Get the violins out - Stonewall is "in crisis"

The rainbow has now, for me, taken on a sinister aspect - to me the pride flag now stands for suppression of dissenting viewpoints, hounding of women, and the inappropriate sexualisation of children.

Genuinely how I feel when I see it. It's no longer a sign of hope, of God's covenant with humankind (I'm Eastern Orthodox Christian) or acceptance and gay equality (which is important to me as my DS1 is gay). It's something much darker to me now.

I'm sure there's a PhD thesis on the symbology of it all, hopefully someone will write it at some point.

It is absolutely amazing how thoroughly and successfully they have managed to completely appropriate the rainbow. Sometimes I'll remind even religiously-literate people of its original (and very recent) significance in the Noah's Ark story. You can see the look of horror when they realise the campaigns have worked in wiping their cultural memory too.

Of course the confusion isn’t the fault of the LGBA, it’s down to Stonewall originally having been a gay rights charity for LGB people but they’ve not had the honesty to drop even the L when they changed their remit to prioritise trans people over lesbians.

Yes, the LGB alliance

@TheOtherRaven, your visceral reaction to the rainbow flag is mine too. To the extent that I have passed on buying some lovely items of clothing because they were vaguely rainbow striped.

I disagree strongly that Stonewall is 'loveable'. They traded for a very long time on the mask of the reputation built by others with very different values in the days before they declared homosexuals to be 'sexual racists', especially women refusing to play along with male people wanting to be provided with straight sex while the woman pretended otherwise for them.... I mean think about that, it's become so normal that the absolute horror of it has been wallpapered over with rainbows.

A gay woman should abandon her sexuality. Her desires. Her wishes. Her consent even. No 'authenticity' or 'love is love' or 'freetobeme' or other pretentious and hyberbolic twonk for her.

Her job is to 'learn to cope' and accept that the most she can expect or should look for in a sexual relationship is to be able to physically tolerate what the man requires from her. She's a walking sexual resource with a birthright duty that somehow he lacks despite that he is absolutely a 'woman'.

Anyone remember Riley Dennis explaining that if a woman was a bit traumatised then she had a little while to get over this (so generous) before she had to crack on with getting her body out for a man's use.

It is essentially a demand for free sex work. With shaming, exclusion coercion, barbed wire baseball bats and blood stained t shirts - take a look at terfisaslur.com for how pathologically disturbed the men were who were demanding this.

Stonewall were right behind this. I helped fundraise for them in the dark ages when they were the one light on for LGB people. Straight people may see them as all cuddly snuggly. I see the rainbow now and I honestly internally want to get the fuck away, it is the mark of attitudes and behaviours that I don't want to be anywhere near.

given how they grossly misrepresented U.K. law, who would trust such a guide now?
Such a shame they’ve destroyed their own credibility.

I disagree: Del Boy, when you look beyond the petty crime and self-aggrandisement, is fundamentally a good-hearted character who cares deeply about his friends and family, and won't hesitate to put them first when the chips are down.

Stonewall on the other hand has become a cruel, disingenuous, wasteful behemoth squatting on public life, hiding its cynicism behind a facade of sweetness and light.

A better fictional character to compare Stonewall to would be Delores Umbridge.

They threw lesbians to the wolves and for that reason alone (though there are many others) they need disbanded, like, yesterday.

I miss the days when the Indie used to be a proper newspaper.

Stonewall disingenuously represented itself as a quasi governmental organisation and (mis)interpreter of the law for years, growing fat off taxpayer funds and corporate sponsorships. As such it acted way outside its remit and should have been investigated by the charity commission years ago.

It's comprehensively let down lesbians for the past decade and as such, now only really represents gay men and straight (AGP) men, ie the two groups in British society with the most cultural capital, wealth and privilege.

It's deeply corrupt, misguided and needs to be disbanded. It is the very definition of doing more harm than good.

Enjoy your erasure, guys.

Perhaps the reason I’m so very angry with them is that I did some volunteering for them when they were a gay rights charity. I remember Section 28 Stonewall.

I sometimes think people confuse Stonewall with a gay rights charity - is there such a charity, one that spends its donations/income championing say lesbian rights rather than attacking same sex attracted women, one that perhaps has a similar name which is causing the confusion?

i sent my local (Tory) councillor the sex matters email and guidance. Our Liv Dem council have made headlines/you tube reaction videos over their treatment of people asking for single sex spaces. Hes written back saying he fully supports the SC decision and will be making sure it is implemented across council services and men and women have safe spaces. Hurray!! Hopefully the Sex Matters guidance will help in His work

That's soooo booooring! Who's going to be able to go on a March and deface statues and abuse women by putting out a boring old travel guide to stop gay people being humiliated on holiday or ask David Beckham about his views on sportswashing and Gay rights?

