The LGB Alliance is a British anti-transgender charity and advocacy group. It was founded in 2019 in opposition to the policies of LGBTQ rights charity Stonewall on transgender issues. Its founders are Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark and Ann Sinnott. The LGB Alliance argues that the rights of transgender people conflict with those of cisgender lesbians, bisexuals, and gay men and that same-sex attraction is endangered by the inclusion of trans people. The group has opposed a ban on conversion therapy that includes trans people in the UK, opposed the use of puberty blockers for children, and opposed gender recognition reform. The group intervened at the UK Supreme Court in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, which ruled that the terms woman and sex in the Equality Act 2010 refer exclusively to biological sex.
The LGB Alliance has been described as transphobic, "anti-trans", "trans-exclusionary", a "hate group" and as part of an "anti-transgender movement" by scholars, politicians, LGBT organisations, human rights organisations, and others, including the Labour Campaign for Trans Rights and several Labour MPs.
The LGB Alliance was granted charitable status in April 2021, after the organisation agreed to revise its social media policies. A legal challenge against this decision was dismissed by a First-tier Tribunal in 2023 on the grounds the Appellant (Mermaids) lacked legal standing, with no finding made as to whether LGB Alliance should have been given charitable status.
History
In September 2019, twenty-two people signed an open letter to The Sunday Times accusing leading UK gay-rights charity Stonewall of having "undermined women's sex-based rights and protections" through its policy on transgender issues. It further stated that twelve months earlier, a group had asked Stonewall to commit to "fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate" with those who wished to question its transgender policies, but that Stonewall had refused to allow any such dialogue, and that "if Stonewall remains intransigent, there must surely now be an opening for a new organisation committed both to freedom of speech and to fact instead of fantasy."
One month after the publication of the open letter, it was announced that a new group called the LGB Alliance had been launched. The group was co-founded by Bev Jackson, Kate Harris, Allison Bailey, Malcolm Clark, and Ann Sinnott, with the support of Simon Fanshawe, who spoke at the initial meeting on 22 October 2019 along with Miranda Yardley and Charlie Evans.. See also https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1186705679064686593.html Harris stated that:
The main difference is that lesbians, gays, and bisexuals have something in common because of our sexual orientation, that has nothing to do with being trans. We welcome the support of anyone — gay, straight or trans — as long as they support our commitment to freedom of speech and biological definitions of sex. So we are a very broad and accepting group. We will be called transphobic, but we're not.
In 2020, the LGBT+ Consortium umbrella group refused to admit LGB Alliance.
In October 2020, Ann Sinnott, a director of the LGB Alliance at the time, initiated a legal case calling for a judicial review of the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance on the Equality Act 2010, crowdfunding almost £100,000 for legal fees. The LGB Alliance believed that the specifics of the Equality Act 2010 have been "misrepresented" by some organisations. In May 2021 the case was found by the court to be unarguable, Justice Henshaw stating that "the claimant has shown no arguable reason to believe the Code has misled or will mislead service providers about their responsibilities under the Act."
In June 2021, the LGB Alliance announced the appointment of five new trustees in addition to Harris, Jackson and documentary producer Malcolm Clark: co-founder of Shed Productions Eileen Gallagher OBE, strategy consultant Conrad Roebar, professor of philosophy Kathleen Stock OBE, professor of human rights law Robert Wintemute and Labour peer Lord Young of Norwood Green. At the same time, Ann Sinnott announced her resignation as a director.
In October 2021 the organisation had a stand at the Conservative Party Conference, which reportedly cost £6,000. Later that month, the organisation hosted its own conference, with guests including MPs Joanna Cherry (SNP), Jackie Doyle-Price (Conservative) and Rosie Duffield (Labour), as well as the television comedy writer and anti-trans activist Graham Linehan. A protest against LGB Alliance was held outside the conference venue, attended by Daniel Lismore and the King's College London LGBT+ Society.
On 30 March 2022 the London Community Foundation awarded the LGB Alliance a grant as part of the Arts Council England Let's Create Jubilee Fund, for a film Queens — 70 Years of Queer History. It withdrew the grant in April 2022, after being made aware of the legal challenge against the LGB Alliance's charitable status. The film was retitled "Very British Gays" and first shown in March 2023.
On 10 June 2022 the organisation announced that it had received a grant from the National Lottery Community Fund to create a helpline "for young lesbian, gay and bisexual people and their families and friends."
On 17 June 2024 the organisation announced that it had launched a live text-chat service for 13-24 year-old lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. According to PinkNews, the announcement of this service led to criticism and accusations of being "groomers" by gender-critical and anti-LGBTQ+ Twitter accounts, coupled with mockery from trans people and their allies focused on the fact that the LGB Alliance had itself used the slur against LGBTQ influencers in the past.
