If you are puzzled by Stonewall's priorities, read this blog by a retired civil servant and former Labour policy developer, on how activists reacted to proposals to improve health services for trans people. It's very long, but also very, very worth reading.
But here's part of the conclusion:
extract
So if the content of the manifesto came as a surprise to anyone that it should not have come as a surprise to, it was because they were absent, or not paying attention, or not interested. It is simply absurd to suggest that in any case the holder of portfolio responsibility was blindsided. Absurd and quite untrue.
But what interests me more than Heather’s occasionally erroneous account of events is the emphasis of what matters to the comrades of LGBT Labour.
The whole unnecessary fuss — and the subsequent unhelpful media narrative — arose from their utter discontent that the Labour Party had committed to continuing the legal entitlements of women (and men), as defined by the protected characteristic of sex, to be allowed service provisions on the basis of their sex when — and only when — it was a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim to define access to such services on the basis of sex and not on the basis of a differently defined ‘gender’.
This may well not be the policy of LGBT Labour but it is long standing Labour Party policy. It was not changed when we introduced the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 and it was explicitly underscored by the Equality Act in 2010. It has never been changed by decision of our Conference, or by a decision of the Courts, or by a statement from any Party Leader, or by the wording of any election manifesto, or by any policy announcement. It wasn’t even considered controversial until after the 2016 report of the Westminster Parliament’s Women and Equalities Select Committee, which itself did not accept the recommendations along similar lines submitted in the evidence provided by trans rights lobbyists including Stonewall.
But it dismayed trans people, according to Heather’s account and the actions of pop-up people like Ellie-Mae and her ilk. It dismayed the pop up people and LGBT Labour because it was the removal of the established legal rights of women that interested them.
Nowhere, ever, have I seen any recognition from any of them of the astonishingly bold, tangible and very expensive commitment that we gave to improve the lives of trans people by ensuring adequate and much improved access to health care services.
It’s not because they didn’t know.
It’s because that’s not what they’re interested in.
lachlanstuart.medium.com/the-confessions-of-a-transphobe-b4942c06e6e4