Gay man 'bullied' off Manchester Pride for wearing LGB Alliance hat and t-shirt

[Gasp0deTheW0nderD0g]

LibDem activist delighted by this. Here are two of her tweets. The gay man who turned up in an LGB hat and t-shirt was allegedly advised by police to leave for his own safety and seems to have had the hat stolen.

Another young fool tweeted that 'bullying the guy in the LGB Alliance shirt who came to the protest march is my favourit part of Pride so far xx'. He has since deleted this (possibly because he is now sober and/or has seen how many people had reported this to his employers) and now claims he was just chanting 'Trans lives matter!'. 'Bullying' is an odd choice of words for this. How could anyone think admitting publicly to 'bullying' was a good look?

The LGB Alliance man has been advised that people shouting at him is actually assault if he wants to take it further. Doesn't sound like he does, though.

Unedifying, to say the least.

He was wearing the logo of an organisation whose approach and focus people expressed their disagreement with (in an admittedly over-aggressive way). That is political disagreement, not homophobia.

So you wear a t shirt and hat proclaiming 'Trans lives matter' and a crowd jeers at you, intimidates you, steals your hat, and that's not transphobic then? Merely a political disagreement? Good to know.

I urge you to look at their website, then, where the only six campaigns they list are all to do with trans issues and sex/gender issues ("transing the gay away", Allison Bailey being accused of transphobia, opposing GRA reform, opposing gender self-id in the census, engaging with EHRC on gender vs sex, opposing aspects of Scottish hate crime legislation to do with sex vs gender).

Obviously those campaigns are to do with the direct threat and impact upon LGB rights. Yes, they're all coming from and created by the same direction, but those campaigns are actually about the LGB need. That homosexual kids are at risk of being encouraged or pressured to transition because of homophobia, a gay woman being accused of homophobia, GRA reform which holds significant threat to sex based rights particularly affecting females and LGB people whose rights and needs are in fact sex based, etc etc.

This is like coming on FWR and complaining everyone here is obsessed with trans people when no, it's about womens rights and the fact that gender ideology and policy is currently multiply attacking and affecting those rights on multiple fronts. It's disingenuous to say the least to try and hush LGB people and females from standing up to it on the grounds that it's unkind to the political lobby doing it.

We're back to 'please don't upset me by wincing or saying stop it while I'm kicking you'.

Or faced up to the reality that if lesbians want an exclusively lesbian group, they have to do it secretly.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes

I am saying that their "prioritising looking after lesbians" isn't in improving access to healthcare, reducing homophobia in society, or doing anything that substantively improves their lives (or my life as a gay man) – it is simply focusing on trans issues. That is inherently controversial at the moment.

As you have said, you are a gay man, in a discussion over a lesbian-founded organisation, with mostly women, many of us lesbian or bisexual ourselves, or the mother of a lesbian daughter. Your perspective on what "looking after lesbians" should look like is going to be very different to what any of us think it looks like.

We think women being sexually coerced is a massive problem, and fighting against that will substantively improve lesbian lives, and we have rather a lot of "lived experience" why.

I don't know what the divide is, but no lesbian I know IRL agrees that this is in any way a priority. I accept that you feel differently and you are entitled to do that.

So you wear a t shirt and hat proclaiming 'Trans lives matter' and a crowd jeers at you, intimidates you, steals your hat, and that's not transphobic then? Merely a political disagreement? Good to know.

Yes, I somehow don't think that would be the consensus.

[quote PurgatoryOfPotholes]Here's a great thread analysing the situation from a legally qualified gay man on twitter.

thread

🧵1/ Let us be clear. If you're condoning what happened at Manchester Pride this is what you're endorsing. Alexander had his hat stolen from his head. That's the crime of robbery. He was hounded by a mob, that's various public order offences.

2/ He was denied the right to participate in gay political activity because he supports a registered Charity the Commission responsible said categorically is not a "hate group". So you're supporting breaching his human rights to freedom of thought and expression.

3/ Because he's a gay man going to gay pride you're also targeting a person on the basis of their same sex attraction which is a protected characteristic by s.12 of the Equality Act 2010.

