Damaging the monopoly

The Times reports on the Jolyon/Mermaids lawsuit:

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”.

I think it’s a little underhanded to call the LGB Alliance a “rival” group…as if Stonewall were some kind of obvious Rightful Owner and the LGBA a trespasser. Stonewall doesn’t own All Things NotStraight, and anyway it’s far more about the T these days.

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.”

But the LGBA doesn’t “denigrate” trans people. It’s not “denigrating” anyone to say that lesbians are women and gay men are men. The LGBA is of course not campaigning to remove legal protections from anyone.

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”.

So challenging dominance is wicked now? Do they really want to go with that?

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”.

Only if you define “legal protections for trans people” as the right for men to invade women’s spaces and sports and prizes and jobs.

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”.

Well that’s just tough shit, isn’t it. Who ever told them they were entitled to a monopoly?

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