One of the co-founders of the far-left LGBTQ charity Stonewall has accused the group of discrediting equal rights activism by embracing far-left ideology on transgenderism, such as claiming there is no difference between the bodies of men and women.
LGBTQ activists at Stonewall have lost the plot, according to Simon Fanshawe OBE, who was one of the six founders of the group in 1989. Fanshawe, an openly gay man who spent decades campaigning for equal rights in Britain, said that he and others made gains by engaging with others of differing opinions.
In contrast, the Stonewall co-founder accused the current batch of trans activists of treating their ideology as “non-negotiable”.
“All that work is now in danger of being wrecked, Stonewall’s reputation discredited, and its credibility squandered, by trans activists — not all trans people, I hasten to add — who believe they can dictate what everyone is allowed to say and think,” Fanshawe wrote in the Daily Mail.
“A small minority of activists, including those who have taken over Stonewall, do not want to extend that decency and tolerance to the rest of the population,” he said.
“Equality, to them, means imposing their views on everyone else, without debate. That should concern anyone who believes freedom of speech is sacrosanct.”
Fanshawe said that his “jaw hit the floor” when Stonewall’s ‘Head of Trans inclusion’, Kirrin Medcalf, 24, said in court on Tuesday that “Bodies are not inherently male or female. They are just their bodies.”
The activist made the statement during a discrimination case brought forward against the LGBTQ charity by barrister Allison Bailey, who has alleged that her chambers, Garden Court, has been swayed by Stonewall, which serves as an advisor to the law firm, to reduce her pay and work after she criticised transgender ideology.
Medcalf, 24, who earlier this week refused to testify without the presence of his mother and a “support dog”, claimed that Bailey’s opposition to transgender ideology put trans people “at risk of physical harm”.
The Stonewall co-founder responded to the claim by saying that “[p]eople such as Kirrin Medcalf imagine that reality can be reshaped to fit their requirements.
“A difference of opinion is being painted as a physical threat. According to Medcalf, any trans person encountering Bailey is at risk of attack. This is a completely imaginary scenario”
In May of last year, then-Equalities Minister Liz Truss, now the Foreign Secretary, called on the government to end its relationship with Stonewall over its increasingly radical positions on transgenderism.
Despite being governed by the so-called Conservative Party, some 250 government bodies had paid Stonewall to “educate” them on issues such as gender pronouns.
Despite the call from Truss to stop funding the far-left charity, the Foreign Office she now leads was found in January to have given Stonewall over three quarters of a million pounds between 2020 and 2021.
In total, the government provided the charity with £1.2 million in taxpayer money during this time period.
The LGBTQ activist organisation has frequently found itself at odds with other seemingly progressive voices in Britain, such as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling , over women’s issues, with Stonewall deriding such critics as TERFs (trans-exclusionary radical feminists).
Simon Fanshawe argued Stonewall should not minimise the concerns of women who object to transgenders competing in female-only sports or oppose letting biological males into female-only spaces such as changing rooms and bathrooms.
“Women who do speak out, even those as highly regarded as J.K. Rowling or Martina Navratilova, are told with vehemence to shut up,” Fanshawe wrote.
“It often feels as though the trans debate has plunged us back into an era before feminism, when women were often treated as airheads with nothing to contribute to social discourse.”
Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka
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