Media Backgrounder

LGB Alliance & Charity Commission Tribunal

About LGB Alliance

LGB Alliance is the only UK charity that exclusively promotes human rights based on the protected characteristic of sexual orientation. As a grassroots group, it represents a growing constituency of lesbian, gay and bisexual (LGB) people who feel let down by legacy gay rights groups like Stonewall.

LGB Alliance was founded by lesbians Kate Harris and Bev Jackson, who called together a private meeting of 70 LGB people on 22 October 2019. Speakers at the event noted that organisations which once fought for homosexual equality have today embraced an ideology that can reasonably be understood as homophobic.

LGB Alliance was awarded charitable status in April 2021.

Fighting the New Homophobia

LGB Alliance was born out of despair at the way organisations which once advocated for LGB rights now promote the contested idea that we each have an internal gender identity and that this does not always align with biological sex. Consequently, well-funded groups, foremost among them Stonewall, argue that some lesbians have penises, that some gay men have vulvas, and that to dispute this is transphobic.

These ideas have become known as gender identity ideology and the impact on LGB communities has been catastrophic. They are making gays and lesbians fearful of expressing their sexual orientation and sending them back into the closet. 

Another key area of concern for LGB Alliance are the disproportionately high numbers of LGB youth referred to gender identity development services (GIDS) – today mostly girls. This can be considered a form of medical conversion therapy – “transing the gay away.” 

LGB Alliance was formed in response to such concerns; to offer a voice for those who refuse to be shamed by (LGB)TQ+ organisations for their sexual orientation; and to raise awareness of the threat to LGB youth from gender identity ideology.

Organisational structure

LGB Alliance was founded by lesbians Kate Harris and Bev Jackson. Jackson was an original member of the Gay Liberation Front in 1970. Harris was involved in the women’s movement and was a volunteer fundraiser for Stonewall before it started promoting gender identity ideology. LGB Alliance is run day-to-day by a management team headed by Chief Executive Officer Kate Barker who reports to six trustees, including chair Eileen Gallagher OBE.

The campaign against LGB Alliance

The reaction to the formation of the LGB Alliance was instantaneous, huge, and polarised. Many messages received by the group expressed profound relief, in particular from lesbians who expressed their gratitude and hope that a new movement was starting. Others however sent a flurry of obscene and threatening messages and images to LGB Alliance and some of its “out” supporters.

The campaign to defame LGB Alliance as a “hate group” began immediately after its first meeting. This campaign relies on baseless smears, such as that LGB Alliance is supposedly funded by the far right or Evangelicals in the US; that its “membership” is predominantly heterosexual (LGB Alliance is not a membership organisation and surveys show that the majority of its supporters are LGB); and that the charity and its supporters are fascists, racists, and even homophobes.

The campaign has been fuelled by public figures who repeat these lies. Foremost among them are Good Law Project (GLP) founder and tax barrister Jolyon Maugham; John Nicolson MP; columnist Owen Jones; and Benjamin Cohen, founder of the online magazine Pink News, which since 2019 has published 1,663 articles critical of LGB Alliance.

Nicolson told a parliamentary committee hearing that for the BBC to give a platform to LGB Alliance would be comparable to inviting racists to speak on matters of race. This mudslinging, combined with a refusal to debate with LGB Alliance, has made it exceedingly difficult to engage with many areas of the media, especially national broadcasters, preventing LGB Alliance from refuting these defamatory and self-evidently false claims.

Given these pernicious smears, intimidatory tactics and attempts to suppress free speech, LGB Alliance’s Twitter account is an important tool. Today its follower numbers stand at 60K, and more people are beginning to realise that LGB Alliance simply does what Stonewall once did: it champions LGB rights and emphasises that same-sex attracted people don’t need medical treatment of any kind. 

Challenges to the decision to register LGB Alliance as a charity

Nicolson published an open letter demanding an explanation from the Charity Commission. Fellow SNP politician Mhairi Black MP warned the regulator “risks its own credibility by actively choosing to normalise and reward hatred and venom.” This was followed by a slew of complaints from transactivist and LGBTQ+ organisations. 

Maugham signalled he was keen to challenge the Charity Commission’s decision. His GLP then funded the challenge against the decision that was launched by the youth gender transition advocacy charity Mermaids. 

Why is this important? 

As the Charity Commission itself argued in court, diversity within the third sector is good, as it can help advance public opinion. Abortion rights charities exist alongside pro-life charities; both have a right to protect and champion their causes. More widely, the existence of a plurality of views, and the freedom to express them, are fundamental to a healthy liberal democracy.

Mermaids’ attempt to have LGB Alliance struck off the charitable register is profoundly anti-democratic. Were it to succeed, it would set a precedent for charities with opposing views to drag one another through the tribunal system. In contrast, LGB Alliance acknowledges that a range of different views on the topic of sex and gender exist, and believes that open debate will allow society to progress. 

