t seem to realise that they’re effectively saying the same things as white racists did fifty or sixty years ago. They were wrong the and they’re wrong now, to borrow from Sky TV’s warning notices.
Graham Linehan is very good at exposing the bizarre misogyny and homophobia of the trans activists and their infiltration of vulnerable “woke” organisations – typically through roles at public facing outposts like the Press Office or their catastrophic “Diversity and Inclusion” bureaucracies. Another recent victim is the hollowed out husk of the Liberal Party.
I don’t know about Stonewall, but part of this is the NGO money-go-round – both lobbying and campaigning and then providing services with respect to that lobbying. Even RoSPA does it.
It creates a whirlpool effect where the lobbying demands more money and action, and the NGO then profits from providing services. If money is cut, out come the press releases.
Walls are needed so groups doing lobbying and advocacy are restricted from bidding for contract work as a result of that lobbying.
Check out this report by the Institute of Economic Affairs from nine years ago. It was ever thus:
https://iea.org.uk/blog/how-the-government-uses-charities-to-lobby-itself
The trans lobby is fundamentally at odds with gay rights just as it is fundamentally at odds with feminism. The term ‘lesbian’ is quite specific. It does not refer to a non-binary or gender fluid person; it explicitly means a gay female. When immutable characteristics suddenly become malleable, that’s quite the destabilizing force within a population.
One can only shudder about how tomboys or effeminate young males would have been treated in an earlier time. How many adults would have seen those children as ripe for medical experimentation, to include surgical intervention. Never mind that almost every tomboy grew up to be either a straight woman or lesbian – but either way, a woman – or that those boys are either gay or straight adults.
Re-doing a course in Dutch spelling and grammar to refresh myself after 25 years abroad, coming across the part of gender in language (masculine, feminine, or neuter) I suddenly wondered are our languages soon to be revised too? I mean this will not stop until measures are taken. Not likely with the weak political class we have currently. The west is governed by cowards… and the rest of the world by dictators….
The English language has already been revised – with all the ludicrous pronouns which various zealots apply to themselves. As if learning French, Chinese, etc is not hard enough, I guess we will have to learn a mountain of absurd, politically driven and ever changing invented words.
I have a slight suspicion that the Chinese won’t change their language to appease Western activists!
I’m an English teacher, and while I’ll willingly humour a biological male who identifies and presents as a woman and has a woman’s name by using the pronouns she or her (or vice versa), I refuse to use grammatically incorrect or made-up pronouns.
It’s my hill, and I’m prepared to die on it.
The gender lobby already have..stating that a woman is an adult human female is a “transphobic dog whistle” and hence. cause for horrendous levels of abuse. Look at terfisaslur if you doubt me.
Just finished watching ‘Pact’ Last night. irritatingly intriguing. i will need to write a letter of complaint since it did not contain a trans person. a person with learning difficulties or an obese person.
On the plus side
there was a confirmed lesbian.
A bi sexual person
One confirmed homosexual
one tentative homosexual
one female black senior police officer.
One child abuser
3 victims of child abuse.
A dodgy Vicar (white hetero male)
and an ineffective PC intent on promotion (white hetero male)
All of this in a small town in wales
What happened to the only gay in the village?
the 2- 3% of the population who are gay are well represented in publicly funded broadcasting
Douglas is the villain for noticing? It’s like every commercial having black actors, or at best, mixed couples that are so unbelievable that the ads are almost comic. There is a host of shows where characters are gay for reasons that have nothing to do with the storyline itself. They could be asexual in terms of plot and it would make no difference.
I wonder how BLM will travel along this continuum.
LGB folk got equal rights through the creation of equalising legislation, but I’m struggling to see any BLM “policies” that will generate legislative changes.
Does this mean BLM will remain a “grievance business” indefinitely … ?
See my comment above. BLM began as a racket and quickly evolved into corruption and criminality.
Do we know what happened to the £million plus they collected as donations last summer?
The person who could probably answer your question is currently fighting for her life after being shot in the head.
Live by the sword, etc….she’s a horrible person (and a racist one, eg. calling a black man who had the temerity to disagree with her a c**n) who clearly ran with an equally horrible crowd.
