Tribunal Judges Griffin and Neville have ruled on a case regarding a group widely described as an anti-trans hate group who became a charity. Ruling in their favour, LGB Alliance are to retain their charity status.
The case was brought before the court by Mermaids UK, a charity for supporting families with a transgender young one. Their argument was that as a charity for transgender people the existence of a charity that opposes transgender people materially affects them.
Specifically Mermaids argue that LGB Alliance have publicly mischaracterised Mermaids’ activities, encouraged organisations not to support or work with Mermaids – including challenging sources of their funding, made media attacks on individuals who support or work with Mermaids and has used or intends to use its charitable status to obtain funding to further continue these actions, enhance their credibility or gain greater support and publicity.
LGB Alliance argue otherwise claiming that this is a mischaracterisation and instead described their activities as “facilitating the public debate in this area, by putting [forward] another point of view”.
In the ruling the Judges state that the actions of LGB Alliance’s supporters are not to be held against the charity, only the actions of the charity itself are reflective of the charity. Which is pretty lucky for LGB Alliance given the vast swathes of hateful bigots who seem to support them.
They also state that they are making a distinction between LGB Alliance as an organisation before it registered as a charity – which included posting full page adverts associating trans rights with rapists in the national press – and LGB Alliance after they registered as a charity. Which only has 9 pieces of evidence submitted for it in the ruling compared to the previous 23 or so.
The Judges state that the lessening of their horrific anti-trans propaganda since becoming a charity “may itself demonstrate the potential effect” of LGB Alliance having a charity status. Essentially acknowledging that they were far worse before now and being a charity could have reigned them in a bit. Which I predicted in 2021 just so you know;
no seriously
LGB Alliance operating entirely without any oversight, accountability or real scrutiny from anyone is how they managed to be so hateful without consequences for so long
becoming a charity means consequences. they're fucked. lmao.
— intact breastuccino (@notCursedE) April 20, 2021
Ultimately they ruled that Mermaids didn’t have the “standing”; i.e. the Judges could not find a reason why LGB Alliance’s work may impact the legal rights of “Mermaids” as an entity. Mermaids can still operate exactly as it was and charity status or not, LGB Alliance hasn’t stopped that with their bigotry.
Which all in all, I kind of expected. Sure, it would have been nice to see the a well-funded bigot organisation get taken down a peg or two. Who doesn’t love watching bigots lose? But the UK Charity Register isn’t just a list of organisations we agree with. There are many organisations on there who are utter bastards, some even share the same 55 Tufton Street address as LGB Alliance.
I even said way back when this case was announced that I don’t think there will be a case to answer. I hate dedicating any time to defending a bastards right to be a bastard when there’s so much more important things we could promote; but it’s true.
I keep seeing the lawsuit against lgb alliance's charity status going around and idk. I don't think there's a case to answer.
They are horrific bigots, yes. But ultimately they're kinda free to believe whatever they want and organise around that.
— intact breastuccino (@notCursedE) July 29, 2022
I don’t know how much this debacle cost – but I doubt it was cheap and I don’t know any one who was actively asking for it. My trans friends are online asking for help to pay rent, buy equipment to start new careers or in my case – crowdfund an emergency gay wedding due to a terminal illness in the family.
The money wasted on this failed attempt to take a jab at LGB Alliance could have materially impacted trans lives in such beautiful and amazing ways. Instead it went into the pockets of lawyers who probably already own their own houses and aren’t so worried about electricity costs that they feel bad for running the washing machine once a week.
And what makes it worse is that for years people have been criticising this exact bullshit coming from the transphobes who launch legal crowdfunder after legal crowdfunder to “defend women’s rights!” Spending millions on trying to inch the borders of acceptability to encompass more of their transphobic beliefs all while women, cisgender women even, live and die in poverty in the UK.
I know this to be case because I am “people” in this context. I have been saying this. I have been making fun of the transphobes for this exact thing and to see “our side” engage in it too is sad.
Transphobes would rather set up endless twitter based lobbying groups and crowdfund for litigation to change policy to be trans exclusionary when they could simply just use that money to set up the services they want to see exist.
And that says a lot about them.
— intact breastuccino (@notCursedE) November 9, 2022
You can’t fight hateful fire with fire, you’re just going to burn your house down by trying. We don’t win this by engaging in the same litigious mithering the transphobes engage in, we win this by building each other up to the point where the actions of a hateful charity don’t and can not possibly have a material impact on us.
I just wish those leading the charge on this case had figured that one out before they spent all that money. We could have really used it!