4/ Because you're targeting this gay man because he believes something he's entitled to (because democracies don't have state mandated beliefs) you're also harassing him for the s.9 protected characteristic of belief.

5/ More generally, you're now part of a mob. It's an online mob and it's doing digital queer bashing. You've likely been radicalised by "no debate" so now you simply can't function happily with democratic norms.

6/ What you're supporting is something that has (rightly) utterly horrified people outside the gender debate. You're supporting a brave man just trying to exercise freedom of speech being terrified by a mob. This is how tyrannies start.

7/ They start with people like you sweeping serious crimes and breaches of human rights aside "for the greater good". People are watching this and we've had enough of this petty dictatorship.

8/ #HatsAgainstHate - Alexander's hat was stolen - show your support for @ALLIANCELGB, use this appalling event to strengthen the only charity that actually supports same sex attracted people.

From: twitter.com/Jebadoo2/status/1431955263632941065?s=19[/quote]
I see there is a discussion going on over whether there was an assault, so I'll quote this again.

Unless telekinesis is a thing, hands must have been placed on Alexander to remove that hat.

@titchy

He was wearing the logo of an organisation whose approach and focus people expressed their disagreement with (in an admittedly over-aggressive way). That is political disagreement, not homophobia.

So you wear a t shirt and hat proclaiming 'Trans lives matter' and a crowd jeers at you, intimidates you, steals your hat, and that's not transphobic then? Merely a political disagreement? Good to know.

Well, if someone shouted at me for wearing a trans lives matter t-shirt, I'd think they were a callous idiot more than anything.

@JustPassingThrough3
Could you kindly clarify for me how the man at Manchester Pride was "assaulted"?

Of course. He had an item of clothing stolen from him, by way of snatching a hat from his head, and was mobbed by a crowd to the point where he needed a police escort. Now, I realise it may not be on the same level to you as misgendering, because we all know that is LITERAL VIOLENCE, but it does remain an assault. Do you think if you were wearing apparel that indicated you were gay and a mob of people crowded around you, shouting at you, before snatching clothing from your body isn’t assault? It wouldn’t cross your mind to think you may have been targeted because you are gay? Your threshold for tolerance is lower than mine, if so.

If someone, a small group of people, came up to you in the street and shouted at you, snatched your hat off your head, how would you describe it?

I don't know what the divide is, but no lesbian I know IRL agrees that this is in any way a priority

That's funny, because I've met many who do. Perhaps the answer is that our personal friends and acquaintances are a filter bubble?

But a small hardcore of people who do believe this does not mean that it's part of any official push to "redefine" gay, or that it is anywhere near representative of what the majority of LGBT people think. It's sort of shadow-boxing: fighting and getting angry over something that a minute number of people actually say.

Lots of people working very hard today to push the narrative that no no no, it's ok, it's not really happening because it's only a very small number of people and it isn't enough to mind about and it's only paranoia and being silly....

Who benefits from suppressing information sharing and LGB people's responses to this I wonder?

Why is the effort focused on minimising and hushing and discrediting rather than openly agreeing this is totally unacceptable, being part of the TQ community that stands up against it and says loudly no, not in our name, we accept and welcome the rights of LGB people to be same sex attracted and to live their own way alongside us, and we stand with them in resisting this inappropriate, discriminatory behaviour?

I don't know what the divide is, but no lesbian I know IRL agrees that this is in any way a priority. I accept that you feel differently and you are entitled to do that.

@JustPassingThrough3
Not at gay pride, apparently…

I'm a little boggled that 'I've never met a someone who has been assaulted/it doesn't happen much' is seriously being peddled as an argument why LGB people shouldn't be allowed to have a charity for them.

Lucky for me that I know decent men, gay and otherwise, who are capable of empathy.

Well, if someone shouted at me for wearing a trans lives matter t-shirt, I'd think they were a callous idiot more than anything.

It wasn't 'someone' it was a crowd. But can I clarify from your response then that you wouldn't consider a crowd jeering at you and stealing an item of your clothing to be transphobic then?

