New sports club at DC’s high school only open to LGBTQ+ pupils and their allies

[SirChenjins]

Are they legally allowed to exclude GC pupils? Or pupils who are not one of the special alphabet children?

This is a really great club - nothing like the school has offered before. Seems a shame to limit attendance based on sexuality/gender ideology rather than interest/ability.

We’re in Scotland if that makes a difference.

Nobody is saying LGBT groups should not exist.

This is not an LGBT group. It is a ping pong club which excludes a particular group of students on the grounds that they hold a legally protected belief.

This is not about creating a safe space free from homophobia and transphobia. (Indeed, as many posters have pointed out at length, there are aspects of gender ideology which are clearly and explicitly homophobic, such as the idea that lesbians should be open to having sexual relationships with trans women, and so for students who are lesbians and wish to play ping pong, this club is clearly not a safe space from that kind of homophobia.)

It is legitimate for a school to have an LGBTQ+ club for LGBTQ+ students to meet and connect with each other. I have no doubt that such a club exists.

It should also be legitimate for a school to have an LGB club which is only for students who are same sex attracted and does not include heterosexual students with gender identities, but sadly such clubs no longer exist and we all know the reason why.

But when it comes to sports clubs (or indeed, music ensembles, drama clubs, chess clubs and any other clubs which are for students to enjoy hobbies which do not have anything to do with their sexual orientation or gender identity), (1) all students should be equally welcome to join, and (2) the school should be operating a zero tolerance approach to any kind of bullying, thereby negating the need for specific clubs to be designated safe spaces free from any particular kind of bullying.

But this is not about providing a safe space for LGBTQ+ students to play ping pong.

It is about ostracising students with gender critical beliefs and excluding them from regular parts of school life.

Every time the apologists on this thread talk about gender critical beliefs not being a justification for discrimination, they are ignoring a crucial point. The LGBTQ+ people are not the ones being discriminated against here. They are the ones doing the discriminating.

And here we are. I expect my Lesbian: female homosexual top wouldn’t be acceptable either because it excludes males.

Oooops, there's the quiet part out loud again. Lesbians welcome, unless you have ideas some men don't like. Specifically, opinions on whether your sexuality needs to include men. Then this inclusive event is not for you, bigot.

Someone in that school should start an LGB knitting club and state that trans students can only join if they are attracted to people whose sex on their birth certificate is the same as theirs, on the grounds that they need a safe space from homophobia and the LGBTQ+ allies ping pong club is not a safe space.

Excellent idea.

That's a great idea - I can't see why anyone would object.

If they did object they’d obviously be homophobic.

He's a child. I get the impression he wants to attend to play the sport, not hold a Let Women Speak rally.

Go along and play the sport and if anyone queries it then he can say he's an ally. No need to make a massive deal about it.

Yes, I am not really concerned about slogans or T shirts or badges that state you belong to a group. That's politics for grownups.

But what I am concerned about (well, one of the things) is what the children are allowed to say and do in a specifically "LGBT" group in Scotland. Can you be an "ally" if you know that Jenny who identifies as a girl is physically a boy and if you say that? If a child says that Jenny is "really" a boy, which is how many children would express "physically"?

Can a child be an "ally" if they don't always treat Jenny exactly the same as they would a girl and Jenny doesn't like that? What if a child gave "because Jenny's really a boy" as the reason why they didn't want to cross some boundary that they don't cross with boys?

And what if the children discuss what it means to be "trans", to be a "boy" or a "girl" among themselves? Children do - my DC has very seriously discussed what it means to have have autism with other autistic kids at primary school age. It would be very easy for children to quarrel and if GC beliefs (i.e. that Jenny is not "really" a girl even though she presents as a girl, because physically she is a boy) aren't taken seriously or are condemned... well where does that leave the kids?

If all the children are required to be 100% in line with gender ideology and to accept correction for any GC beliefs, or for any GC beliefs that offend a trans-identified child then this "LGBTQ and allies" club could present a big problem.

Of course, calling it an "LGBTQ and allies" club doesn't automatically mean the above, but right now, given the prevalence of gender ideology in Scottish schools I wouldn't feel confident that such situations would be managed well for all the children involved.

The problem isn't just how this group would work in practice, but the fact that a group which discriminates against a group of children is allowed to exist.

If it were the children with the gender identities who were being discriminated against then people would quite rightly be up in arms about it.

So why is it OK to exclude the children who don't believe in all the gender stuff and just want to play ping pong?

The problem isn't just how this group would work in practice, but the fact that a group which discriminates against a group of children is allowed to exist.

