The Times- Transgender legal battle: Stonewall backs Mermaids against LGB Alliance
Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor | Catherine Baksi
The LGB Alliance has come under fire after its founder expressed the view that trans women are not biological women
GETTY IMAGES
Transgender legal battle: Stonewall backs Mermaids against LGB Alliance
The LGB Alliance has come under fire after its founder expressed the view that trans women are not biological womenGETTY IMAGES
Jonathan Ames, Legal Editor | Catherine Baksi
The Times
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In an increasingly bitter row, Stonewall and other campaigners have supported Mermaids, a charity for trans children, in a crowdfunding plea to finance legal action against the LGB Alliance.
Also supporting Mermaids are the activist groups Gendered Intelligence and the LGBT Consortium.
They aim to raise £20,000 to finance an appeal against a decision made by the Charity Commission in April to authorise charitable status for the LGB Alliance.
The alliance was co-founded in 2019 by Allison Bailey, a lesbian barrister, who has alleged that Stonewall pressured her chambers to discipline her after she expressed the view that trans women were not biological women.
Bailey is suing Stonewall and her chambers, Garden Court in London, for discrimination and victimisation after she helped to set up the alliance. Both groups deny any wrongdoing.
In their objections to the Charity Commission’s decision, the groups argued that “charitable status is earned by those who serve the public good. Denigrating trans people, attacking those who speak for them, and campaigning to remove legal protections from them is the very opposite of a public good.”
The groups cited a comment last year by Bev Jackson, a director of the LGB Alliance, in which she explained that her organisation had applied for charitable status “to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity”.
Mermaids said that the purpose of the alliance was “the denigration of trans people and the destruction of organisations that support them, in particular through political lobbying and campaigning for law change”.
The groups said on their crowdfunding page that “these purposes are reprehensible and they are not charitable; they are political objectives — to roll back legal protections for trans people”.
The transgender organisations added that to be registered as a charity, “an organisation must be established exclusively for purposes which the law recognises as charitable, and it must pursue them in a way which gives rise to tangible benefits that outweigh any associated harms”.
In court documents, which do not appear to have been signed by its lawyers, Mermaids states that unless the decision to grant charitable status is quashed, it “is likely to suffer financial loss”, as it “may find itself competing with LGB Alliance for donations from the public and grant-making bodies”.
Stonewall has backed transgender activists in a legal challenge to the charitable status of a rival campaign group that is accused of “denigrating trans people”.
In an increasingly bitter row, Stonewall and other campaigners have supported Mermaids, a charity for trans children, in a crowdfunding plea to finance legal action against the LGB Alliance.
Also supporting Mermaids are the activist groups Gendered Intelligence and the LGBT Consortium.
They aim to raise £20,000 to finance an appeal against a decision made by the Charity Commission in April to authorise charitable status for the LGB Alliance.
The alliance was co-founded in 2019 by Allison Bailey, a lesbian barrister, who has alleged that Stonewall pressured her chambers to discipline her after she expressed the view that trans women were not biological women.
Bailey is suing Stonewall and her chambers, Garden Court in London, for discrimination and victimisation after she helped to set up the alliance. Both groups deny any wrongdoing.
In their objections to the Charity Commission’s decision, the groups argued that “charitable status is earned by those who serve the public good. Denigrating trans people, attacking those who speak for them, and campaigning to remove legal protections from them is the very opposite of a public good.”
The groups cited a comment last year by Bev Jackson, a director of the LGB Alliance, in which she explained that her organisation had applied for charitable status “to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity”.
Mermaids said that the purpose of the alliance was “the denigration of trans people and the destruction of organisations that support them, in particular through political lobbying and campaigning for law change”.
The groups said on their crowdfunding page that “these purposes are reprehensible and they are not charitable; they are political objectives — to roll back legal protections for trans people”.
The transgender organisations added that to be registered as a charity, “an organisation must be established exclusively for purposes which the law recognises as charitable, and it must pursue them in a way which gives rise to tangible benefits that outweigh any associated harms”.
In court documents, which do not appear to have been signed by its lawyers, Mermaids states that unless the decision to grant charitable status is quashed, it “is likely to suffer financial loss”, as it “may find itself competing with LGB Alliance for donations from the public and grant-making bodies”.
Responding to the legal move, Bailey, who is a criminal law specialist who was called to the Bar in 2001, described the action as a “vexatious and mendacious lawsuit”, which she said “will fail because our democracy will not stand for this sinister and Orwellian manoeuvre”.
Bailey added on Twitter that the attempt to challenge her group’s legal status was ironic as it came at the beginning of Pride month, an annual celebration of gay rights.
The barrister tweeted it was “disgraceful” that “during so-called Pride month assorted LGBTQ+ organisations, who combined receive millions of taxpayer money have the barefaced cheek to crowdfund to prevent LGB people having a dedicated organisation”.
Bailey also said that the move signalled an end to the support for the groups taking action.
“As the LGBTQ+’s stranglehold on British politics is rightly being weakened,” she tweeted, “the death rattle of these organisations that have blighted our politics are lashing out wildly and desperately.”
The Charity Commission said in a statement that the LGB Alliance’s purposes were to “promote equality and diversity and human rights”.
It continued: “It is not the commission’s role to make value judgements about the aims or ideas put forward by any organisation. Instead, its role is to decide whether an organisation’s purposes fall within the legal definition of charity.”
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