But still, I believe every person is redeemable (the nuns who taught me did their work, I guess), so I still wish her a full recovery.
One of the principals has used it for real estate investments. She’s probably not the only one to profit. Meanwhile, people from Breonna Taylor’s mother to random black folks find the group useless. Whether that’s because they’ve not gotten a share of the spoils or truly think it useless is up for debate.
Probably too scared to comment.
Well we know quite a lot about what happened to the countless millions they collected in the US. Much of it has gone into property and cars etc.
Probably some of their leaders bought themselves multiple expensive homes with it, just like the BLM co-founder in the US.
I’m expecting that will be so…
Of course. According to Critical Race Theory, there is no end to “doing the work”. Equality is already being deemed insufficient, now it must be equity – equality of outcome. But even that isn’t enough, because it doesn’t make reparations for past inequalities. History must be ‘repaired’, which is impossible.
There’s no end to this, and they don’t even pretend there will be.
And, of course, achieving “equity” involves discrimination against any group which is doing better. The classic example was the old 10% quota on Chinese students at Canadian universities. Remove it and, surprise, surprise, the University of Toronto starts to look like Hong Kong. Better bring back the old 10%.
One Caucasian mother at a California school remarked, with implicit disapproval, how the Asian pupils at her son’s high school were going to advanced science and maths classes while she drove her boy to baseball practice. Now her son is working at the local pet megastore and the Asians are at top unis. Better to give everyone an automatic first class physics degree after every five sports practices.
Simply and accurately put.
Equality of opportunity vs equality of outcome is the fulcrum. Once it tips too far to ‘outcome’ the scales will re-adjust. I am confident there remain enough sensible people to recognise this.
Another serious issue here is the “celebration” of minorities. I’m genuinely glad that gays and ethnic groups have legal equality. I’m sorry that there are residual pockets of prejudice that need quietly sorting out.
But when groups say that I ought to “celebrate” their difference, they lose my support. They even court my overt hostility. If I want to applaud different cuisines, musical styles, and sexual practices, then I’m sure I can Google ways of doing so. But I don’t, thanks, and anyone who thinks the worse of me for that will be told to p1ss off and stop being a time-wasting narcissist.
I genuinely don’t give the remotest f)(k about their difference. I want them to go to work, vote when the time comes, not commit crimes, and, above all, shut the f()k up for five minutes and give us all break from the constant whining.
Stonewall is toast, death throws in the gutter. It exists solely to keep its top people on top salaries; its days, as its very well done past work, are done. Move on now please.
My favourite example of Stonewall’s Diversity
ChampionsCash-Ins is the Premier League. How exactly is an organization with ZERO gay people a Diversity Champion?Oh, I doubt there are no gay people in the Premiership. There may not be many, as is true with sports in the US, but they are not non-existent. Besides, it’s about appearances, not substance. The trans mob is about the loudest of the social justice mobs. Just look at how it mangles the language. We just had members of Congress talking about “birthing people” in the run up to Mothers’ Day.
The LGBTQ etc is the correct definition and Stonewall are simply widening the wedge that they had legitimised and so opened Pandora’s Box in the process. Douglas cannot now close this box because the legitimacy of acting on a desire simply because one possesses that desire is now backed by the force of law.
We are all of us full of many different kinds of illicit desires. It doesn’t matter where those desires come from, or whether they are lifelong or not. Until relatively recently, we were all expected to overcome those illicit desires and act in accordance with what is right. The way to close the box is to make every letter in the LGBTQ etc give some justification for acting upon these desires and that justification must not depend upon the mere existence of the desire itself. Perhaps it is time to re-establish if the desire is acting in accordance with what is right. Too much of the LGBTQ+ apologetic is either tacitly or explicitly rooted in the assertion that “I am of legal age and I can do what I want with a consenting partner.” That is what the world currently thinks. I for one, do not believe that sexual desire is always self-justifying. I think most people would agree with that statement, so perhaps it is time to follow that road all the way to the end.
