The dispute between two powerful "rights" organizations is about to reach its final chapter: the lawsuit filed in the United Kingdom by the Mermaids Association against the LGB Alliance.
Two nonprofit entities that on paper should be united by the same intentions: advocacy over sexual and gender discrimination. Instead, Mermaids is accusing LGB Alliance of not being a true charity. On the contrary, according to Mermaids, LGB Alliance would use the title of charitable organization as a cover to carry on "anti-trans" propaganda!
How is it possible that two entities seemingly on the same "rainbow" front ended up battling in court?
The case taken to court
The different nature of the two associations is self-evident: the LGB Alliance right down to its name goes no further than B... No T (Trans), Q(Queer) and Plus (any other designation of sexual orientations not included in the above). While Mermaids has often ended up in the eye of the media for its extremely aggressive stance towards the supposed protection of "minors with gender dysphoria" through irreversible pharmacological and surgical procedures. Mermaids vs LGB Alliance thus represents a stark clash of activist worldviews. Although both are "rainbow" entities, their visions are at polar opposites.
Clash that for the moment seems to be turning in favor of the moderate LGB Alliance. The British authority that oversees charities, the Charity Commission, has declared that the LGB Alliance provides a "public benefit." Indeed, one of the Charity Commission's lawyers, as reported by the Guardian, said that the presence of charities with different worldviews is a public benefit because it encourages debate in the "evolving" field of diversity and equality.
But the case is still open, remaining to be determined whether LGB Alliance's status is purely charitable, and thus it is proper for it to be recognized as a charity (the Charity Commission's position). Or, as Mermaids who initiated the lawsuit argues, whether LGB Alliance's real purpose would be to advance anti-trans positions, given how LGB Alliance activists portray Mermaids (although, as we shall see, Mermaids activists seem perfectly capable of making themselves look bad if someone points it out).
Why LGB Alliance upsets gender ideologues
While legally Mermaids stands against LGB Alliance from the standpoint of charitable status, in fact it is the very existence of something like LGB Alliance that stands out against the dominant narrative. LGB Alliance was born in 2019 and, as is evident from its name, was created in open contrast to the historical associations of what was once the "homosexual world," such as Stonewall UK. Associations that, according to LGB Alliance's founders, had abandoned traditional anti-discrimination battles to focus solely on what some have called "trans cult" or "transgenderism." Cult because by going so far as to deny the existence of so-called "genital preferences" they were coming to threaten the mainstream gay and lesbian world.
That is, in recent years, according to associations such as the aforementioned Stonewall, for a lesbian to refuse a relationship with a "non-transitioned trans woman who proclaims herself to be a lesbian" (simplifying to the borderline case of a male who calls himself a "lesbian woman") would be a transphobic act. In practice in the brave new world if a male proclaims himself to be a lesbian woman, the lesbian who rejects his advances would be accused of transphobia. This is why some activists have gone so far as to declare that lesbians in the "transgenderist" world would be at risk of extinction. An "extinction" that on closer inspection already seems to be happening at the level of language, where the term queer has now erased terms too anchored to biological sex such as gay and lesbian. As the New York Times“ pointed out. And after all, LGB Alliance was born also for this, to reclaim the biological element. In fact, the charity right from its charter proclaimed the supreme blasphemy in the rainbow church: that "there are only two biological sexes and gender is a social construct."
LGB Alliance, then, as an association too moderate in terms of language. And especially opposed to transition procedures for minors, which have become Mermaids' core business. And even went so far as to state how it is not necessarily homophobic to oppose same-sex marriage! Too moderate, too realistic and too critical these days. So much so that it has earned the label of transphobic association by a group of Labor MPs!
Mermaids: the infamous trans sirens for children
It goes without saying that an "anti-descrimination" association that takes such a critical stance against "transgenderism" is the very negation of the urgency with which increasingly restrictive legislation is being passed in the UK and, especially, in Scotland, the true laboratory of the brave new world. Inevitable is the clash with what is the herald of transgenderism and transition procedures for minors, namely Mermaids, a historical association of the British "anti-descrimination" scene. Founded in 1995 as an association of parents of children "with gender dysphoria or nonconformity." From being a small association over the past decade, it has become the breakthrough centerpiece in proposing puberty blocker therapies (and more) to minors, doing lobbying activities that would lead to Tavistock, Britain's largest mental health institution, becoming the infamous epicenter of the administration of these blocker drugs (sometimes derived from chemotherapy drugs) to healthy children and adolescents.
An approach, that of Mermaids, that was not only medically extreme but also had thoroughly questionable methodologies. A British National Health Service psychologist who had worked with the Tavistock recently stated that "those who had come into contact with Mermaids were terrified because they were told that their children would kill themselves if they did not take puberty blockers."
In short, a totally even-keeled attitude... But Mermaids wasn't just on the front lines at Tavistock: he worked as a consultant on British ITV's 2018 TV series "Butterfly." A screenplay centered on a child who ends up taking just the famous "blockers." And Mermaids also makes an appearance in the series, which thus acquires the characteristics of a real propaganda program. Which of course is critically acclaimed for how such a sensitive topic was presented to the general public. And it is not only the aggressive promotion against blocking drugs that also comes through TV dramas. Here are the latest challenges to Mermaids:
- the “Telegraph” objected to training in schools, where Mermaids would propose reinforcing rigid gender roles by instigating nonconforming children to identify as transgender.
- The cancellation of conferences with personalities critical of the transgenderist view
- a telephone helpline where they prescribed breast compression bands to minors and declared the "blockers" as absolutely reversible, this without even doing a psychological evaluation of the subjects.
On top of that, as previously detailed in this blog, the presence on the Mermaids board of a scholar with connections to a pedophile support organization. A figure promptly sacked after these connections surfaced in the media. And that's not forgetting the Tavistock bubble burst, which had seen the NHS Gender Identity Development Service increase the number of applications by 3500% in the last ten years (also thanks to the ITV screenplay?). And that is not the only statistical anomaly. While initially the number of children requesting the service was equalized between boys and girls, the number of females had started to grow by leaps and bounds. It had reached 2.75 girls requesting transition for every boy. But while legal cases and controversy led to the closure of NHS Gender Identity Development at the Tavistock in July this year, in reality the work of the UK's national service was simply transferred to the regional level.
Conclusion
After the closure of NHS Gender Identity Development at Tavistock, the new Mermaids vs. LGB Alliance case has brought the spotlight back on the different views of issues related to sexual orientation or gender role discrimination.
But one has to be less optimistic than the Charity Commission's lawyers, for whom the lawsuit and the existence of two associations at antipodes (while advocating seemingly similar issues) would represent a fruitful debate. Instead, it is the manifest situation we would have found ourselves in with the Zan Bill in Article 7 and earlier. To stand critically against activities of the established "National Day Against Homophobia, Lesbophobia, Biphobia and Transphobia" would have meant standing before a judge.
This is because certain associations, as evidenced by Mermaids and the related British case against LGB Alliance, would take it upon themselves to "denounce" anyone who stands critical of what they advocate. Claiming that biological sex is immutable would be the first charge in any lawsuit to prove "anti-trans" if not "transphobic" positions. Even if you stand up for gay rights. Welcome to the Brave New World.
Essayist and popularizer, among his publications Alessandro Blasetti. Il padre dimenticato del cinema italiano (Idrovolante, 2023). With Emanuele Mastrangelo Wikipedia. L’Enciclopedia libera e l’egemonia dell’informazione (Bietti, 2013) and Iconoclastia. La pazzia contagiosa della cancel culture che sta distruggendo la nostra storia (Eclettica, 2020).
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