In October 2024 the organisation's annual conference was disrupted by thousands of crickets released by trans rights group Trans Kids Deserve Better. The conference included a speech by the actor James Dreyfus, who said "The current gender movement is undoubtedly the most homophobic movement I've witnessed since the early 80s".
LGB Alliance made a joint submission with The Lesbian Project and Scottish Lesbians to the UK Supreme Court in the case of For Women Scotland Ltd v The Scottish Ministers, arguing that the rights of same-sex attracted women would be affected if a Gender Recognition Certificate changed sex for the purposes of the Equality Act. The judgment found that sex and sexual orientation referred to biological sex for the purposes of the Equality Act, which CEO Kate Barker described as a "watershed for women and, in particular, lesbians who have seen their rights and identities steadily stolen from them over the last decade".
Charitable status In March 2020, the LGB Alliance submitted an application for charitable status to the Charity Commission for England and Wales. Bev Jackson, a founder of the LGB Alliance in a speech stated "We're applying for charitable status and building an organisation to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity".
A petition set up against the application received 30,000 signatures. The commission found that LGBA made "inflammatory and offensive" social media posts and their messaging "appeared to involve, at times, demeaning or denigrating" remarks about the legal rights of transgender people. The Alliance agreed to revise its social media policies and the commission granted the application in April 2021, ruling that its aims could be charitable if they did not denigrate transgender rights.
After LGB Alliance was granted the status of charity, over 50 LGBT+ Pride and queer event organizers in the UK such as Pride in London and Bristol Pride signed an open letter condemning the decision, which quoted Pride in London to describe it as "a political campaign organisation with their main aim to remove trans people from our LGBT+ community and block trans rights".
In June 2021 an appeal against the Charity Commission's decision was filed by transgender youth charity Mermaids, supported by the Good Law Project, the LGBT+ Consortium, Gendered Intelligence, Trans Actual, and the LGBT Foundation. A First-tier Tribunal sat from 9 to 16 September 2022 and from 7 to 8 November 2022, with Mermaids, the Charity Commission and the LGB Alliance represented in court. The appeal was dismissed in July 2023 on the grounds that Mermaids lacked standing to bring the challenge the decision by the Charity Commission. There was no finding made on the question of whether LGB Alliance should have been given charitable status, with the two judges unable to reach agreement. The Charity Commission welcomed the result and repeated its position, that it "applied the law carefully and properly in registering LGB Alliance as a charity."
Regulatory issues In August 2021, the Charity Commission announced that it would be engaging with LGB Alliance trustees after the LGB Alliance posted a Tweet stating that "adding the + to LGB gives the green light to paraphilias like bestiality – and more – to all be part of one big happy 'rainbow family,'" which was subsequently removed by Twitter for violating the social media platform's rules.
On 7 September 2022, the LGB Alliance was found by the Fundraising Regulator to have broken its Code of Fundraising Practice in two ways: firstly by making a "false and misleading" claim that it was the only charity representing lesbian, gay, and bisexual interests, and secondly by failing to deal correctly with a complaint made about this claim.
Views
Gender identity The LGB Alliance opposes the concept of gender identity. Its position is that homosexuality, previously understood as attraction to the same biological sex, has been repackaged by "gender ideologists" to refer to attraction to the same "gender identity", which has led to same-sex attracted children to think they are trans. Echoing arguments from Janice Raymond and The Transsexual Empire, the Alliance argues that lesbian transgender women are deceptively pursuing lesbians, denying "real" lesbians their own spaces.
Co-founder Bev Jackson said that lesbians are in danger of extinction due to disproportionate focus on transgender issues in schools: "At school, in university, it is so uncommon, it is the bottom of the heap. Becoming trans is now considered the brave option." She also voiced concern that "If you do not accept that everyone has a gender identity then you are automatically labelled transphobic which means you can no longer discuss women's lives and what's happening to lesbians. We are increasingly discovering that lesbians are no longer welcome in the LGBTQ+ world, which is astonishing."
Jackson has said, "Lesbians don't have penises. A lesbian is a biological woman who is attracted to another biological woman. That's obvious. Or at least it was obvious until a few years ago."
Conversion therapy LGB Alliance has opposed the inclusion of transgender people in legislation banning conversion therapy. The LGB Alliance claims that affirmation-based therapy for transgender youth is gay conversion therapy and that campaigns to ban conversion therapy for transgender people are "being used as political cover to promote an affirmation-only approach to gender identity".
Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill In 2017, the Scottish Government consulted over 15,000 people on proposed reform to the Gender Recognition Act, with most organizations and approximately 60% of individuals favouring a shift to gender self-identification. In 2019 the government proposed legislation which would allow people to apply in the Scottish civil registry, remove medical barriers and requirements, and require 3 months living in the acquired gender prior to applying and a 4 month "reflection period" after, with false declarations remaining a criminal offence. Groups including LGB Alliance emerged largely in response to the proposed reforms.