You're allowed to discriminate to support protected groups who are otherwise under-represented or discriminated against. Being LGB (and arguably T though that's a grey area for kids) is protected by the Equality Act so you can discriminate to support those kids. Being GC is WORIADS but it's not protected by the Equality Act.

Usual qualifier - IANAL and I got most of that off t'Internet.

Being GC is protected by the Equality Act 2010 under the category of the protected characteristic of belief/religion, as determined by the Forstater appeal -

www.theguardian.com/law/2021/jun/10/gender-critical-views-protected-belief-appeal-tribunal-rules-maya-forstater

In the same way as (in theory), services are legally allowed to to support women using the protected characteristic of sex, using the single sex exemptions stated in the EQA2010.

But, as we've seen many times, organisations who should be allowed to use these exemptions choose not to because of funding being dependant on them not doing so or because they have been (incorrectly) advised by lobbying organisations such as Stonewall.

You're allowed to discriminate to support protected groups who are otherwise under-represented or discriminated against.

'LGBTQ+ and allies' isn't a protected group though. As PP pointed out, it's just code for 'not GC'. And excluding people because they are GC is illegal discrimination under the protected category of belief.

Disclaimer IANAL either

Being GC is protected by the Equality Act 2010 under the category of the protected characteristic of belief/religion, as determined by the Forstater appeal

I'm not convinced that would be enough for this kind of club though, the court would have to put GC belief on a par with LGB. Even after Forstater, Allison Baillie still had to argue that GC beliefs were more likely to be held by women to support her discrimination case.

And as you say, it's all a bit "in theory". No-one wants to go to court over their kid's right to join their friends at the pingpong club without having to agree that their friends can really change sex.

...and because being GC is a protected characteristic we go back to Jess, the GC lesbian who wants to join the group but has been made to feel unwelcome by the Ts. Whose needs/wants/feelings take priority here?

Meanwhile, other children just want to play ping pong without having to declare their sexuality, their gender ideology, or the fact they're an ally of anything.

And so we continue to go round in circles.

Pages and pages above explaining all this repeatedly.

But yet again:

People might be a bit more willing to accept TQ+ political groups for jollies that exclude IF that TQ+ political movement ever, under any circumstances, permitted women female only spaces. Not just equally for jollies either, but in situations of dire need.

As opposed to forcing a rape survivor to fight through the courts for several years to try and be allowed an accessible support service that she pays for through her taxes, because TQ+ politics feels that men will be miffed that somewhere in town a group exists that they cannot dominate and control women in, despite having a choice of three separate groups of their own. Just for an example. The Equality Act explicitly protects these spaces for women and yet TQ+ politics ignores it and intimidates and bullies to stop people being able to apply it, and has no respect or care for the law, so asking that we all nicely respect the EQA when it might be in the favour of TQ+ is a bit rich really.

If this was a situation of mutual tolerance and reciprocal good will, instead of an insanely prejudiced and controlling, totalitarian nutjob movement now grooming children into the belief that thou shalt not suffer a sinner, this whole 'be kind' stuff might work.

I understand your point but this club lets non lgbt children join

they just have to have the ‘right’ opinions

By which is meant, the right political affiliations. Including willingness to lie.

Can you seriously at this point not hear the opening bars of 'tomorrow belongs to me'?

Yes, thank you frood well said

I disagree with quite a lot of this.

First of all, and I realise this opinion isn't shared by everyone, I am wholly unconvinced that LGBTQ+ is an underrepresented or discriminated against group. LGB certainly was historically an underrepresented and discriminated against group, and still is in certain ways. The TQ+ only really hitched themselves to the bandwagon once the LGB had already made huge amounts of progress.

In terms of representation, we have Pride Month, where every major town will have Pride events and essentially all major workplaces will celebrate Pride in some fashion. I am a lawyer, as it happens, and I can tell you that during Pride month my entire LinkedIn feed is awash with rainbows as all the firms I have ever worked for and all the firms my contacts work at change their logos to have a Pride flag background. Huge amounts of public discourse are taken up with talking about the rights of trans and non binary people. I would argue that no other identifiable group has this much representation.

In terms of discrimination, no other group is allowed to use toilets or changing rooms, join support groups or compete in sports for members of the opposite sex. No other group is allowed to dictate how others refer to them and how others are referred to. No other group has succeeded in getting so much of their own personal belief system to form the basis of public policy. No other group has managed to get people fired from their jobs for not sharing their belief system, or have all single sex support for female rape victims made mixed sex to include them.

