Stonewall statement on misinformation about the Diversity Champions Programme

What kind of attacks are organisations advocating for LGBTQ+ equality receiving?

In the first four months of the year there were more than 900 Freedom of Information requests sent to public bodies about their work with Stonewall.

Aww some monsters are asking for information about Stonewall's actions to be made public. The poor stonewall champions are overwhelmed with almost 0.8 FOI requests per organisation per month.

There's an interesting post on it here legalfeminist.org.uk/2021/05/22/to-boldly-go-why-going-beyond-the-law-risks-unlawful-discrimination/

I think in some circumstances it’s ok to go ‘above and beyond’ the law. For instance, offering more parental leave than the legal minimum. Good employers do more than the basic legal requirement in many areas. However, it gets sinister when Stonewall is saying it when we know that they have been advising employers not just on good practice in LGBT inclusion to go above and beyond the legal minimum, but to do so in a way that tramples all over others’ rights, notably women’s and girls’, and that misrepresents what the law and the legal minimum actually are.

I know this for a fact as about three years ago I was invited to sit in on some Stonewall training for senior teachers (I’m not a teacher myself). The trainers told the teachers that a boy who decides he is trans much be allowed to change with the girls, and if a girl is h comfortable with this, “the law is very clear - you have to provide another space for her to change in, not for the trans child”. I was pretty sure at the time that this was wrong but not absolutely certain so I didn’t challenge it and I regret that now. But it was one of the things that made this lesbian and Stonewall supporter and donor investigate all this further and come to a firmly GC position.

That is not going above and beyond the law in any helpful way: it’s giving legal advice that is flat wrong and that denies the legal rights of other people (girls).

This is just a different twist on "ahead of the law" isn't it?

Archive: archive.li/MwU49

there has been a lack of clarity around non-binary identities within the current legal framework

Really? I wonder who could have caused that?

The jaguar land rover case was seen as case law in my organisation to indicate that non binary came under gender reassignment protected characteristic. The positive is it stopped them using gender instead of sex as anything to do with gender identity comes under gender reassignment. Our organisation would say they go above and beyond and focus on inclusion outside of the protected characteristics.

This is straight from Robin Moira White isn't it?

A couple of years ago the poster boy for gender fluid was Phil Bunce, and that PR move exploded the Stonewall construction wide open.

One comment in one tribunal about fluidity is hardly going to make the idea that men are women on some days any more plausible after that PR fail. I genuinely don't understand what they are trying to achieve anymore with all this wordsmithing.

It's alienating more and more people.

Stonewall encourage companies to go beyond the law. In writing.

Wow…

@Heidi1982 what is the Jaguar Landrover case? Sorry I haven’t seen it mentioned before.

Above the law is not a good mindset to have!

This snacks of desperation. Plus I wish they would stop misrepresenting the Jaguar Landrover case.

The petition on legally recognising non binary gender identities was rejected by government. The same government that makes the law (something SW may not have noticed or indeed may have deliberately ignored).

Gender identity isn't the only thing SW support being self-declared, charities can also self-appoint themselves as law-makers can they?

Above and beyond the law? At what point does that actually taking you into law-breaking territory?

Stonewall is welcome to recommend the fiction of gender identity as long as they're completely clear that it forms no part of the legal framework and it can not be a matter that is enforced on employees, no matter how indirectly.

No you're not.

"For employers who wish to flout the law"

They may come to regret putting that in writing.