Who decides which desires are “illicit”? I’ve no problem with consenting adults doing whatever they like with each other. As long as nobody expects me to get involved, fund it or care one way or another, Ls, Gs, Bs, TS or anyone else can do what they like. What I object to is having it “shoved down my throat” (pardon the expression) by the BBC in every programme
You already fund the promoting and fall out, through your taxes.
Try disagreeing too strongly and you will fund your own room in a prison cell.
I agree with you there, and that’s the point I was making. I have no problem with anyone in the “alphabet community”, but object to the constant propaganda, which we’re all funding.
I don’t agree. I don’t want LGBTQ (or anyone sympathetic), in schools promoting their lifestyle choices to my kids. I would like parents to have the option of a public funded school that can be truly independent. Market forces and vouchers if you like. Let’s see which type of school the parents go for, when they have a real choice and control the money,
I also object to it being foisted on children to young to be able to make an INFORMED decision.
“we were all expected to overcome those illicit desires”
So when did you overcome your homosexual desires?
Shortly after he stopped beating his wife?
ad hominem is the usual response from the left
But who will speak for the LGTB&Q brigade? Their contribution to effete home improvements goes unrecognized and unrewarded. Something must be done!
Government institutions signed up to Stonewall. WTF is going on? This smells of 4D corruption.
“Hoffer’s great insight is fulfilled: every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business and eventually degenerates into a racket.” Well, it didn’t take long for BLM, Antifa, and woke to reach their natural endpoints.
“There is a law of nature that governs campaigning groups and charities, which is that an organisation set up to deal with a particular problem will always find a way to exist even after that problem has been addressed.”
Yes. Charity is just another career.
The only person I can think of who didn’t follow this route was Farage.
He tried (sort of)
Rather than the, constantly, changing alphabet soup, surely a better campaigning identity, in this modern day, would just be “fuc em all”, it works on so many levels and doesn’t need a re-write every time someone, so far up their own backsides (I’m sure there must be an inclusivity letter or symbol for them as well) has a brain fart.
Highly appropriate article, strongly worded. Thank you, Mr. Murray.
Well, I guess that puts paid to the ‘Gay Mafia’ conspiracy theories. If the so-called gay Mafia was indeed running the country, it wouldn’t put up with Stonewall.
However, given the ruinous effect on public discourse of the uber-shouty trans lobby, I think the ‘Trans Mafia’ is well on its way to running the country, if it isn’t already doing so.
Interesting that the author did not mention Peter Tatchell who battled dragons over the last 30 years.
Until the trans lobby came for him and he publicly announced his resignation because of the agenda shift.
Yet more examples of what the anthropologist David Graeber called ‘Bullsh*t Jobs’.
Ultimately we all need to be able to hold and express our own views, as long as they are not inciting violence / criminality. We all need to have places other than our own homes where we can socialise freely with like minded people. We all need to accept there are places where we would not feel comfortable and simply not go there. Anything else is the Orwellian nightmare coming awake
Unfortunately the rhetorical flourishes, dog-whistling the so-called anti-‘wokeists’, risks giving ammunition to actual homophobes. Thanks for putting ideas into the heads of the knuckle-draggers in this particular Tory government.
How many actual cases are there of ‘LGBs’ being traduced or otherwise assaulted, verbally or physically (of course it shouldn’t happen.) by ‘TQ+s’?
Stonewall still plays a valuable part in UK society. It needs to continue. Have a bit more vision & charity, maybe?
Maybe it does do some good. The point the author is making is that increasingly it is ceasing to do so, and moving away from its mission, or no longer doing it at all. So does the bad outweigh the good?
If it needs to continue, as you say, maybe it needs to change. It certainly sounds like it does. Sounds to me like Ms Bailey (the lesbian barrister mentioned above) might feel that she was an ‘actual case’. She’s prominent, others aren’t.
And I’m not sure why you identify the Tories as being particularly anti-gay, or knuckle-dragging.
‘Tank-topped bum boys’ our Prime Minister.
2019 Survey of members of political parties by Queen Mary University found 59% of Conservative Party members opposed gay marriage.
75% of Tory MPs voted against equalisation of age of consent in 1998.
Is that enough to start with on Tories being anti-gay?
52% of muslims in a poll reported by The Guardian stated they wanted to see homosexuality made ILLEGAL. Are you OK with Muslims being anti-gay?
