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LGB Alliance

Formation	2019 (2019)
Founder	Bev Jackson, Kate Harris
Founded at	United Kingdom
Legal status	Active
Website	lgballiance.org.uk

The LGB Alliance is an advocacy group in the United Kingdom which was founded in 2019. The group describes their aims as to advance LGB (lesbian, gay, and bisexual) rights, to counter public confusion between sex and gender and to assert "the rights of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted."

The LGB Alliance has taken a stance opposing transgender activists on a number of issues, including gender identity education in schools, pharmaceutical treatment of children for gender dysphoria and gender recognition reform. The group has been described by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights group, an a statement signed by a number of candidates for the Labour leadership including successful deputy leadership candidate Angela Rayner MP, and by John Nicolson MP, as transphobic, and by articles in two scholarly journals as trans-exclusionary.

History

In September 2019, twenty-two Stonewall members, described by Nicholas Hellen of the Times as "pioneers of LGB rights and feminists", signed an open letter to the Sunday Times accusing leading UK gay rights charity Stonewall of having "undermined women's sex-based rights and protections" through its policy on transgender issues. It further stated that twelve months earlier, a group of LGB members had asked Stonewall to commit to "fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate" with those who wished to question its transgender policies, but that Stonewall had refused to allow any such dialogue, and that "if Stonewall remains intransigent, there must surely now be an opening for a new organisation committed both to freedom of speech and to fact instead of fantasy."

Among the signatories was Stonewall co-founder Simon Fanshawe, who told the Sunday Times that Stonewall was refusing to recognise that many of the rights won by women were based upon their biological sex, and failing to defend lesbians from threats of violence made by transgender activists: "I have never seen a feminist placard that says 'Death to trans people' but I have seen many placards that say 'Death to TERFs' or 'Punch a TERF'. The violence coming toward lesbians is staggering. If Stonewall can't defend lesbians, then we will have to look at setting up an organisation that will."

One month after the publication of the open letter, it was announced that a new group called the LGB Alliance had been launched. The group was co-founded by Bev Jackson (a previous spokesperson for the Gay Liberation Front) and Kate Harris with the support of Fanshawe. Harris stated:

The main difference is that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals have something in common because of our sexual orientation, that has nothing to do with being trans. We welcome the support of anyone — gay, straight or trans — as long as they support our commitment to freedom of speech and biological definitions of sex. So we are a very broad and accepting group. We will be called transphobic, but we're not.

Views

Lesbian erasure

In a December 2020 article in The Telegraph, co-founder Bev Jackson said "Lesbians don’t have penises. A lesbian is a biological woman who is attracted to another biological woman. That’s obvious. Or at least it was obvious until a few years ago."

She went on to state that lesbians are in danger of "extinction" due to disproportionate focus on transgenderism in schools: "At school, in university, it is so uncommon, it is the bottom of the heap. Becoming trans is now considered the brave option.” She also voiced concern that "If you do not accept that everyone has a gender identity then you are automatically labelled transphobic which means you can no longer discuss women’s lives and what’s happening to lesbians. We are increasingly discovering that lesbians are no longer welcome in the LGBTQ+ world, which is astonishing."

Scotland Gender Recognition Act

The Alliance opposes proposed legislation in the Scottish Parliament to change the process of legal recognition of gender to be based only on self-identification rather than biological sex, and reduce the age of access from 18 to 16.

The group took out adverts in Scotland to campaign against the Scottish government’s plan to reform the Gender Recognition Act stating that the GRA reform would create a "gender free-for-all" and is "a law that could be exploited by predatory men who wish to hurt women and girls". Complaints to UK's advertising watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) were dismissed, although it issued the group with an "Advice Notice", advising that the messages could be "potentially misleading".

Gender identity education in schools

The Alliance supports compulsory relationships and sex education (in Scotland termed "Relationships, Sexual Health and Parenthood Education"), but says that the concept of gender identity is being taught as fact despite what Alliance representatives claim to be its lack of a scientific basis. They also allege that the materials being provided to schools are produced by campaign groups rather than people with any relevant qualifications in education or science and that the materials violate principles of safeguarding by instructing teachers to conceal children's expressed desires to transition from their parents. The Alliance refers to this manner of teaching gender identity as potentially harmful propaganda.

Treatment of gender dysphoric children

Bev Jackson accused the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, which offers Gender Identity Development Services (GIDS) to children, of "transing out the gay" by transitioning children who would otherwise grow up to be homosexual men and women. She also referred to studies which show elevated rates of autism among children identifying as transgender, saying she had spoken with a teacher at a SEN (special educational needs) school who told her there were "24 trans kids, one non binary, but no gays and lesbians."

In December 2020, Jackson welcomed the High Court verdict in the Bell vs. Tavistock trial, which ruled that children should not be given puberty blockers unless they can understand the long-term risks and consequences.

Media coverage and criticism

In November 2020, the gay men's magazine Boyz retweeted Twitter posts from LGB Alliance and responded to criticism by suggesting that people not jump to conclusions about the organisation and instead "hear them out". Companies that advertised in Boyz or stocked the magazine were targeted with threats of boycotts and at least one venue, the cabaret club Royal Vauxhall Tavern, stopped selling it. The magazine eventually apologised "for the publicity we have given the LGB Alliance."

The Spectator published a defense of LGB Alliance on 27 November 2020 titled "The Disgraceful Crusade Against the LGB Alliance". Writer Brendan O'Neill stated that the group was being targeted by leftwing activists who had branded it a 'hate group' and had deprived it of opportunities to raise money by getting it removed from the JustGiving and GoFundMe crowdfunding websites. The article also stated that activists had gotten one of LGB Alliance's founders, barrister and gay rights activist Alison Bailey, investigated by her Chambers for alleged transphobia. "The message is clear: if you dare to question the orthodoxy, if you talk about sex rather than gender, if you think lesbians are female, then you will be crushed."