DC is in a heterosexual relationship for now and seems happy. (I wouldn't care if DC was Gay or Bi either, but the trans ideology scares me - it causes so much damage).

In the UK, it doesn't harm a person to be unsure of their sexuality as long as they use condoms for penetrative sex. It harms them greatly to be unsure whether they are trans if they end up on lupron or cross-sex hormones.

They could have campaigned for the rights of gay people in other countries

Abortion Support Network did exactly this when Ireland repealed the Eighth, and consequently still get my direct debit despite Mara's appalling comments on social media about "TERFs".

ensured the safety of gay people going abroad

A Stonewall travel guide, letting the would-be holidaymaker or expatriate know both the law and the culture of every country in the world and letting you filter countries by what civil rights they recognise (e.g. will our adopted children be recognised as ours? will our British marriage be recognised?) would have been really useful to LGB Brits.

The most prominent LGBT group and yet, if my child was any one of the LGBT I would be doing everything in my power to steer her away from them. They've lost all credibility as far as I'm concerned.

Strange that the Supreme Court is getting criticism for not hearing from any trans people but this massive behemoth didn't even bother applying to intervene on behalf of the people it betrayed rational people for.

This would be the sane approach.

However up until this point no such organisation has been able to escape political capture and control, much as women's groups and organisations were targeted, captured, controlled and either repurposed or destroyed. Anything useful tends to be commandeered as a resource to further the political agenda, without the faintest care or conscience for what happens to the organisation, it's members or its service users. For example the people parachuted in to jobs for example the head of women's rape crisis. And the heavy politicisation and control that destroyed the Tavistock.

The judgment is going to free the voices and meeting up of LGB people in ways that has been very sternly controlled in the last decade. It will be interesting to see if TQ groups are able to gain more independence too as the landscape settles. Some actual diversity of views and voices is badly needed.

I don’t see why not. If there are 2 types of women (according to the TIM’s) then surely us cis women could simply identify as transwomen? That way we’d have the run of the place and generally rule the world.

The bloke who was the CEO at the rape crisis centre in Edinburgh told women to reframe their trauma. An absolute vile specimen of a human being.

We were disposed of. Shut out, shouted out, told we were wrong and hateful and homophobic for wanting to be homosexual.

Some of those people who set up Stonewall went and set up the LGBA - which has been relentlessly targeted and smeared largely as a threat to the control of funding and narrative, homosexuals escaping control and having voices was seen as a threat.

It's been exceptionally ugly.

Ultimately, they hollowed out their host and it looks like it may not survive.

Entirely and absolutely this. Which begs the question. Why isn't the spent host furious over having been chewed up and spat out in such a way? Or did the vast bulk of the LGB abandon the whole mess to the TQ, but some stayed quiet on pain of being lambasted as a 'hate group' along with the LGBA?

They torpedoed their own organisation, and their own 'rights' (or incorrect perception of what those rights entailed). Talk about shitting on your own doorstep.

Love the image of Stonewall as Japanese knotweed 😁

On the suggestion that a trans charity might be set up to replace Stonewall -
the TRAs obviously found it much more convenient to latch on to an existing organisation, existing analyses, existing slogans, even the existing rainbow flag, which they then twisted to their own requirements.
Ultimately, they hollowed out their host and it looks like it may not survive.

It will be interesting to see if a brand new trans organisation emerges, or if TRAs find some other host that has already done the hard work.

Can I self identify as trans and demand that I take over. If the trans people don’t like it they can re- educate themselves -isn’t that what they told rape victims?

Trans struggle to have a group on their own as they can’t define what they are, and attaching themselves to different groups gives them validation.

Since it was founded more than 35 years ago, the charity has become entwined in our country’s psyche, Parliament, schools, sporting and business sectors. But for how much longer?

Haha, too right it has. Like a particularly stubborn variety of Japanese knotweed.

Hopefully, not for too much longer.

The problem is that the trans version was "TWAW. get over it." which is not remotely comparable to "some people are gay". The latter is demanding acceptance of a fact. The former demands capitulation to a lie. "some people are transsexual. get over it." is a very different message.