Of course not. What’s your point? Because I disapprove of anti-Gay attitudes among Muslims I somehow can’t also disapprove of them in Tories?
You disapprove much more of what you think are “ anti-Gay attitudes” in Tories, although no Tories want to throw them from the roofs of tall buildings. Why is that, I wonder?
Being opposed to same-sex marriage is not necessarily anti-gay, but wanting to outlaw or kill them really is.
How does defining “marriage” in the traditional sense equate to anti-gay? For much of Western tradition, marriage things on three things: it involved two people of the opposite sex who are unrelated. (We can quibble about the third point and how royalty used to arrange marriage between cousins but that’s a one-off.)
Since that middle point is no longer applicable, the polygamists look forward to your support. If the part about ‘opposite sex’ is an arbitrary consideration, then so is the number of participants. And before long, the unrelated part will come into question.
I don’t want to get into a debate on polygamy! I don’t have any knowledge of or views on that one. Marriage as a social construct, which it is, has cultural or social value for those that choose to adopt it. In that sense, saying you’re only able to access that social value if you want to have sex with someone with different genitals than yourself is a bit anti-gay.
More importantly, why would it be seen as important not to allow gay people to marry unless it was seen as in some way diminishing the importance of non-gay marriage?
Marriage was in large part constructed to create a legally binding family unit, one that was (hopefully) stable for children and adults, but one that also identified who belonged with whom. No gay couple is going to conceive a child on its own.
That said, I have no quarrel with gay marriage. It’s not like straight people have always upheld the institution. But I don’t go along with the idea that defining a term in a specific way has to be anti anyone. By your own numbers, close to half the Tories were for legalizing it.
Marriage should have been abolished for straight people, its function was to ensure that the care of of resulting children didn’t fall on the state. With DNA technology we can now abolish the significant legal distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children (now women can’t be sacked for being married or pregnant as was the case in living memory)
It’s arguably demonstrating poor judgment with this issue. Mistakes were made/are being made? For sure, as time progresses, ‘missions’ or campaigns change. ‘Bad’ outweighing the ‘good’? I wouldn’t have said so.
Of course Ms Bailey’s situation is a case but how many cases in total are there? And, no, there shouldn’t be a single one.
The Conservative Party has changed on this issue. Good. Historically, however it has held out against liberalisation of same-sex relations, legalisation and normalisation.
As we are touching the issue of trans self ID gender recognition: Liz Truss: LGBT panel disbanded after trans self-ID row (pinknews.co.uk)
Any person who goes against them gets the same treatment she did.
“How many actual cases are there of ‘LGBs’ being traduced or otherwise assaulted, verbally or physically (of course it shouldn’t happen.) by ‘TQ+s’?”
You mean other than the several thousand young gay and lesbian kids being convinced to chop their genitals off each year?
“How many actual cases are there of ‘LGBs’ being traduced or otherwise assaulted, verbally or physically (of course it shouldn’t happen.) by ‘TQ+s’?”
Why don’t you ask Germaine Greer and Julie Bindel, who have been demonised and banned from speaking at events because they don’t think for example that people who are physically male should be allowed in women’s changing rooms, toilets and refuges?
Don’t know about Bindel but Greer wasn’t banned.
In 2015, an attempt to ban Germaine Greer from giving a lecture at Cardiff University because of her ‘transphobic views went ahead only because she defied the campaign to prevent her speaking.
So technically yes, she wasn’t banned, but only because Greer refused to be cowed by the 3,000 + people who signed a petition to ban her from speaking.
Around the same time, she was due to receive an honorary Doctorate degree from Newnham College Cambridge where she gained her PhD in 1967, but because of her views on transgender women she was turned down.
The link takes me to a very entertaining interview on You Tube with Greer on the above incidents:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7B8Q6D4a6TM
but then I live in Tokyo where this link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cN7L_cte7PA
takes me to a very entertaining clip from Fawlty Towers with ‘the Major’ reminiscing about a trip to the Oval to “see India”
Apparently, it doesn’t work in the UK, but maybe if you have a VPN set to Tokyo, it might work…
Do you mean the homophobic knuckle draggers who got same sex marriage on the state books?
