Why LGB Alliance Mattered So Much.
A tiny gay group played a key role in getting puberty blockers banned. It did this by disrupting the monolithic narrative of the LGBTQ+ lobby.
The announcement of the permanent ban on puberty blockers has been greeted with all the restraint and fair-mindedness we’ve come to expect from the trans lobby and its supporters. Reactions on social media varied from, “Fuck you Wes Streeting you piece of shit, you worm, you quisling prick…” to claims….
….the Health Secretary was a “child murderer”.
Leading trans activist Katie Neeves who styles himself “a trans ambassador” exercised his diplomatic skills by suggesting Streeting, “will have blood on his hands”.
Neeves was named the 2023 Burberry Diversity Awards Hero of the Year. Of course he was.
Some trans activists even openly argued Streeting deserved the same fate as the American health insurance CEO allegedly killed by easy on the eye nutjob Luigi Mangioni.
“Where’s Luigi when you need him?” asked one.
Many subscribers may know most of the story of the battle against puberty blockers already. A friend suggested though that some of you might want to read my perspective as someone who played a small part alongside my friends and colleagues at LGB Alliance.
I hope then you enjoy this much truncated and slimmed down history. I should have given a mention to Keira Bell, the wonderful Dr David Bell (a hero of mine) and Sue and Marcus Evans among others but then this would have been twice as long.
I can write more about the campaign and their contributions if you like at a later date.
All this is just a flavour of what the unlikely grassroots coalition against puberty blockers has had to face for almost a decade. The ban on puberty blockers would never have happened without the agitation of that coalition. Yet their every attempt to alert the public was howled down amid threats of violence and the most outrageous lies from the LGBTQ+ lobby.
The coalition was made up of a constellation of newly formed groups run on a shoestring and a prayer from feminists and concerned parents to people of faith and old-style trade union stalwarts. There were traditionalists. There were radicals. There were even Scottish nationalists (they’re not all mad, apparently).
If the story of how that coalition turned the medical tide is ever made into one of those quintessential British movies in which a bunch of plucky amateurs take on Goliath it’ll have an unlikely supporting cast. Their campaign would never have gained traction without a certain best-selling novelist, a Tory Baroness, an Irish comedian and a ballsy politician of Nigerian extraction. More of them later. Oh and did I mention two rather formidable lesbians?
One afternoon in early October 2019 as I was working in an edit suite in West London I received a phone call from a woman who introduced herself as Kate Harris. She had been given my name she said by someone who was sure I’d want to help get a new lesbian and gay organisation up and running.
Harris was the co-founder of what would soon become known as LGB Alliance. Little did I know her call would, in time, lead to the implosion of my career in film-making.
And ….its proudest moment.