How To Build Bridges: LGB Alliance Style

I’ve made the joke about it being black and white in colour scheme and how that’s indicative of their kind of thinking. So allow me to make the second joke you can make about this god awful logo. The letters LGB are in a box, exactly where LGB Alliance want these uppity queers to be — back in their box. — Gemma Stone

On 6/13/2021, fellow An Injustice writer Gemma Stone published an article titled “A quick history lesson for LGB Alliance.” I’ve previously written about the LGB Alliance — a group of ex-Stonewall members that tells us they have no issue with the rights of lesbians, gay people, or bisexual people, but do take issue with the rights of transgender people. Specifically, Gemma was criticizing this now-deleted tweet from their official Twitter account:

This is a really important point. In our historical gay and lesbian rights movement, we never demanded that society change its laws, its activities and its language to accommodate us. We never cursed people who disagreed with us or tried to get them fired. We always built bridges.

Now, I’m not going to pretend that I know everything about the gay and lesbian rights movement in the United Kingdom — where the LGB Alliance is located — but I will say that it is true that they “never demanded that society change its laws,” they had a very different movement from the one that gave me rights in my home country of the United States. I remember clear as day activists campaigning for the repeal of the ban on homosexuals serving in the military which began in 1949 (this was later moderated to “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” in 1993, called that because they literally used to ask people if they were homosexual before joining the military, before being done away with altogether in 2011). I also remember activists campaigning to repeal anti-sodomy laws until the Supreme Court struck them down as unconstitutional in 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas. Or how about the activists involved in making same-sex marriage legal in the United States, which involved changing the laws of many states — some of whom amended their constitutions to prevent it? (My home state of Ohio did this in 2004 through a direct referendum, as did Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, and Utah — again, just in 2004. Gay-rights activists fought tooth and nail to have all of those changed, because that has historically been the point of activism.)

However, let’s entertain the idea of the LGB Alliance for a second and assume the point of activism is just to “build bridges.” (What we’re supposed to do with these new bridges if not use them to advocate for changes in society, I’m not sure.) Let’s take a minute and actually look at who the LGB Alliance has built bridges with.

For those unaware, the LGB Alliance was founded in 2019 by former members of Stonewall — the largest LGBT rights organization not just in the United Kingdom but in all of Europe — over the issue of transgenderism. So a group that thinks building bridges is the point of activism (it’s not) started due to backlash over Stonewall trying to build bridges with transgender people. In fact, it seems like the very founding of the LGB Alliance was an attempt by its founders to burn bridges with Stonewall, whom its first group of members used to work for.

So who have they built bridges with? Well, on 6/3/2020 PinkNews reported that Gary Powell — a leading activist and one of the founders of the group — has ties to various anti-LGBT rights organizations. These include the Center for Bioethics and Culture Network, The Heritage Foundation, and the Alliance Defending Freedom — all three of which are major religious-right groups in the United States. They’ve also gained the support of outright Neo-Nazis and British politicians who are opposed to same-sex marriage.

On same-sex marriage, the LGB Alliance — which, might I remind you, promises us that it exists to defend the rights of homosexuals — has said it’s willing to work with opponents. On 6/18/2020, their official Twitter account tweeted:

To those people saying it is “homophobic” not to be in favour of gay marriage have a look at the statistics. It seems it’s rather a small minority who have made their wedding vows. #LGBIssues #CanWeDropItNowPlease #NotABigDeal #PluralityOfViewsIsAllowed

On their website, they call the idea that they have any ties to the religious right a myth, saying:

We are funded by individual donations. As a registered charity we are required to declare certain sources of income and our accounts will be publicly available. We have only existed for just over a year and so we will publish our first-year accounts as soon as they have been compiled by our accountant.

But this is dodging the question. Nobody is saying that the LGB Alliance is only funded by homophobes and other members of the American religious right, what they’re saying is the two groups seem to have some cozy connections with each other — as seen by the fact that many of its members have cozy connections with the religious right.

Of course, also on their website, the LGB Alliance makes it clear they’re fighting the real homophobia: Transitioning:

Very many children, and quite possibly adults, enter the process of gender transition as a result of the homophobia of their parents, peer group, or their own internalized dislike of their sexual orientation. Young gay men or lesbians are being sold a myth that they can be straight, that lesbians are really straight men and that gay men are really straight women. This is homophobic conversion therapy.

To be fair, this is actually fairly common — in Iran, but that’s another story. However, if we’re talking about first-world countries with flourishing LGBT cultures, clubs, and organizations, like the United Kingdom, then I’m going to need some more evidence of this claim that all gay people are becoming transgender.

I want to make clear that if the LGB Alliance were nothing more than an organization that just wanted to fight homophobia — actual homophobia, not gender transition, which they’ve convinced themselves is some conspiracy to end homosexuality — without taking a stance on the issue of transgenderism, that would be fine. I’m not sure if I would support such an organization personally considering transphobia is a much more acceptable form of bigotry than homophobia is — especially in the United Kingdom, which has so many TERFs some trans-people actually call it “TERF Island” —but they would not be worth a full article of criticism.

However, it’s the fact that they actively take a stance on the issue of transgenderism, and the stance they take is on the side of bigotry and intolerance, that is the issue. Because they took that stance, people who want to take away the rights of the people the LGB Alliance claim to fight for support them. Instead of disassociating with them, the LGB Alliance fights with them while saying they’re “building bridges,” without realizing those bridges will take them to the very place they keep claiming their enemies are taking them.

If they’re doing this on purpose or not is up for debate, but either way, the LGB Alliance keeps showing itself to have an odd relationship with homophobes, and they seem no issue with that.

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