Belper is a pretty market town on the edge of the Peak District. Comfortably middle-class and a quiet kind of place, it has a population of just 18,000 and benefits from good schools and a selection of attractive shops.
Despite the small population, last year’s Pride in Belper attracted an incredible 12,000 revellers to its day of celebration. It stands to reason that most attendees were heterosexual but no matter. Most felt, I’m sure, pleased to show their support for the LGBTQ+ community.
But Pride in Belper, slogan ‘inclusivity for all’, is not quite what is seems.
It certainly isn’t very inclusive of lesbians or gay men. In the Guide to the day’s activities, the word ‘trans’ appears 41 times, ‘non-binary’ 10 times but ‘lesbian’ and ‘gay’ have to make do with a single mention each.
The word bisexual does appear but is prefaced by this odd description: “Bisexual is just one of the many non-binary sexual orientations.” It will be news to many bisexuals that they are neither male nor female!
So that might explain why, when a local LGB Alliance Friends’ Group applied for a stand at the event, they were refused. The decision, they said, was because the applicants did not respect trans and non-binary identities.
They are right that lesbians, gay men and bisexuals do disagree with the way gender identity ideology is promoted.
Especially to children.
LGB people are deeply worried that girls who are sporty and boys who like dolls are being told they might have been ‘born in the wrong body’. We know that gender non-conforming kids often grow up to be happy, well-adjusted lesbian, gay and bisexual adults. They don’t need to be ‘fixed’ with puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones. We say kids are perfect as they are. But The Guide explicitly rubbishes the Cass Review which supports our position.
The day itself has a huge, and we would say inappropriate, focus on kids.
There’s Tiny Talk for babies and toddlers, a toy space, Crafting, Story Time, Blend Youth Project for young people to “chill out and get creative”, Mindfulness Sessions and, to make sure all of that gender education has really sunk in, the young people’s LGBTQ+ Quiz.
It’s not just the Cass Review that Pride in Belper rejects.
They are furious about the recent Supreme Court decision too and local businesses have been asked to sign up to ‘THE WELCOME LIST’, a public list of business which have agreed not to provide single-sex facilities and oppose the ruling that ‘woman’ means ‘biological woman’.
The Belper Guide tries to persuade with a deliberate misrepresentation of the ruling, saying, “The court concluded that, in the context of single-sex services and spaces, the word sex refers to legal sex as recorded on a birth certificate, unless it has been changed by a Gender Recognition Certificate.”
It didn’t conclude anything of the sort.
The ruling said that ‘woman’ means a biological woman and a Gender Recognition Certificate did not make a jot of difference to that. Following on from this entirely false representation are a range of startlingly inaccurate assertions. There are too many to list here but, needless to say, it’s a wild read.
There is no evidence that Belper Pride has leaned on local businesses to sign up to THE WELCOME LIST but the implication that those that did not display a sticker in their window would be labelled transphobic will have been a worry for some. ‘This is a nice little coffee shop you have here. Would be a shame if something happened to it…’
So perhaps they were right that LGB Alliance wouldn’t fit in.
Like most lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, we don’t believe people can change sex or that men can be lesbians. We don’t believe that children can be born in the wrong body and we think it’s wrong to interrupt a child’s healthy puberty with powerful drugs. We don’t think men should be able to self-ID into women’s toilets, changing rooms, refuges or sports.
Like the vast majority of sensible people we do believe that sex is binary and immutable. Our rights as same-sex people are predicated on the fact that sex is real.
There is one part of the day that recognises the reality of sex. Their dog show has the categories, Most Handsome Dog and Prettiest Bitch. Perhaps the gender-addled ideologues at the helm have realised that non-binary, gender-fluid and trans identified dogs might finally alert the locals to what we’ve known all along – Belper Pride are absolutely barking.