America's LGBTQ+ Queen Is in Big Trouble
Sarah Kate Ellis took over America's most respected gay group and turned it into a pro-trans money making machine. Her hubris led her to attack the New York Times and now her reputation is in tatters.
The recent New York Times exposé of the CEO of GLAAD, the vast ex-gay organisation that surrendered to the trans agenda a decade ago, is a moral tale for our time. It’s a story that mixes hubris, revenge, sabotage and treachery. Oh and money. Lots of it.
On August 1st the Old Grey Lady (so called because of the paper’s reputation for being a stickler for factual accuracy) published the results of a major investigation that alleged mis-spending tantamount to fraud by GLAAD’s CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.
With access to what seemed like an extraordinary range of internal documents, journalist Emily Steel detailed internal rows, protests by the non-profit’s finance staff and a pattern of lavish spending that was eye-popping.
This eye-popping.
Ellis of those strange, butter wouldn’t melt eyes was alleged routinely to fly first class. Up to 30 times a year. And stay at five star hotels like the Waldorf Astoria.
The paper claimed Ellis combined lobbying at the likes of Davos (where else?) with personal pleasure including the odd ski trip and dwelt in exquisite detail on one top dollar trip to Zurich where a chauffeur drove her to a seven bedroom chalet that cost half a million dollars a week to rent.
The tab for the rental of the Tivoli Lodge was picked up, the Times alleges, by GLAAD. It was just one luxury excess the organisation shelled out for on behalf of its CEO, such as Cape Cod summer holidays and $20K to remodel her home office. The remodel came complete with a chandelier. Doesn’t everyone?
As the paper said,
“The overall pattern of spending represents “a potentially abusive use of charitable funds that would be surprising and insulting to a lot of their donors,” said Michael West, a lawyer who advises charities at the New York Council of Nonprofits. “It appears she may have fallen into the trap of excess.””
You don’t say.
The Hollywood Reporter focused its attention on the suggestion Ellis receives a basic salary of $441,000 with automatic 5 percent increases every year. They speculated bonuses mean she could receive from $700,000 to $1.3 million a year. GLAAD disputes the figures.
So what makes this story more than just another case of alleged inappropriate behaviour at yet another charity?
What the New York Times and the Hollywood Reporter do not explain is that GLAAD had a special place in the affections of American lesbians and gays. Like Stonewall here in the UK, GLAAD was set up as a response to a crisis and quickly became one of the most effective and respected gay organisations in history. Until that is Ellis took it over in 2014.
What she did next is a classic example, perhaps the classic, of the global capture of gay organisations by the trans lobby and gay enablers like Ellis. Ironically, she was appointed as head, the same year as Ruth Hunt (now a Baroness) was at Stonewall and used almost identical tactics to force through the shift to the trans agenda. Like Hunt, Ellis would ruthlessly weaponise her organisation’s status and influence to try to silence anyone who disagreed with that agenda; especially women. JK Rowling would be a particular target. Of course she would.
Ellis was, if anything, more upfront than Hunt in her passionate opposition to single sex spaces. Hunt feigned a reluctant drift towards that conclusion after “consultation”. Ellis made the destruction of single sex spaces her cri de coeur from the start.
Her story then is a tragic example of a deluded gay woman who sold out her sisters and brothers. She did this not like Hunt for a title that allows the Baroness to waddle around the House of Lords like The Penguin in a ridiculously unconvincing disguise. Ellis did it for the money.
All this would be a depressing story if it wasn’t that her imminent downfall seems assured. What is even more uplifting is how she brought about her own fall. If we are lucky a spate of similar events may be about to happen.
For the last two years GLAAD has fought an increasingly hysterical battle to defend puberty blockers, bullying journalists online who dared, even tentatively, to report on the growing evidence the drugs were not safe. Above all Ellis and her organisation targeted reporters at the New York Times, spinning lies, one more egregious than the last.
In doing so Ellis unwittingly sabotaged her own reputation and created the conditions for this month’s exposé. ‘The Old Gray Lady’ may have struck Ellis as a soft touch but like many a mature woman, it was a bad idea to underestimate her. The Times has had its revenge.
How though did we get here?
How could a hypocrite and alleged fraud be given the reins of a great organisation and be allowed to turn it into a champion of child sterilisation?
To understand that we have to travel back in time to 2014. That was the year Time magazine dubbed, The Transgender Tipping Point. It was then when the commanding heights of the most successful social justice movement in history were seized by ….men in dresses.
Buckle up. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.