Cllr Gary Powell is a councillor in Buckinghamshire.
While China continues on its stratospheric journey as an economic and military superpower, the West preoccupies itself with the new cultural Marxism of identity politics.
Unfettered from the inconvenience of objective reality and scientific verification, this ideology sweeps across the political and social landscape with a degree of contagion matched only by its contempt towards our foundational belief systems, and the rights of anyone too low in the woke pecking order to matter.
A major prong in this identity politics colonisation, the LGBT+ lobby continues to pressure the Government; and the Government, presumably with an eye to increasing the younger vote, looks as though it is wobbling.
Yet who populates this “LGBT+ community”, and on whose authority do LGBT+ spokespeople speak? Although I’m a gay man and a longstanding gay rights campaigner, this lobby doesn’t speak for me. Many lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people, across the political spectrum, actively campaign against the LGBT+ lobby.
The primary LGBT+ obsession is the introduction and enforcement of extreme gender ideology – which has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Many gay and lesbian people strongly oppose the values and aims of the LGBT+ lobby and do not consent to its claims to speak on our behalf. We are not a homogeneous attitudinal monolith, and the real gay and lesbian community has never elected these strident spokespeople.
How can we support a lobby that has redefined homosexuality to mean “same-gender attraction” rather than “same-sex attraction”, so that gay and lesbian people are now called “transphobes” and “genital fetishists” for asserting our surely unassailable right only to date people of the same biological sex as ourselves?
The LGBT+ lobby is a dangerously anti-gay and misogynistic force, steamrolling over women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and protections, attempting to give intact biological males access to hitherto exclusively female environments and domains, simply on the basis of “transgender” self-identification. It attempts to remove the right of same-sex attracted people to meet and organise exclusively on the basis of our sole shared characteristic of same-sex sexual orientation.
We now often get called “LGBT+” instead of gay or lesbian. Young gay and lesbian people – assailed by a barrage of online transgender grooming, woke LGBT+ school and media indoctrination, and modish peer contagion – are increasingly self-identifying as “trans”, and therefore as heterosexual but in the wrong body, inviting the irreversible risks associated with a possible nightmare journey into hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and even amputations: a modern form of “conversion therapy” that was examined in a recent piece by Radical on these pages.
The history and language of the historical LGB rights movement – “conversion therapy”, “Section 28” – are being casually misappropriated by an extreme gender movement that is actively undermining our autonomy and identity.
Until around 2015, LGB people had the same unchallenged right as every other social minority group to meet and to organise on the basis of our shared common characteristic, which is sexual orientation and nothing else. However, following gay marriage, some grabby gay rights charities and activists needed a new minority cause to keep the ker-ching in their cash registers and to keep the victim identity bandwagon rolling. Consequently, the “T” (transgender) was added to their campaigns, even though “gender identity” has nothing to do with LGB rights.
This still wasn’t enough, and further groups were added to the expanding alphabetic initialism, representing such phenomena as “asexuality”, “kink”, and the “furry” identity, (something to do with dressing up as a furry animal). The free-for-all “plus” in “LGBT+” is reflected in Stonewall’s current motto: “Acceptance without exception”. Surely a bad maxim that encourages blind acceptance even of things that are harmful.
The LGBT+ lobby’s attempt to impose extreme gender ideology on society also does little to help people with genuine gender dysphoria, who deserve acceptance and support, who do no harm by presenting culturally as the opposite sex while respecting the traditional sex-based boundaries that are in place to protect women and girls, and whose reputation is harmed by association with social engineering, zealotry and overreach.
A ferociously-championed political movement, extreme gender ideology is designed to undermine cultural norms, scientific reality, the connection between motherhood and children, parental rights, and freedom of speech: aspects of society one might reasonably expect the Conservative Party to defend tooth and nail as a party that is meant to be conserving what is good and valuable.
The gay and lesbian community has never agreed to merge its cause with any other group’s cause, or to surrender our right only to date members of the same sex, our right not to make common cause with extreme gender ideology, or our right not to give up our exclusive gay or lesbian spaces. Neither have we agreed to encourage LGB young people to wrongly believe they are transgender and be set on a de facto conversion therapy pathway to self-identified heterosexuality by means of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
The individuals in the sub-categories that this purely hypothetical “LGBT+ community” composite claims to represent do not form a monolith, and we have a right to our own individual views and opinions: that includes the many mainstream, moderate trans people whose own campaign to help people with gender dysphoria and enlighten the public has also been hijacked by victim-culture social engineers pushing an extreme political agenda.
Many gay and lesbian people on the planet do not enjoy even the most basic of gay rights: Western sensibilities over a wedding cake don’t even hit the radar, and pronouns are the smallest beer imaginable. Homosexuality is still illegal in 70 countries, where the death penalty can be imposed in several. In some places, gay people are publicly flogged.
Yet the western LGBT+ lobby remains primarily obsessed with self-indulgent identity politics that will allow natal men to drive a coach and horses through women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and protections and will cause confused, misinformed and traumatised children to wrongly self-identify as trans.
Countries with anti-gay customs and laws can now point to the LGBT+ overreach in the West as an excuse to block basic gay rights reforms at home. The Western LGBT+lobby is harming the rights of gay and lesbian people, children and women across the globe. This is not a movement that deserves appeasement – least of all from conservatives – and there should be no more concessions.
We need Conservative leadership that will stop neo-Marxist identity politics being force-fed to children in British schools, and not a Government of appeasement that abandons conservative principles while nervously and surreptitiously shifting to the woke left in search of votes from an indoctrinated Brave New Generation.
Cllr Gary Powell is a councillor in Buckinghamshire.
