Unherd
'Why I can’t trust Stonewall any more
Its fight for gay rights was exemplary; now its trans dogma makes it unfit to work in schools'
BY JONNY BEST
(extract)
If ever there was a lost, screwed-up gay kid who would have benefited from the existence of an organisation like Stonewall in his childhood, it was me. Bullied, lonely, and lacking any knowledge about what it meant to be gay, but feeling a vague, dark sense that the lives I saw around me were not the same as mine — I didn’t have words to describe what I felt. At around the age of 13 I retreated into myself and was taken to a child psychologist, but I refused to speak.
I was 18 when the infamous Section 28 became law in May 1988, prohibiting the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality by local authorities. I don’t know where all this promotion was taking place but it wasn’t at my Cleethorpes comprehensive, which had covered sex education in one baffling, strictly science-only lesson. Homosexuality wasn’t mentioned, let alone advertised.
In 1989, Stonewall was founded and, thanks in large part to its careful, determined work, British society began to change for the better. Life became gradually easier and happier for lesbians, bisexuals and gay men. It was a slow process." (continues)
The calumny that LGBT people are a risk to children is alive and well, and I don’t want what I write here to give succour to those who perpetuate it. But here’s the thing: the Stonewall of today is not the Stonewall I so admired a decade ago. If I were on the phone to those teachers today, I’d advise them not to have Stonewall in their schools.
The government also appears to have spotted that something is wrong. It has issued guidance prohibiting schools from working with external organisations that “reinforce damaging stereotypes, for instance by suggesting that children might be a different gender based on their personality and interests or the clothes they prefer to wear”. The government doesn’t say which organisations it has in mind, but several established LGBT organisations — including Stonewall — produce materials that would appear to fall foul of the new rules.
The original Stonewall proceeded from a premise which gradually found support across the political spectrum: that the experience of same-sex desire is morally neutral and therefore not a just basis for discrimination. Stonewall’s campaigns to equalise the age of consent, overturn the ban on gays and lesbians in the military, and secure civil partnerships and equal marriage, all gathered social and political support on this basis." (continues)
For example, it has led Stonewall to reconfigure homosexual desire. This is not immediately apparent from Stonewall’s glossary, which, for example, describes a lesbian as a woman who is attracted to other women. But the glossary doesn’t offer a definition of ‘woman’ because Stonewall is keen to dodge the implications of its replacement of biological sex with self-reported gender identity — namely that a woman is a person of either sex who ‘identifies’ as a woman.
It follows inexorably that lesbians must now accept that — to use the phrase beloved of trans activists and their woke allies — “some women have penises”. You don’t have to know much about lesbianism to appreciate that the absence of penis is fundamental to the concept. When a group of lesbians protested at London’s Pride parade in 2018, Stonewall showed them no sympathy. This issue is causing distress and anger for many people, including young women just finding their feet in the lesbian community." (continues)
concludes:
A substantial, and increasing, number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people have had enough of Stonewall’s dogmatism. The founding in 2019 of the LGB Alliance, a grassroots, lesbian-led lobbying group which rejects gender identity, is responding to the demand for alternative thinking.
Stonewall’s brand is powerful — but brands are illusory, and Stonewall’s masks the socially divisive and damaging effects of its current policies. Politicians, schools, NGOs and major corporations routinely subcontract their judgment on LGBT issues to Stonewall, persuaded that whatever Stonewall says is ‘best practice’ must be right. But they should learn to be more cautious, because the new Stonewall is a vastly different organisation from the one which gradually earned their trust."
unherd.com/2020/10/why-i-cant-trust-stonewall-any-more/