Damaging the monopoly
The Times reports on the Jolyon/Mermaids lawsuit:
Stonewall has backed transgender activists in a legal challenge to the charitable status of a rival campaign group that is accused of “denigrating trans people”.
I think it’s a little underhanded to call the LGB Alliance a “rival” group…as if Stonewall were some kind of obvious Rightful Owner and the LGBA a trespasser. Stonewall doesn’t own All Things NotStraight, and anyway it’s far more about the T these days.
In their objections to the Charity Commission’s decision, the groups argued that “charitable status is earned by those who serve the public good. Denigrating trans people, attacking those who speak for them, and campaigning to remove legal protections from them is the very opposite of a public good.”
But the LGBA doesn’t “denigrate” trans people. It’s not “denigrating” anyone to say that lesbians are women and gay men are men. The LGBA is of course not campaigning to remove legal protections from anyone.
The groups cited a comment last year by Bev Jackson, a director of the LGB Alliance, in which she explained that her organisation had applied for charitable status “to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity”.
So challenging dominance is wicked now? Do they really want to go with that?
The groups said on their crowdfunding page that “these purposes are reprehensible and they are not charitable; they are political objectives — to roll back legal protections for trans people”.
Only if you define “legal protections for trans people” as the right for men to invade women’s spaces and sports and prizes and jobs.
In court documents, which do not appear to have been signed by its lawyers, Mermaids states that unless the decision to grant charitable status is quashed, it “is likely to suffer financial loss”, as it “may find itself competing with LGB Alliance for donations from the public and grant-making bodies”.
Well that’s just tough shit, isn’t it. Who ever told them they were entitled to a monopoly?
Well, that’s just literal violence right there, that is erasing Mermaids and all the people it serves. There will be mass suicides in public squares. Stonewall hasn’t got time to compete for donations, it is far too busy erasing women.
The monopoly thing is just… unreal. Even if we put aside the glaring fact that charities don’t get to decide who people give their money to, the intersection of people who might give money to either Mermaids or LGBA is surely very small, especially given Mermaids’ own campaigning to get LGBA shut down!.
By contrast, the intersection of people who might donate to either Mermaids or the other charities involved in the legal action is surely almost total! So by their own logic, shouldn’t they each immediately denounce their own charitable status and abolish themselves?
This is the first time I have ever seen a charity for any cause view other charities for that same cause as ