Inside the 2023 Tory war on LGBT rights

[IwantToRetire]

Rows about LGBT rights brewing in the Conservative Party in 2022 boiled over in 2023 beyond an internal war and into a radical shift in tone and policy.

Today, politicians and insiders from both sides of the House speak out about this shift to reveal its causes, consequences, and implications for the future.

One Tory MP discloses details of a face-to-face meeting with Rishi Sunak in which he implored the Prime Minister not to pursue this as an election issue. Another MP warns that next year’s general election will be “the most brutal and hate-filled in my lifetime”. And a third reveals that after she publicly opposed a minister over trans rights, hate mail with her name on it was sent to local businesses alongside graphic pictures of transition surgery. The police are now investigating.

For one of the architects of the 2019 Conservative manifesto, however, this shift is neither a strategy, nor a vote-winner, but based on real concerns about transgender issues.

https://inews.co.uk/news/inside-the-2023-tory-war-on-lgbt-rights-2821349

Not sure how accurate any of this is, but interesting that there is no reporting about the Labour "war" given that they are assumed to be the next Government.

Full article can be read here https://archive.ph/iskFq

(Given that this is the "i" and the writer a recipient of Stonewall Journalist of the Year Award winner, some might detect a slant in the article.)

... The roots of this wind change are wider, he said, partly emerging in concert with well-funded American religious right organisations who have championed anti-LGBT causes in recent years – and echoed by the Russian government.

“Here in the UK, this anti-LGBT campaign has become incredibly well-organised. It’s managed to capture the fears of otherwise moderate colleagues. And I think that is what has led to this change in attitudes. When I think back to the publication of the LGBT Action Plan, all of the hysteria and the rhetoric that’s coming out now was nowhere near as potent as it was in 2018.”

But the causes of this change, he added, are also more internal, driven partly by certain Tory advisers, and emerged during the two Conservative leadership elections last year.

“There’s been a battle for affection within the party membership to try and win those members over,” he told i. “And for some reason, the issue of LGBT – particularly the issue of trans – seemed to be one where people thought they might garner support.”

... “I don’t think it’s strategic,” Robert Colvile, one of the authors of the 2019 Conservative Manifesto, told i. “If there has been a change in the Tory party it’s very much about the ‘T’ in ‘LGBT’. It is emphatically not being done out of electoral strategy.”

Instead, he thinks the shift has arisen from “genuine” and “heartfelt” concerns surrounding the treatment of trans children, and the “tension between self-ID and the idea that there should be safe spaces for women who’ve been victim of abuse and rape”.

“There is a sense within the Tory party of them pushing back against a progressive movement that has not just gone too far, but has denied there were any problems with any of this,” he said.

But this taps into a more fundamental fear on the right “that conservatism is increasingly being viewed as illegitimate”, he said, citing “the rise of ‘woke’” and “a whole series of doctrines which are being spread in academia, in charities, which essentially attempt to argue that the things they believe in are outdated or prejudiced”. A senior Tory who did not wish to be named told i that MPs who campaign against trans issues, or so-called ‘woke’ issues, are rising in the party due to this deeper worry.

There is no anti-LGB... it's just the T that's at issue. Sick of this forced-teaming.

Unfortunately as the article points out even within the Tory party many people have been Stonewalled.

And as we know all of Labour has been.

What an infuriating article. The go-to way to make a movement look sinister and illegitimate is to mention the American religious right, and/or Russia.

The rising awareness in the UK of the insurmountable conflict between trans demands and women's rights is purely due to the action of feminists, and the legal battles that have been won.

This started with Maya Forstater, who's eventual victory confirmed that it's illegal to discriminate against people for non- belief in the gender religion, which allowed the free-speech floodgates to open on this issue. And other legal battles exposed how Stonewall made up its own interpretation of the law, in order to dupe organisations into believing that trans people are legally entitled to enter opposite sex spaces, thus drawing attention to the fact that trans don't have as many entitlements as was widely believed.

Also, everything the Tories have done has been positive for LGB people, whose young members are affected by the culture of transing the gay away, and whose adult members are subjected to extreme pressure to have sex with trans people and especially lesbians, whose spaces have almost entirely disappeared.

Finally, I resent the article acting like it's a mystery why the Tories are doing this, as if trans rights are widely accepted by the general public. “And for some reason, the issue of LGBT – particularly the issue of trans – seemed to be one where people thought they might garner support.” - yeah, because trans bullshit is wildly unpopular with the general public. The privileged elites in politics and the media are ridiculously out of touch with ordinary people.

Women hardly seem to enter the equation, do they? In any of the debate

Wasn’t Strudwick the same person who wrote something about the Let women Speak event in Melbourne inviting/supporting the Neo Nazis and then got pulled up on it by JKR. He also thinks Alex Drummond is a woman. He certainly has bias in his writing. .https://www.buzzfeed.com/patrickstrudwick/this-transgender-woman-has-a-full-beard-and-she-couldnt-be-h

Strudwick clearly has an agenda and, for all the names he's thrown around in that article, the only Tory MP I could spot actually going on the record and speaking to him was Elliot Colburn.

That said, I still think it's reasonable to believe there are deep divisions in the Conservative Party about the issue. It would explain why they've been so infuriatingly slow to act. We already know that Caroline Nokes is chair of the Women and Equality Select Committee and openly hostile to Kemi Badenoch, also Penny Mordaunt who stood as leader and might well do so again.

I expect other voices will get louder and that, assuming they lose the election, there will be a bitter inquest plus a leadership contest with at least one TWAW candidate.

I think given its the i and who the writer is, there was little hope of it being a balanced article, let alone that women should be recognised!

But I think it shows how both the anti Tory agenda (which may well be right on other issues) and the Stonewall agenda of everything is about the T are what appears in most papers.

And so despite lots of activism by both individual women and campaigns, the general coverage is still vile reactionaries are traumitising vulenerable Trans and Tories are just anti "woke" and dont really care (and again the issue of women is never referred to).

The TRA campaign has been a real gift to MRAs. It gives them even more grounds on which to say women's issues are irrelevant.

If any other group that is one of the protected categories was so completely talked over and derided there would be uproar.

Lazy journalism

The roots of this wind change are wider, he said, partly emerging in concert with well-funded American religious right organisations
I think this is true - the New Conservatives in particular appear to have a strong link to American Conservative and evangelical Christian movements and I think they are interested in the trans agenda for religious reasons rather than protecting women

The Tories do not have a battle with LGBT children - they are safeguarding children against the toxic ideology Whixh is damaging our children in education

Trouble they have is on the ground it's women to the left pushing back on this. Also Christian right are not gender critical, so not part of the movement by definition.