Is it all over for Stonewall?
The charity’s financial collapse shows what happens when an institution becomes ideologically captured.
The collapse of Stonewall is a cautionary tale for our times. This week the Telegraph revealed that the UK’s foremost LGBTQ+ charity has less than £92,000 remaining after catastrophic drops in income over the last few years. Donations are down, corporations are withdrawing from its ‘diversity awards schemes’, and its reputation is in the sewer. Supporters fear that it is on the verge of bankruptcy.
Stonewall is one of the many casualties of the culture war, but its demise is of its own making. It shows us what happens when institutions are captured by ideologies that work against their own interests. For those trying to fathom how a much-respected charity with a track record of major achievements in the struggle for gay rights could tumble so spectacularly, the clue is in the latest coverage.
Attitude magazine, for instance – a publication that is supportive of Stonewall – illustrated its article about the charity’s financial problems with an image from 2011. It depicts activists marching under the Stonewall banner, many of them holding placards or wearing t-shirts with the organisation’s slogan: ‘Some people are gay: get over it!’ The rainbow flag makes an appearance, but there are none of today’s ‘progress pride’ flags.
The magazine has inadvertently exposed the nature of the problem. Whereas back in 2011 Stonewall was a force for gay people, it now embraces an ideology that actively undermines them. Gay rights have always been predicated on the fact that a minority of any given population are attracted to members of their own sex. Gender identity ideology tells us that sex is irrelevant to sexual orientation, and that an inner ‘essence’ is the defining feature. That is to say, it urges us to believe that homosexuality does not exist.
This is why lesbians are now routinely shamed for excluding men who identify as women from their dating pool. This is why gender nonconforming youths – most of whom will grow up to be gay – are medicalised and put on pathways that can lead to sterilisation. This is why Australia’s Human Rights Commission prohibits lesbians from holding women-only events on the grounds that they discriminate against men who believe they are female. This is why the former CEO of Stonewall, Nancy Kelley, compared lesbians to ‘sexual racists’. This is why gay male hookup app Grindr prohibits its users from filtering out women, and shames homosexuals as ‘perpetuating discrimination and harm’.
To put it another way, gender identity ideology is inherently anti-gay…
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