Scene responds to LGB Alliance charitable status

Scene magazine was concerned to hear that the LGB Alliance has been awarded charity status in UK.

LGB Alliance is recognised by almost all the LGBTQ+ community as an anti-transgender hate group. Its main goals have been to criticise and legally challenge well established LGBTQ activist  groups (such as Stonewall or Mermaids) seeking wider LGBT inclusion and to oppose transgender equality.

It is on record as being in opposition to legal reform of the UK’s process of gender recognition, and actively campaigns against it, taking relish in distorting people’s lives and ignoring data, evidence and authentic lived experience while doing so.  It has refused to distance itself from neo-Nazis, American anti-LGBTQ evangelical organisations and anti-LGBT education pressure groups. Its intent is to remove and change the UK Equality Act protections and provisions in law for LGBTQ+ people and younger trans and non-binary people in particular. This so-called LGB Alliance is also allied to other anti-trans groups in the UK and US and has a clear objection and opposition to fully inclusive LGBTQ+ healthcare; it has targeted and opposed trans health care, and care for younger trans people with a vehemence which has exposed its real agenda and caused real harm to individuals.

We should judge groups by their actions, not their carefully worded website or pseudo calls for ‘claiming back’ lesbian and gay equality. We should judge groups by the company they keep, the people they promote, their on-record statements about excluding and ignoring trans and LGBTQ+ experts in health care, mental health, education, sports – the list of their opposition to equality and inclusions is eye-opening. A few days ago, on the 5th May, just before the elections they took out another full page advert in a Scottish Newspaper, an action some are calling directly political.

The Charity Commission has made a mistake in allowing this whining hate group to be awarded charity status. It is unpleasant for other LGBTQ+ groups to share the same status with a group which is committed to their removal and suppression. We do not recognise the LGB Alliance as supporting or platforming any community views other than its own tiny group of supporters. It is a small group of entitled, privileged, older gays and lesbians and their heterosexual allies and paymasters.

You can read the full report from the Charity Commission here, some key points in this decision is that it noted the LGB Alliance had-

37.During the course of the registration case, the Commission noted some evidence of social media activity (information that was posted or re-posted on social media) by LGB Alliance and considered that some of the language used may be regarded as inflammatory and offensive.

39.LGB Alliance’s social media activity represents a part but not the totality of its activities in furtherance of its purposes. If LGB Alliance presents its view in such a way that respects the dignity of transgender persons and does not create an intimidating, hostile, degrading, humiliating or offensive environment, then this is capable furthering charitable purposes. If a charity promotes the rights of one or more groups whilst demeaning or denigrating the rights of others, then the Commission may consider taking regulatory action.

We are encouraging our readers to both sign this petition against the LGB Alliance being awarded charity status and also asking you to write to the Charity Commission letting it know as an LGBTQ+ person why you think this decision is wrong and harmful to our fight for true and fully inclusive equality in the UK.

Sign the Petition:  

Tell the Charity Commission about your concerns. You can do that here.  To complain about the decision to include LGB Alliance as a registered charity go to this link. You’ll need its charity number as a reference: it’s 1194148

Our Trans, non-binary and gender queer communities are under attack as never before, each day seems to bring some new outrage and push back, but we are a wide, strong, experienced, talented, diverse community, we are resilient and will continue to fight for equality for all. Unless all are equal, none are truly equal. We are staunch allies , we remember our true history, and how TNB communities have always been at the forefront of our battles and struggles for change.

We are lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, questioning, queer, nonbinary, intersex, gender queer and a host of other things, but we are a community with much in common. We are stronger together and we recognise divisive  twisted rhetoric when we see it. The LGB Alliance is a sophisticated con trick, a sharply dressed, deeply unpleasant group of people who do not have the LGBTQ+ communities’ best interest at heart.

We are unfortunate in this city to have members of the LGB Alliance living here, we would ask everyone to call out their hatred and online twisting in every way possible, to rebuke, denounce and expose their untruths and distortions of LGBTQ+ and of trans lives and lived experience and to double our efforts, as a real community of LGBTQ+ people, to push for fully inclusive equality for everyone in the UK and wider world.

The LGB Alliance has powerful friends and clever words, it has money and slick, greasy advertising, its social media is pervasive and it is relentless in trying to distort the truth. It aims to divide us, it will fail. One good thing from this decision is that it will now have to share where its funding comes from – we will be paying close interest to this disclosure.

We call on our colleagues in the mainstream media to refuse to platform the view of the LGB Alliance – it does not represent our community – and to seek out authentic voices of LGBTQ community activists if they need commentary, input or content.

We would urge the Charity Commission to seek out and listen to transgender inclusive charities, groups and peoples.

And we tell the LGB Alliance, its supports, enablers and funders, that we are watching you carefully.  All of us in the real LGBTQ+ alliance. The one dedicated to full equality for all.