While China continues on its stratospheric journey as an economic and military superpower, the West preoccupies itself with the new cultural Marxism of identity politics.
Unfettered from the inconvenience of objective reality and scientific verification, this ideology sweeps across the political and social landscape with a degree of contagion matched only by its contempt towards our foundational belief systems, and the rights of anyone too low in the woke pecking order to matter.
A major prong in this identity politics colonisation, the LGBT+ lobby continues to pressure the Government; and the Government, presumably with an eye to increasing the younger vote, looks as though it is wobbling.
Yet who populates this “LGBT+ community”, and on whose authority do LGBT+ spokespeople speak? Although I’m a gay man and a longstanding gay rights campaigner, this lobby doesn’t speak for me. Many lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people, across the political spectrum, actively campaign against the LGBT+ lobby.
The primary LGBT+ obsession is the introduction and enforcement of extreme gender ideology – which has nothing to do with sexual orientation. Many gay and lesbian people strongly oppose the values and aims of the LGBT+ lobby and do not consent to its claims to speak on our behalf. We are not a homogeneous attitudinal monolith, and the real gay and lesbian community has never elected these strident spokespeople.
How can we support a lobby that has redefined homosexuality to mean “same-gender attraction” rather than “same-sex attraction”, so that gay and lesbian people are now called “transphobes” and “genital fetishists” for asserting our surely unassailable right only to date people of the same biological sex as ourselves?
The LGBT+ lobby is a dangerously anti-gay and misogynistic force, steamrolling over women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and protections, attempting to give intact biological males access to hitherto exclusively female environments and domains, simply on the basis of “transgender” self-identification. It attempts to remove the right of same-sex attracted people to meet and organise exclusively on the basis of our sole shared characteristic of same-sex sexual orientation.
We now often get called “LGBT+” instead of gay or lesbian. Young gay and lesbian people – assailed by a barrage of online transgender grooming, woke LGBT+ school and media indoctrination, and modish peer contagion – are increasingly self-identifying as “trans”, and therefore as heterosexual but in the wrong body, inviting the irreversible risks associated with a possible nightmare journey into hormone blockers, cross-sex hormones and even amputations: a modern form of “conversion therapy” that was examined in a recent piece by Radical on these pages.
The history and language of the historical LGB rights movement – “conversion therapy”, “Section 28” – are being casually misappropriated by an extreme gender movement that is actively undermining our autonomy and identity.
Until around 2015, LGB people had the same unchallenged right as every other social minority group to meet and to organise on the basis of our shared common characteristic, which is sexual orientation and nothing else. However, following gay marriage, some grabby gay rights charities and activists needed a new minority cause to keep the ker-ching in their cash registers and to keep the victim identity bandwagon rolling. Consequently, the “T” (transgender) was added to their campaigns, even though “gender identity” has nothing to do with LGB rights.
This still wasn’t enough, and further groups were added to the expanding alphabetic initialism, representing such phenomena as “asexuality”, “kink”, and the “furry” identity, (something to do with dressing up as a furry animal). The free-for-all “plus” in “LGBT+” is reflected in Stonewall’s current motto: “Acceptance without exception”. Surely a bad maxim that encourages blind acceptance even of things that are harmful.
The LGBT+ lobby’s attempt to impose extreme gender ideology on society also does little to help people with genuine gender dysphoria, who deserve acceptance and support, who do no harm by presenting culturally as the opposite sex while respecting the traditional sex-based boundaries that are in place to protect women and girls, and whose reputation is harmed by association with social engineering, zealotry and overreach.
A ferociously-championed political movement, extreme gender ideology is designed to undermine cultural norms, scientific reality, the connection between motherhood and children, parental rights, and freedom of speech: aspects of society one might reasonably expect the Conservative Party to defend tooth and nail as a party that is meant to be conserving what is good and valuable.
The gay and lesbian community has never agreed to merge its cause with any other group’s cause, or to surrender our right only to date members of the same sex, our right not to make common cause with extreme gender ideology, or our right not to give up our exclusive gay or lesbian spaces. Neither have we agreed to encourage LGB young people to wrongly believe they are transgender and be set on a de facto conversion therapy pathway to self-identified heterosexuality by means of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
The individuals in the sub-categories that this purely hypothetical “LGBT+ community” composite claims to represent do not form a monolith, and we have a right to our own individual views and opinions: that includes the many mainstream, moderate trans people whose own campaign to help people with gender dysphoria and enlighten the public has also been hijacked by victim-culture social engineers pushing an extreme political agenda.
Many gay and lesbian people on the planet do not enjoy even the most basic of gay rights: Western sensibilities over a wedding cake don’t even hit the radar, and pronouns are the smallest beer imaginable. Homosexuality is still illegal in 70 countries, where the death penalty can be imposed in several. In some places, gay people are publicly flogged.
Yet the western LGBT+ lobby remains primarily obsessed with self-indulgent identity politics that will allow natal men to drive a coach and horses through women’s and girls’ sex-based rights and protections and will cause confused, misinformed and traumatised children to wrongly self-identify as trans.
Countries with anti-gay customs and laws can now point to the LGBT+ overreach in the West as an excuse to block basic gay rights reforms at home. The Western LGBT+lobby is harming the rights of gay and lesbian people, children and women across the globe. This is not a movement that deserves appeasement – least of all from conservatives – and there should be no more concessions.
We need Conservative leadership that will stop neo-Marxist identity politics being force-fed to children in British schools, and not a Government of appeasement that abandons conservative principles while nervously and surreptitiously shifting to the woke left in search of votes from an indoctrinated Brave New Generation.