The LGBT Lobby: Not The Same Thing as People Who Are Gay

I was railed against last week for being “homophobic” for suggesting last year at a Christian conference that the “LGBT lobby” had become an overly influential facet of British public life, independent from the reality of the wishes of desires of the nation, gay or otherwise. That was before “Gay Pride” banned LGBT UKIP from attending their annual march, whose members, despite being gay, were not deemed to be “LGBT friendly.” It served to underline my point.

In the media today, we hear often of the views of “the black community”, “the gay community”, “the Polish community”, but despite this identity politics being so prevalent, these so called communities simply do not exist.

There is not a single viewpoint that unites all gay people, black people or Polish people, that doesn’t unite all of humanity. It is the madness of our age that concludes equality and cohesion can be achieved by separation and unequal treatment.

The “LGBT lobby” comprises a number of groups, perhaps most notably Stonewall, The Peter Tatchell Foundation, and Pink News, who between them have an estimated budget of more than £10 million. These organisations have clearly defined aims, which they intend to spend their money on persuading politicians, celebrities and media outlets to agree with. This is how politics works in Britain, and it is how we have allowed minority advocacy groups a grip over the majority of our citizenry.

The fact is, the “LGBT lobby” does not speak for gay people, it speaks for itself. The great trap for lobby groups is that once they are founded and funded, like any bureaucracy, they go far beyond their initial, often single issue scope, chiefly in the cause of maintaining their new found power in the political spectrum and the careers of those involved.

The message went out in 2012 from self appointed spokesmen like Peter Tatchell, that gay marriage was the final step in achieving equality for gay people in the UK. Same Sex Marriage has been passed, and yet there are more LGBT advocacy groups in Britain than there have ever been, with more funding than they have ever had.

The danger of lobbying more generally is that it grants disproportionate influence to issues and groups because they have money, not because they speak for many people, or even any people.

Sir Ian McKellen, a founder of the Stonewall lobby group spoke this week, in a moment of disarming truth, of the power of Westminster LGBT lobbyists: “It’s astonishing for a Tory Prime Minister to insist on gay marriage, dragging the party behind him.

“It’s possible because we live in a small country and you only have to persuade about 50 people, all of whom live within sight of this window, and if they agree, they can have it in law within a year. Americans have to slog through every state.”

Many gay Christians have experienced the same exclusion from LGBT groups and events as UKIP has experienced this week, and I have had a large number of conversations and debates with members of LGBT advocacy groups where they refuse to accept that anyone who is gay might not support same sex marriage. Such is the vitriol and hysteria of their politics. I was told that any gay person who does not support gay marriage is “either not really gay or insane.”

And much of the “LGBT lobby” is defined by being exclusive, not inclusive. These are groups advocating tolerance, but by their own newfound hubris display their clear intolerance of any viewpoint or background that differs even slightly from their own extremely narrow view and desire for society. They have become an even more extreme version of exclusivity and elitism than their founding thinkers initially set out to break down.

It has reached the point of such ridicule where many in the movement believe they have the ability and right not only to decide if an individual is worthy of taking part in their purportedly inclusive events and organisation, but to decide if they are worthy of even being considered gay.

Today’s liberals speak off the cuff about the importance of hearing everyone’s views, but then appear disgusted when they learn that there are other views.

Almost every public figure is terrified of challenging both the unchecked march of LGBT lobby groups and the rise of the fascism of “liberal intolerance”, for fear of being labelled a “homophobe”, “racist” or any number of other modish, progressive buzzwords.

It would be a fair assessment to suggest that the “LGBT lobby” is more powerful now in terms of influence than it has ever been, more so even than the Christian lobby, which dominated the governance of this nation for a thousand years.

Times change, power shifts, but the measure of the powerful is how they treat those who are not, and I would suggest the “LGBT lobby” is, in record time, well on its way to learning the ancient political tale of hubris: nemesis.