Congratulations to LGB Alliance!
Today’s judgement is a victory for free speech, biological truth and gay rights
Congratulations to LGB Alliance! The UK’s only charity dedicated to furthering the rights of same-sex attracted people has emerged victorious in its legal battle with the disgraced children’s charity Mermaids. Mermaids took LGB Alliance to court in an unprecedented bid to have the group’s charitable status removed. In a case which had far-reaching implications for LGB rights, freedom of association and free speech, tribunal judges today ruled that Mermaids had no right to bring its challenge. The LGB Alliance can keep its all-important charitable status.
Backed by Jolyon Maughan’s Good Law Project, Mermaids accused the LGB Alliance of ‘impeding the work of organisations (particularly charities) that work for the benefit of trans people’ by ‘promoting the view that they spread disinformation and by seeking to deprive them of funding’ in a court case heard in September and November last year. Mermaids was angry that a group defending the interests of LGB people could legitimately oppose its view that an invisible sense of gender identity was more important than anatomy in determining someone’s identity and shaping their sexuality.
The threat to Mermaids was also existential. LGB Alliance’s very existence reveals the new homophobia that lies at the heart of gender ideology. When self-declared gender identity supersedes biology we soon end up with males declaring themselves to be lesbians. Men and women attracted only to people of the same sex are effectively pushed back into the closet for fear of being accused of transphobia. For gay and lesbian children, the impact of transgender ideology can be catastrophic. Girls reluctant to see themselves as lesbians are celebrated as transgender boys and find themselves on a conveyor belt of breast-binding, puberty blockers and, eventually, life-changing surgery.
The campaign to discredit LGB Alliance began after its launch in 2019. Even now, Mermaids claims the group is ‘focused on hostile anti-trans activism’. The LGB Alliance has been repeatedly smeared as far-right, transphobic and even homophobic. These claims have been amplified by high profile figures while Mermaids has received celebrity endorsements from the likes of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, Emma Watson and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
With celebrities, large parts of the media and public institutions all backing Mermaids, the LGB Alliance’s victory today was never guaranteed. Even now, the tribunal’s verdict represents a fudge. By finding that Mermaids did not have legal standing to appeal the Charity Commission’s decision, judges have avoided commenting on the fact of the LGB’s charitable status. This is a shame.
In its bid to have the LGB Alliance closed down, Mermaids was attempting to delegitimise groups that hold alternative viewpoints to its own. But, in a democratic society that values free speech, it is absolutely right that charities represent different perspectives and interests. There are charities representing the meat trade and vegetarians, abortion rights and pro-life groups. Calling this into question is an attack on free speech.
Today marks an important victory for LGB Alliance. But, in many ways, the bigger battle was won in the courtroom itself. Mermaids’ key witnesses repeatedly proved themselves to be uncooperative and ignorant. Mermaids’ chair of trustees, Dr Belinda Bell, told the court: ‘I’m not sure that people come out of the womb with a sex’. She claimed to be unable to comment on the disproportionate number of children who present at the Tavistock clinic identifying as trans who later turn out to be gay or lesbian because this was ‘too niche and specialist’. Paul Roberts, the chief executive of the LGBT Consortium, acknowledged that he had not read the Cass report that had led to the Tavistock clinic’s closure and claimed to be unable to comment on the human-rights implications of the gender-identity debate because he was ‘not a legal expert’. Transgender ideology itself seemed to be on trial.
The good news is that this led to much greater scrutiny of Mermaids. Members of the charity’s board of trustees were investigated and its practices - including sending breastbinders to children without parental consent - were exposed. In a delicious irony, Mermaids’ bid to have the LGB Alliance stripped of its charitable status prompted an initial charity commission investigation into Mermaids and, in November last year, Susie Green resigned as Chief Executive Officer. In December, following yet more concerns about governance and management at Mermaids, the Charity Commission launched a full statutory inquiry into Mermaids.
All of this is welcomed. Supporters of the LGB Alliance can take delight in seeing Mermaids tripped up by a malicious legal case they started. But the bigger problem we now face is that the ideas about gender pushed by Mermaids are being promoted to children in schools, in popular culture and through the endorsement of celebrities and multinational corporations. This is the fight that still needs to be won.
LGB Alliance has been made to wait a long time for today’s court ruling. Fighting this unnecessary case has no doubt been gruelling and expensive. Kate Harris, a co-founder of the LGB Alliance, broke down in court when asked to define ‘lesbian’. She should never have been put in this position. Time and resources that could have been better spent campaigning to improve the lives of LGB people have instead been spent on a legal defence. With its charitable status guaranteed, now would be a good time for believers in biology, sex-based rights and free speech to show their support for the LGB Alliance.
A substantially edited version of this article originally appeared at Spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/2023/07/06/why-the-lgb-alliance-had-to-win/