Get the violins out - Stonewall is "in crisis"

[IwantToRetire]

Our biggest LGBT charity is in crisis. Are we just going to let it collapse? LGBT people need armour; an organisation like Stonewall to act as a first line of defence

Stonewall, Britain’s largest LGBT organisation, is in crisis. It’s plummeting financially, with rounds of redundancies as funding cuts hit. And its credibility and influence is plunging amid a national and global backlash against LGBT rights.

This matters. If someone asked you to name the first LGBT organisation that comes to mind, I would bet my cat you’d say Stonewall. Since it was founded more than 35 years ago, the charity has become entwined in our country’s psyche, Parliament, schools, sporting and business sectors. But for how much longer?

However you feel about Stonewall, we need a conversation about the state of the biggest charity defending LGBT people. And we need to ask ourselves a question as the opponents of all kinds of human rights lie in wait: are we just going to let it die?
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To highlight one recent example of Stonewall’s seemingly waning influence, I asked the Government several times recently whether it has consulted with Stonewall over a proposed ban on conversion therapy since taking office. A spokesperson from the Cabinet Office declined to confirm whether it has even had any meetings with the charity about it, instead offering vaguely: “We will engage further with a broad range of stakeholders.” I asked Stonewall three times, but they did not provide a response.

Perhaps both sides are being coy or don’t want the public to know that they’ve met. But either way, this is as bizarre as it is concerning. Stonewall was once the charity that lobbied every MP in the country to help pass the same-sex marriage law in 2013. Now, it is unclear whether they’ve even had a meeting with the new Government over the psychological torture of LGBT people
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Should it die, many will dance on Stonewall’s grave. But then many would happily see the rights of LGBT people revoked too – thereby exposing how much a strong, influential organisation for this community is still needed.

If you think it should return to only representing lesbian, bisexual and gay people, then you’re ignoring not only the plight of trans people but also how intertwined all these rights are and how many government’s incarcerate people for laws that oppress every letter in the acronym – or pass laws like the Equality Act that protect everyone (until that is chipped away).
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Complete article at https://inews.co.uk/opinion/biggest-lgbt-charity-crisis-stonewall-3645337
Can also be read in full at https://archive.is/yGTYs

(If LGB people can set up their own Alliance, why cant trans people do the same?)

https://www.flagcolorcodes.com/genderqueer

Not all marketing campaigns are successful....but thanks to David Lammy (rare words) some are. 🦕 🦖

What on earth is gender queer? Why do they all need flags?

I can't imagine why attention seekers would need flags. But I'll give it a try...
impromptu picnic blankets, emergency shelters, wrapping up your belongings when leaving home, sarong.

They haven't come for our 🦕🦖....yet

I believe they have. Because something something temperature affects sex in reptile eggs something something, I think.

James Dreyfus (and a few other people) wrote to Stonewall to ask them to help take the heat out of the ‘debate’.
To ask them to call off the rabid and frankly, unhinged TRAs, and they said ‘no’.

They didn’t ignore the letter, they actively said that they wouldn’t lift a finger to help.

Think of that…

I’m not sure, though, that any interventions from Stonewall would have helped, cos no one’s pure enough (trans-wise). And that rabid and unhinged searchlight would have been aggressively targeted on them.

I dunno.🤷🏻‍♀️

An LGB charity does not need to include the T no more than it needs to include issues like cancer care, disabled support or environmental concerns. Most charities stick to one thing. Should the RNIB join with greenpeace?

Except that, insofar as they are all recipients of public funding carrying out semi-detached public functions, they do have an underlying common cause of keeping that support going. That's the hidden corruption from having created a Third Sector. Hence there is a logic to any Cause of One becoming a Cause of All. While it seemed mad for other charities to use their funds to try to strike off the LGB Alliance, from that perspective it would have made a kind of sense.

Are green, white and purple identifying as primary colours now?

What the flip is gender queer? Can anyone explain as if to a six year old please?

Straight with a spicy haircut & a transally of course.

It means whatever you want it to mean......because the whole world revolves around you and your self definition.😉

I’m none the wiser !!

Nailed it. They are the architects of their own demise.

So wearing suffragette colours means you're gender queer now 🤔

😂I think we can safely say that suffragette colours haven't been successfully hijacked.

I proudly wear my suffragette colours and have acquired a few more in the last 12 months... I truly do feel this is our generation's "suffragette moment" and every bit as important!

It means you’re special. Specialier than anyone else and with rainbow glitter to make you extra extra special.

Stonewall has a lot to answer for but I'm starting to think they just took advantage of an increasing culture of idiocy among politicians and universities etc. They haven't caused, for example, the Feminist Society at Leeds Uni to be so completely poorly informed that they stated the UK Govt had 'passed a new bill', or caused politicians to fail to bother to read the recent judgement, or caused people to hero worship nyaffy wee woman hating pricks like Pedro Pascal and David Tennant, who they would criticise for the way they speak about women in ANY other context. People just don't have thinking skills and they're not willing to read or learn anything for themselves. Happy to delegate their thinking to someone else, and Stonewall has been happy to pretend to have thought.

It was the queer activists of the 70s (and earlier?) who as part of the analysis of disrupting the norm got women's studies centres closed in universities and instead had gender studies.

And this colonising of women's politics is why so many university educated people have learnt to prioritise queer over old fashioned sex based rights women's politics.

The whole change to what were LGB groups based on same sex attraction is because of queer politics (and the increase overt sexual exhibitionism and pornographic representation).

There have been lots of threads about queer politics.

And worth remembering that the editor of the Guardian says queer politics informs everything she does.

So as I posted earlier, older trans women who were not part of this hijacking of the issue by queer activists, would have had a very different experience.

Unfortunately their life choices have been hijacked as another strand for the queer activists to claim they represent.

What has happened isn't accidental!

wow @IwantToRetire .... I hadn't fully realised that it was connected to gender studies replacing women's studies.... I remember noticing that (early 80s?) and thinking how sad it was, and how foolish ... but hadn't really seen it as part of the bigger picture.

Who was behind that??? Not stephen whittle again? Still cant believe the level of strategic planning and foresight he has shown in demolishing women's rights...

I dont know that any one person started it, but there are or have been contributors to FWR who are well informed.

If time later I might try and find the dates.

But both in terms of queer politics and TRAs whether a sinister plot or just very well organised networks of people with a shared belief, they have infiltrated any number of organisation and institutions that have influence.

Just look at how easily the main stream media became pro trans.

Look at how gender reassignment was given priority over sex in the EA.

And many more!

indeed

Stonewall getting a bit of a kicking here from their former chief executive Ben Summerskill, of all people, in the letters page of The Grauniad, of all places.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/apr/30/stonewall-policy-of-no-debate-on-trans-rights-was-a-mistake

The second letter is worth a read as well.

Blimey, that's a turn up for the books! Even the lofty Grauniad Towers seem to have concluded that reality has bitten.

I’ve been developing a similar phobia. Was trying to decide on a form of words to explain to our GP should they be wearing one on our next visit… I was thinking that the rainbow stuff could easily be shown to create a hostile working environment for GC staff when combined with the NHS trans staff policies. Anyone know if someone has started a tribunal claim on that basis yet?