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Stephen Fry criticised after calling Stonewall’s approach to trans issues ‘nonsensical’

Graham Robson December 20, 2024

Stephen Fry has been criticised after he called Stonewall’s approach to trans issues ‘nonsensical’.

The 67-year-old author and broadcaster had been a vocal supporter of the LGBTQ+ rights charity’s Some People Are Gay, Get Over It campaign, which was launched to secure equal rights for gay people.

When being interviewed by Triggernometry podcast host Konstantin Kisin, Fry was asked a ‘confrontational’ question sent in by former Stonewall employee Levi Pay, who is gay, probing why Fry continues to support the charity.

The question asked by Pay was: “I’m a gay man who used to work for Stonewall. I watched as the organisation which I used to love shifted to arguing for the medicalisation of gender non-conforming children. It now portrays lesbians who wish to exclude male people from their dating pool as being equivalent to racists. How can Stephen Fry in all conscience continue to support them?”  

‘Do I? I am not sure I do support them?’, Fry replied.

‘I have no interest in supporting this current wave of nonsensical [policies], I agree completely with Levi Pay.

‘I think it’s shameful and sad…it’s got stuck in a terrible, terrible quagmire, so he is right.’

Stonewall, the largest LGBTQ+ rights charity in Europe, was founded in 1989 as part of the campaign against Section 28, the law that banned the ‘promotion of homosexuality’ in schools.

Writing on social media, trans activist Sophie Molly said: “Stephen Fry thinks trans people are ‘shameful and sad’

“No! What’s shameful and sad is an elderly man taking out his internalised prejudice on vulnerable people.”

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