The Arts Council tells gay people they don't deserve a group of their own

Just another day of smears directed against LGB Alliance

On 11th April, LGB Alliance announced it had been awarded funding by the Arts Council’s ‘Let’s Create’ Jubilee Fund.

The funding was intended to facilitate the production of a film called Queens which will celebrate 70 years of gay history and gay lives during the reign of Elizabeth II.

A very worthwhile and important LGB project richly deserving of a grant.

Sadly, the Arts Council has announced today that this offer of funding has been rescinded.

The London Community Foundation @London_cf

the London Community Foundation (LCF) has this week informed LGB Alliance (the applicant) that it is formally withdrawing the grant in question. This action has been taken because LCF was not informed of current proceedings in relation to LGB Alliance’s charitable status.

The LGB Alliance was set up in 2019 in response to growing concerns that Stonewall is focused solely on promoting gender identity ideology and has abandoned the rights and needs of those same-sex attracted.

In April 2021, the LGB Alliance was awarded charitable status.

LGB Alliance @ALLIANCELGB

We welcome the Charity Commission’s decision today and we are keen to get on with our charitable aims of advancing the interests of LGB people. #SexNotGender #ProgressiveLGBPolicies

Charity Commission @ChtyCommission

LGB Alliance to be entered onto the Register of Charities. Read our decision: https://t.co/tmp5dxGduW

Their becoming a registered charity, however, was dogged by attempts to defame and sabotage them.

From baseless accusations of transphobia to similarly baseless rumours of funding from right-wing US fundamentalist Christians, the Charity Commission investigated all of the charges levelled against LGB Alliance… and dismissed them. It produced a 4000+ word report exonerating LGB Alliance and concluding that, “The purposes of LGB Alliance, as properly construed in accordance with the legal framework, are charitable and beneficial”.

But this was not good enough for the circling sharks and the attacks and defamation continued. Just a few months later, a group of LGBTQ charities led by Mermaids instigated a legal action to challenge the LGB Alliance’s charitable status.

This action was taken in conjunction with Jolyon Maugham’s Good Law Project. Maugham has been gunning for the LGB Alliance since its inception, never allowing the truth to get in the way of his outlandish lies and slurs.

LGB Alliance @ALLIANCELGB

We reject Mr Maugham’s assertions about us which are unfounded and bizarre. #LGBAlliance is entirely funded by individual donations; we are a group of LGB people. His assertions remind us of the wild conspiracy theories people used to invent decades ago about gay people./1of2

The Good Law Project accused the LGB Alliance of ‘denigrating trans people’ and ‘campaigning to remove legal protections from them’. Again, baseless and dishonest claims.

As we’ve reported before, the Good Law Project has a ‘trans advisory group’, some members of which are worthy of closer scrutiny:

• CN “They/Them” Lester, a trans activist, writer and performer, co-founder of the “UK's first national queer youth organisation” and author of Trans Like Me.

• Sabah “They/Them” Choudrey who works for Gendered Intelligence.

• Alex Sharpe, a trans-identified male and vociferous trans activist. When rapist, “Karen White”, assaulted a number of women prisoners, Sharpe wrote an article defending the housing of trans identified males in the female estate.

• Mridrul Madhwa, a trans-identified male who concealed his true sex to obtain employment at a rape crisis centre and believes that traumatised women needing a male-free space are bigots.

Not surprisingly, when the Arts Council funding was announced, the usual suspects rushed to protest.

The London Community Foundation comes under the auspices of The Arts Council as it is administering the ACE’s LetsCreate Jubilee Fund.

On the same day as it announced the funding allocations, the London Community Foundation tweeted that they had suspended the grant awarded to the LGB Alliance.

And today they have confirmed that the funding has been permanently withdrawn.

They asserted the LGB Alliance’s charity status is currently being investigated. This is not true. A legal challenge has been filed with the Charity Tribunal by the Mermaids consortium and a case management hearing is expected to take place later this year. However, that does not mean that the LGB Alliance is subject to any sort of review or investigation.

A claim was also made that the LGB Alliance failed to disclose ‘any major risks that could affect the grant’ when making their application. It didn’t because there aren’t any.

LGB Alliance @ALLIANCELGB

Statement from our Managing Director Kate Barker on the withdrawal of funding for our film, "Queens": 1/

Why are Mermaids, Maugham et al so determined to shut down the LGB Alliance, a group which exists to defend the rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual people? Could it be because the LGB Alliance disrupts the prescribed narrative, exposing gender identity ideology for the damaging, regressive, homophobic and misogynistic quasi-religious cult it is?

As George RR Martin once said, “When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say.”