More Tory MPs voted against the Bill than in favour. 126 for, 136 against. Yes, those knuckle draggers.
Oh, and for those saying the party has’changed’ this was in 2014 on a Bill introduced by their own Government.
Maybe they were representing the views of their constituents, expressed to them directly? Was that morally wrong, or does the idea of democracy just need to be discarded in the service of what some people regard as progress.
I suppose I am a knuckle dragger, in your book. I believe strongly that same sex couples should enjoy exactly the same protection under the law as ?…how to express this ? m/f couples. That was what civil partnership was supposed to achieve. Marriage for us knuckle draggers is by its biological function of producing children something slightly different.
Maybe the French system , whereby it is the officer of the state who performs the legal marriage, and then people can add their own religious ceremony , strikes us as being preferable to enforcing a new morality on traditional marriage institutions.
ugg ugg where’s my banana?
It was all about the m-word, an early effort at what has become a ritual attempt to rewrite language. I have no quarrel with gay couples who want their unions to have some official stamp of approval. That piece of paper turns out to have quite a bit of importance in numerous matters and society is better off with monogamous relationships. Perhaps the answer is to have the state treat marriage just like it would any other contract that was voluntarily entered into by parties of legal age.
I think we agree on this one.
Civil partnership was to achieve the legal recognition of the equivalent of marriage. It still meant, culturally and in societal terms, gay people didn’t have the same rights as straight people. If Churches or other groups choose to approve gay marriage or not that’s up to them but marriage is a state run business and shouldn’t really be discriminatory.
Apologies, missed your first point. Good question about whether democracy trumps equality. I think on this issue the conservative MPs who voted against gay marriage were doing so to reassure their voters rather than their constituents. Most polling I can find suggests over 70% of the population are and were in 2014 in favour of gay marriage but that number reduces the older people get. As conservative voters tend to be older I suspect most of those Tory MPs were reflecting those views rather than as a matter of moral principle or the majority of their constituents. There was no danger of the Bill not being passed in the Commons so it was a relatively risk free stance for most Tory MPs. Obviously, this involves me making a judgement of their motives that I have no concrete evidence for.
The ‘knuckle draggers’ comment always reminds me of the dehumanising imagery of Nazi anti-Semitic propaganda: keep up the good work.
I was replying to this:
‘And I’m not sure why you identify the Tories as being particularly anti-gay, or knuckle-dragging’
Which was a response to this:
‘Unfortunately the rhetorical flourishes, dog-whistling the so-called anti-‘wokeists’, risks giving ammunition to actual homophobes. Thanks for putting ideas into the heads of the knuckle-draggers in this particular Tory government.’
The term had already been included twice in the thread. Nothing remotely to do with anti-semitism or national socialists.
valuable how? What serious gay rights battle remains? In my lifetime, it seems that the gay community has won the major issues it was pursuing. We’ve reached the point where the vast majority simply does not care how one lives privately, which ironically seems to outrage the activist community that demands we care. Perhaps because it victory threatens the continuation of their gravy train. It’s so with almost any cause. It eventually becomes a racket.
Really? As a gay man, I would say that it has long ceased to do so.
The harm they do is in persuading young LGB people – I would say the correct term for their behavior is “grooming” – that because they do not conform to a ridiculously cliched idea of gender stereotypes, that that are somehow not the sex they were born as and they require medical intervention.
Stonewall plays no good part in UK society. It is corrupt and evil. It should not be allowed a penny of taxpayers money and it should not be allowed within a hundred miles of any children.
Clearly, there are more young people questioning strict gender stereotypes, with a view to reassignment, because of today’s social media and advances in medical technology, which were not available before.
Stonewall could play more of a properly neutral, ‘expert’ role by explaining fully what is involved. (They could even be instrumental in peoples’ decisions not to proceed further.)
Homosexuality/transgender issues are not a ‘done deal’. Homophobia, as Douglas Murray has pointed out elsewhere, still exists and always will. Stonewall as a well known support agency will always need to have a place, in my view.
No support whatever for the L unless they are male ones of course….
Facts are not “ammunition.”