"I would love an organisation that actually grapples with the real issues gay and lesbian and bi people actually face, without thinking that it has to be a battle against people who want to improve, for example, access to trans healthcare services.*

To be fair most women are already doing their own battles for access to health care (and do not disagree because we really do face appalling health inequalities) it is not up to the women to be fighting for better trans healthcare. (However what is meant by improved trans healthcare wildly differs)

Who sets this common "agenda"? Who is the leader of the TRAs and how were they appointed? What is their organisation? How do they set policy?

Stonewall.

Look up their definition of homosexuality, it is no longer based on sex but gender:

This might be considered a more medical term used to describe someone who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender. The term ‘gay’ is now more generally used.

Stonewall also decree that Transwomen are women and Transmen are men, therefore good luck with declaring you are only attracted to men because that includes Transmen who are by dint of their sex biological females.

And in case you are in doubt, don't want to take the word of an anonymous woman

www.sentencingcouncil.org.uk/outlines/assault/

@RedDogsBeg

Who sets this common "agenda"? Who is the leader of the TRAs and how were they appointed? What is their organisation? How do they set policy?

Stonewall.

Look up their definition of homosexuality, it is no longer based on sex but gender:

This might be considered a more medical term used to describe someone who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender. The term ‘gay’ is now more generally used.

Stonewall also decree that Transwomen are women and Transmen are men, therefore good luck with declaring you are only attracted to men because that includes Transmen who are by dint of their sex biological females.

And the BBC:

Homosexual means people of either sex who are attracted to people of their own gender

Such weasel words.

He was assaulted for wearing a t shirt that bore the logo of a gay charity. The nature of the charity was the excuse for the assault. His presumed affiliation was the excuse for the assault.

@PurgatoryOfPotholes: I am also a legally qualified gay man, and I am afraid to say that I disagree with this person's analysis.

There is no way that a prosecutor would consider that the alleged "robbery" met the threshold of "steals" as set out in s. 1 of the Theft Act 1968. And none of his bits about s. 12 of the Equality Act or "harassing based on a s. 9 protected belief" are anything beyond legal word-salad.

It is true that being gay is a protected characteristic under s. 12 EA 2010; it is true (Forstater v CGD) that so-called gender critical beliefs are protected under s. 10 (not s. 9, which concerns race) of the EA 2010. But disagreeing with either of them or even shouting at someone in the street on the basis of them is not a crime. Nor would it be harassment under s. 1 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

Physical contact isn't required for a charge of common assault.

@RedDogsBeg

Who sets this common "agenda"? Who is the leader of the TRAs and how were they appointed? What is their organisation? How do they set policy?

Stonewall.

Look up their definition of homosexuality, it is no longer based on sex but gender:

This might be considered a more medical term used to describe someone who has a romantic and/or sexual orientation towards someone of the same gender. The term ‘gay’ is now more generally used.

Stonewall also decree that Transwomen are women and Transmen are men, therefore good luck with declaring you are only attracted to men because that includes Transmen who are by dint of their sex biological females.

Stonewall is not the leader of every trans person or "TRA" in the country. They do not set the common agenda that all "TRA"s abide by. Do you genuinely think they do?

@FloralBunting

I'm a little boggled that 'I've never met a someone who has been assaulted/it doesn't happen much' is seriously being peddled as an argument why LGB people shouldn't be allowed to have a charity for them.

Lucky for me that I know decent men, gay and otherwise, who are capable of empathy.

When have I said they shouldn't be able to have a charity or a group?

I don't know what the divide is, but no lesbian I know IRL agrees that this is in any way a priority. I accept that you feel differently and you are entitled to do that.

I think Jim Davidson claimed black friends who found his jokes funny and plenty of women have disassociated themselves from those nasty feminists.

Yet racism and sexism still exist.

You can’t defend the rights of people you can’t name. ‘Trans’ and ‘queer’ identities are now regularly claimed by Heterosexual gender conforming people. Good luck defending your rights without language.

Of course you might be privileged enough not to believe you need specific rights. If so please understand that others aren’t so lucky.

Stonewall is extremely influential.

And you are being tedious, disingenuous, and I'm not in the least surprised you don't know any lesbians or gay men that would share about being pressured or coerced to change or hide their sexuality. If I knew you personally I wouldn't tell you because I'd be expecting to be high-handedly dismissed as you have done on the thread.