Trans activists silence gay human rights lawyer for not being subservient

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Trans activists and their allies staged a protest at McGill University on Tuesday, where they used intimidation and assault to derail a talk organized by a controversial gay, lesbian and bisexual advocacy group. This is an unacceptable infringement of political free expression, as the views which were to be discussed did not, in any way, constitute hate speech.

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The event, which was hosted by the Faculty of Law’s Centre for Human Rights and Legal Pluralism, was led by Professor Robert Wintemute, who is a McGill alumnus and teaches Human Rights Law at King’s College London.

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As a lawyer and expert witness, Wintemute has supported 15 successful cases challenging anti-gay discrimination since 2013. For example, last year he went to the European Court of Human Rights to argue against Lithuanian restrictions on the sale of a children’s book that depicted a mix of heterosexual and homosexual relationships.

Given his formidable history of gay activism, why did a screaming mob charge into his event, assault him with flour and unplug his projector? Ultimately, it’s because they’re threatened by the idea that lesbians, gays and bisexuals (LGBs) might not be subservient to the trans community.

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Wintemute is a trustee and lawyer for the LGB Alliance, a British advocacy group that “rejects the coalition of the LGB and T.” The group is part of a larger, UK-based movement which sees sexual orientation and gender identity as two separate issues, and which believes that LGBs have rights and interests that are different from, and sometimes at odds with, the trans community.

The McGill event would’ve allowed Wintemute to share his thoughts about these issues. Specifically, the discussion would’ve explored whether laws should allow individuals to change their legal sex by simply “self-identifying” as trans, and whether there are exceptional circumstances, such as women-only spaces and sports, where birth sex should take priority over gender identity.

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Compared to the U.S. and Canada, the British are far more skeptical about maximalist approaches to trans rights, which has made the UK a global leader in thoughtful criticism of trans issues, including discussions about untethering gay rights.

This predictably infuriates many trans activists, who are now invested in discrediting the LGB movement in general, and attacking the LGB Alliance, which leads the movement, in particular.

A popular strategy is to position the LGB Alliance as a hate group that is not actually run by homosexuals. When trans activist Celeste Trianon published a public letter demanding the cancellation of Wintemute’s event, she used a web of factually untrue and misconstrued information to support this narrative.

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Like many trans activists, Trianon claimed that only seven per cent of LGB Alliance’s members are lesbians. But that claim has been debunked as an obtuse misinterpretation of LGB Alliance’s newsletter subscriber data. Additionally, the organization commissioned a study last August which showed that 34 per cent of its members are lesbians, 33 per cent are gay men, 12 per cent are bisexual and 20 per cent are heterosexual.

Is LGB Alliance’s advocacy hateful? Let’s take a look.

The group objects to redefinitions of homosexuality that deny the existence of same sex attraction and pressure homosexuals into having intercourse with bodies they just aren’t interested in. This particularly affects lesbians, many of whom now report being stigmatized, even violently threatened, for not liking “girl d–k” and refusing to interrogate their “genital preferences.” Is it “hateful” for gays and lesbians to affirm their sexual boundaries and resist a perverse new form of conversion therapy? Absolutely not.

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LGB Alliance also raises important concerns about the impacts of trans activism on homosexual youth.

These days, gender nonconforming youth are often pressured into self-identifying as trans. This, in itself, is offensive to some older homosexuals who spent decades arguing that effeminate boys are still men and masculine girls are still women.

More concerningly, it means that homosexual youth, who are more likely to be gender nonconforming, are disproportionately pressured to falsely self-identify as trans.

Additionally, The Times published an investigative report in 2019 wherein five clinicians expressed deep concerns about the homophobia they observed while working in the UK’s infamous, now-defunct Tavistock gender clinic.

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One clinician said, “It feels like conversion therapy for gay children.” The clinicians noted that some parents seemed to support gender transition so they could make their children into heterosexuals. This is disturbingly reminiscent of Iran’s policy of forcing homosexuals to surgically change genders to “fix” their orientation.

In response, LGB Alliance has opposed overly-permissive gender-identity services for youth, arguing for more regulation and accountability. Consequently, the organization also opposes overly-broad conversion therapy bills that could criminalize objections to unethical cases of youth gender-identity care.

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Trans activists subsequently misrepresented the organization as supporting conversion therapy itself (a practice which tries to change people’s orientation through borderline-torture).

In April 2021, the UK’s Charity Commission granted LGB Alliance charitable status, determining that, based on the troves of documents it had reviewed, LGB Alliance provides a “public benefit” and that no evidence could be found that it had motives beyond advocating for LGB people.

The decision is subject to an ongoing appeal by Mermaids, a transgender organization. The Charity Commission has remained staunchly supportive of LGB Alliance during the appeal’s legal proceedings.

You can disagree with the LGB’s Alliance stances, but to characterize it as hate speech worthy of intimidation and violence is farfetched. Of course, none of that mattered to the activists who stormed Wintemute’s event in their ignorant fury.

National Post