Nonetheless, extreme hostility to LGB Alliance remains entrenched across charities that subscribe to gender ideology. For example, Stonewall chief executive Nancy Kelley has compared gender critical beliefs to antisemitism. She has also likened lesbians who refuse to accept that fully intact males who identify as women can be lesbians to “sexual racists.” 

LGB people who are contending with this “new homophobia” also still face traditional homophobia. Homosexual equality had in many ways progressed, but now LGB Alliance sees the rights of gays and lesbians being lost. LGB Alliance co-founder Bev Jackson says “everyone who denies that sex matters is undermining hard-won rights.”

The tribunal

Mermaids’ legal challenge is the first time that one charity has attempted to have another’s charitable status removed. The hearing, which ran for seven days across September and November, sought to establish whether the purposes of LGB Alliance were exclusively charitable and for the public benefit.

Mermaids’ evidence

Mermaids’ witnesses were Paul Roberts OBE, CEO of LGBT Consortium, which represents over 450 LGBT charities (some of them trans charities), John Nicolson MP and Dr Belinda Bell, chair of the board of Mermaids. 

Under cross-examination Roberts admitted that he had not read the interim Cass report into NHS child and adolescent gender identity services (GIDS). The leading paediatrician’s findings highlighted many concerns also raised by the LGB Alliance – in particular the potential harms of affirming youth in cross-sex identities. It was recently announced that GIDS is to be closed and replaced by multidisciplinary regional services.

Roberts admitted he wasn’t knowledgeable enough to comment on medical transitioning and nor was he “expert” enough to take a view on the 4,000% rise in GIDS referrals. When asked if it is “transphobic” to say someone with a female body cannot be a gay man, he said it is.

Bell was asked to comment on evidence showing that 70% of children referred to GIDS are LGB. She replied that transitioning to avoid homophobia was “absolutely laughable” and that the issues were “too niche and specialist for a generalised gay rights charity.”

At one point, the Mermaids’ chair asserted: “I’m not sure that people come out of the womb with a sex.”

She repeatedly claimed her organisation “does not give health care advice.” However, an investigation by the Telegraph revealed that staff had advised teenage service users about medication and posted breast flattening devices (without parental consent). 

Nicolson was an abrasive witness and needed to be told by the judge to answer the questions posed. When asked whether a heterosexual male who obtains a gender recognition certificate should be regarded as a lesbian, Nicolson replied that he did not understand “this obsession with people’s genitalia.”

The politician referred to those who identify as transgender as “born in the wrong body” and claimed that it was offensive to refute this idea. Mermaids itself now rejects this phrase, explaining in a 2020 blog post “Nobody should have to simplify, redact or misrepresent their own innate self, simply to please the minds of those who struggle to comprehend it.”

Michael Gibbon KC, counsel for Mermaids, said LGB Alliance’s goals were “political” and that the group was working to undermine Mermaids in part by “seeking to deprive them of funding.”

Increased media scrutiny on Mermaids since the case has revealed a number of serious safeguarding failures and internal disputes. The charity’s chief executive resigned in November 2022, and on 2 December 2022, the Charity Commission announced it had launched a full statutory inquiry into Mermaids.

LGB Alliance evidence

LGB Alliance put forward trustees Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, and chair Eileen Gallagher OBE. 

Harris explained the history of LGB Alliance. When asked by Mermaids’ barrister if there was an alternative definition of “lesbian” she replied, “You mean that lesbians can have penises?”

Jackson was asked by Mermaids’ barrister whether the view that sex is immutable “should be taught [in school],” to which she replied “Well, yes.” The trustee defended LGB Alliance from the accusation that it is a gender critical rather than an LGB organisation.

Gallagher gave a summary of LGB Alliance’s charitable activities, including conferences, webinars, videos, research, and preparations for a new helpline for LGB youth.

Summing up for LGB Alliance, Karon Monaghan said that same-sex sexual orientation was once again becoming “the love that cannot speak its name.”

Impact of the case

The tribunal costs, rising to over £270,000, have to be crowdfunded from supporters, simply to defend the continued existence of LGB Alliance as a charity.

The case has made it tough to make progress with projects, such as the planned LGB helpline, partly because of the need to prepare thousands of pages of court documents for the hearing. In addition, one grant awarded by the London Community Foundation from a fund set up by Arts Council England was revoked due to this case. The grant was to make a film to celebrate the great progress made for gay men during the reign of the late queen. Fortunately, other donors stepped up and the film was made. 

Thanks to the charity’s dedicated volunteers and the work of Chief Executive Officer Kate Barker, LGB Alliance again put on a large conference which drew together hundreds of LGB people from across the UK and included an international panel with panellists from four continents.

Quotes

“LGB Alliance is growing. Every day people get in touch to offer words of support and to express their anger that as same sex attracted people they are assumed to believe in gender identity. Ascribing one viewpoint to a group of people because they share a sexual orientation is regressive, and even homophobic.

“Ultimately, this case is not just about the rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual people to organise on our own terms, it is about the rights of all citizens in liberal democracies to freedom of speech, belief and expression.”