In November 2020, Bev Jackson was quoted in a BBC story about children experiencing delays in access to gender reassignment treatment, saying "We don't think children should be allowed to self-diagnose any medical condition."

In December 2020 John Nicolson, member of parliament for for Ochil and South Perthshire, described the group as "sinister" and said that it was absurd for the BBC to rely on "transphobic groups like the so-called LGB Alliance" to give balance on reports about trans issues, saying "you would never do a report on racism, for example, and call in a racist organisation to say that they don’t think black people have a right to equality". Dame Melanie Dawes, chief executive of Ofcom, agreed, saying quoting the group was "entirely inappropriate". Rob Jessel and Helen White of the organisation Fair Cop responded with an article in The Critic, in which they called Nicolson's characterization of the LGB Alliance "lazy slander".".

The Alliance has been described as trans-exclusionary in articles published in the journals Metaphilosophy and the Journal of Gender Studies. A statement from the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights group calling LGB Alliance transphobic and trans-exclusionist was signed by some candidates in the 2020 party leadership elections, including Angela Rayner who was elected deputy leader.

References

1. "About". LGB Alliance. Retrieved 2021-01-27.
2. ^ Gluck, Genevieve (23 October 2019). "What's Current: Dispute over gender identity splits Stonewall, creating LGB faction". Feminist Current. Retrieved 13 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
3. ^ Hurst, Greg (24 October 2019). "Transgender dispute splits Stonewall". The Times. Retrieved 13 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
4. ^ Tominey, Camilla (2020-12-25). "Lesbians facing 'extinction' as transgenderism becomes pervasive, campaigners warn". The Telegraph. ISSN 0307-1235. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
5. ^ Hunte, Ben (2020-11-23). "Trans teen in legal action over gender clinic wait". BBC News. Retrieved 2021-01-04.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
6. ^ "LGB Alliance warned by advertising watchdog over 'potentially misleading' claims about gender recognition laws". PinkNews. 2020-02-06. Retrieved 2020-12-29.
7. "'LGB Alliance' group faces criticism for being transphobic". The Independent. 2019-10-24. Retrieved 2021-01-27. A new lesbian, gay and bisexual alliance group has been heavily criticised for excluding the transgender community, prompting people to label it transphobic.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
8. ^ Weaver, Matthew (2020-02-13). "Labour leadership contenders split over trans group pledge card". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2021-01-27. Lisa Nandy has joined Rebecca Long-Bailey in signing the 12-point pledge card by the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights (LCTR) that also describes some organisations including Woman's Place UK as "trans-exclusionist hate groups".{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
9. ^ "'Entirely inappropriate' to quote LGB Alliance on trans issues, says Ofcom chief". www.scotsman.com. Retrieved 2021-01-29. several high-profile LGBT+ campaigners have labelled the LGB Alliance a hate group{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
10. ^ Guyan, Kevin (4 January 2021). "Constructing a queer population? Asking about sexual orientation in Scotland's 2022 census". Journal of Gender Studies: 1–11. doi:10.1080/09589236.2020.1866513. LGB Alliance (2019) (a UK trans-exclusionary LGB organization) argued the NRS proposal 'would suggest that other sexual orientations exist beyond attraction to the opposite sex, same sex or both sexes' (p. 2) and requested that the census not include the term 'Other sexual orientation' as a response option
11. ^ Monque, Pedro (3 February 2021). "On Decolonizing Social Ontology and the Feminist Canon for Transnational Feminisms: Comments on Serene J. Khader's Decolonizing Universalism". Metaphilosophy: meta.12468. doi:10.1111/meta.12468. some trans‐exclusionary LGB movements have begun to form around TERF ideology (for example, the LGB Alliance in the United Kingdom and the Red LGB movement in Spain).
12. Assuncao, Muri (26 September 2019). "Co-founder of U.K.'s leading LGBTQ organization condemns group's 'extreme' position on trans rights". New York Daily News. Retrieved 15 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
13. ^ Hellen, Nicholas (22 September 2019). "'Anti-women' trans policy may split Stonewall". The Sunday Times. Retrieved 13 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
14. Parsons, Vic (August 21, 2020). "LGB Alliance founder defends working with anti-abortion, anti-LGBT+ Heritage Foundation in resurfaced tweets". Pink News. Retrieved January 28, 2021.
15. Mellors, Robert; Jackson, Bev; Wilde, Jonathon (January 16, 1971). "Gay Liberation". The Spectator. No. 7438. pp. 98–99.
16. John, Tara (4 April 2020). "The quest for trans rights has exposed a deep divide in the UK. Scotland may show a way forward". CNN. Retrieved 12 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
17. "LGB Alliance Statement on reports that the UK Government plans to drop its previous proposals to reform the GRA". LGB Alliance. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
18. "Advertising regulator rejects complaint about LGB Alliance advert". LGB Alliance. 2020-12-22. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
19. ^ "Schools Campaign". LGB Alliance. Retrieved 2021-02-02.
20. ^ O'Neill, Brendan (27 November 2020). "The Disgraceful Crusade Against the LGB Alliance". The Spectator. Retrieved 15 February 2021.{{cite news}}: CS1 maint: url-status (link)
21. "Stonewall take another hostage | Rob Jessel and Helen White". The Critic Magazine. 2020-12-21. Retrieved 2021-02-15.
22. "Lisa Nandy says trans rights pledge wording gave her 'pause for thought'". The Guardian. 23 Feb 2020. Retrieved 23 Feb 2020.

External links

• Official website

• Transgender rights
• Advocacy groups in the United Kingdom
• 2019 establishments in the United Kingdom
• LGBT in the United Kingdom