So no, TQ+ are not what I would call an underrepresented or discriminated against group.

Secondly, you are conflating LGB with LGBTQ+.

LGB is, as I mentioned above, still an underrepresented and discriminated against group. A very obvious example is that when some of them set up an LGB charity, they were taken to court for setting up a charity of their own which did not include TQ+. During those court proceedings, the chairman of the LGBT+ consortium, a group which represents over 300 LGBT+ charities in the UK confirmed that their collective position is that gay and lesbian are now words for people who are attracted to people who share the same gender identity as them, and that anyone who believes, as LGB Alliance do, that being gay or lesbian means being exclusively sexually attracted to people of the same biological sex, is transphobic and not welcome in their organisation, and should not be allowed to exist.

So I would agree, based on the fact that that was allowed to happen in open court, that LGB is an underrepresented and discriminated against group. It is also an identifiable group sharing a single protected characteristic which, as you quite rightly state, should be allowed to have its own groups and this is confirmed by the Equality Act, even if the LGBT+ Consortium disagrees.

But this ping pong club is not for LGB students. It is for LGBTQ+ students and their allies.

That means it is for gay students, lesbian students, bisexual students, students of any sexual orientation with a transgender identity, students who identify as queer I don't actually know what this means but I know that some gay people consider it an offensive slur, students who identify as something covered by the + again I have no idea what this means but I know the LGB Alliance have some major concerns about what might be included here, and straight students who consider themselves "allies" of these groups.

This is not an identifiable group sharing a protected characteristic with a legitimate need to have its own groups from which all others can be excluded.

This is a group which includes potentially everyone, except students who are not "allies". And as many of us have already pointed out, the only thing this can possibly mean is students with gender critical beliefs. So it is a group which is open to everyone except a particular group of students who hold a perfectly legitimate belief that those who have formed this group happen to disagree with.

Again, this isn't about whether gender critical beliefs is considered on a par with being LGB, because this isn't a group for LGB students.

For what it's worth I don't think having gender critical beliefs is on a par with LGB. They are two completely separate, and not mutually exclusive, things.

Being LGB is a simple fact: you are, either exclusively or non-exclusively, same sex attracted.

Being gender critical is a belief system.

Being gender critical is on a par with being TQ+, which is also a belief system.

Put simply, being gender critical means you believe that what makes someone a man or a woman is their biological sex. You do not agree that everyone has a gender identity or that those who have a gender identity should be classified as a man or a woman based on that identity rather than based on their biological sex, because gender identity is based on someone's subjective experience of gender whereas biological sex is determined according to objective criteria.

Being TQ+ means you believe that what makes someone a man or a woman is essentially metaphysical. You believe that everyone has a gender identity, whether they realise it or not, and that this identity, and not their biological sex, is what makes them a man or a woman, or in some cases, something other than a man or a woman. You believe that most people have a gender identity which matches their biological sex which makes them "cisgender" and therefore privileged. You believe that people who are not "cisgender" should be able to use whichever spaces and compete in sporting categories which best correspond to how they feel inside, rather than being subject to any objective criteria.

These are competing belief systems and as such they should be given equal weight when it comes to, for example, who can join the ping pong club. Neither group should be bullying or discriminating against the other group, even if they are certain that they are correct and the other group is wrong.

The sooner we recognise that TQ+ is nothing more than a belief system, the sooner we can get on with debating exactly how much weight those beliefs should be given in society, and in particular whether they should be given more weight than, for example, the belief that humans can't change sex, or the belief that God created the earth.

Absolutely this. The double standards are unbelievable.

If you genuinely believe that you are part of an oppressed and vulnerable group and that you therefore need to have a safe space to play ping pong, away from people with different opinions about gender identity to yours, you should be capable of understanding that female rape survivors need a safe space to discuss being non consensually penetrated by someone's penis, away from people who have penises.

Sorry, wrong button hot too soon.

Excellent points, very well made, I agree with all of them. This should be an article or a leaflet where as much of the general public as possible has access to these points.

There are serious concerns about this political movement's behaviour and control of policy and practice affecting and subordinating others to their personal beliefs, including actual harm to others viewed as 'heretics'.

Anyone not deeply concerned about this finding its way into schools and into the lives of children has a problem.

Secondly, you are conflating LGB with LGBTQ+.

I was going to say that I was trying to stick to "LGBT and allies" because that was what the club was about. But then I re-read the thread title!

"LGBTQ+ and allies"? In a school? Even in Scotland that's pushing the boat out and there are questions any parent might reasonably want to ask about the Q and the +.