THE LGB Alliance has called for a public inquiry after accusing a leading LGBT charity of spreading “lies” about gender identity.
Kate Harris, a director of the charity, told an online panel discussion on no-platforming and freedom of speech, that children were being taught they had a “gender identity that may differ from the sex you were assigned at birth” – something she said was a “lie” which was “destroying lives”.
She was speaking at an event hosted by think tank Reform Scotland and which featured SNP MSP Kate Forbes and her Westminster colleague Joanna Cherry.
Speaking afterwards, the LGB director said she wanted a “public inquiry on the way in which the discourse on sex and gender has been distorted throughout society”.
Harris added: “It is harming the rights of women as well as lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.”
During the event, Cherry indicated she backed Harris’s comments – which included accusing the barrister Jo Maugham of the Good Law Project of attempting to “silence” her organisation by bringing a court case to the charity regulator in an attempt to have the LGB Alliance struck off the charity register.
Maugham has strongly denied his organisation is attempting to silence the LGB Alliance.
Harris said she wanted a public inquiry more broadly into “how on Earth this is the state of affairs in public discourse in 2023” as she lamented the national conversation around women’s rights and transgender issues.
She blasted Stonewall for its alleged “no debate” policy on trans matters, leading to a situation where “informed discussion is being obliterated”.
Harris said: “The result of ‘no debate’ is now what’s a growing medical scandal of children and young people who would normally have grown up to be perfectly healthy human beings, the vast majority of them to be lesbian and gay, are now believing that they must change their bodies to fit the zeitgeist rather than the world must change to allow gender non-conforming people like me, like Joann, like lots of other people on this call.
“We were allowed to grow up to be whatever we wanted to be – thank God. Let’s not forget the violence that’s being inflicted on children and supported on children and supported in Scotland and Wales and England through the school system and through universities to tell anyone who’s a lesbian that she’s a misfit, anyone who’s a girlie boy that he’s a misfit.
“That is the homophobia that is running riot through the whole of this. But this isn’t just, if you like, an issue for lesbians, gays, bisexuals, this is an issue for anyone who supports liberal democracy. Scotland is the home of the Enlightenment. Reason and science and informed discussion is being obliterated. So people say to me, ‘Why do you go on about this? It’s just a minority issue.’
“I believe in liberal democracy. When I see what’s going on in Scotland it chills me to the bone[…]”
Harris added: “For me, the next step is a public inquiry. Unelected groups like Stonewall – and I’m part of that problem because I helped make Stonewall the reliable voice of gays, lesbians and bisexuals for years and I was so proud of that because we were fact-based, we were evidence-based and we were all about building bridges and now we can’t build bridges because we’re not allowed to talk – so Stonewall, I think we need a public inquiry.
“How did we get here? How is it that we’re teaching children lies from the age of five? You have a gender identity that may differ from the sex you were assigned at birth – that is a lie, that is destroying lives.
“Once our verdict comes out on our court case – because many TQ+ charities have come together led by Joylon Maugham to have LGB Alliance struck from the charitable register, to be silenced, to be put out of business. Lesbians and gays do not deserve a voice in 2023.
"So when our verdict comes out – whichever way it goes, whether we’re found guilty of wrongthink or whether we’re allowed to continue – we will be calling for a public inquiry into how on Earth this is the state of affairs in public discourse in 2023.”
Maugham said: “Like so much that Tufton Street-based LGB Alliance say, this is simply not true. The case is not about whether LGB Alliance or its directors can speak. Demonstrably they can. The case is about whether LGB Alliances' activities are charitable or not.
"The category of activities that are privileged as charitable is rightly narrower than the speech that the law protects as free."
Stonewall declined to comment.
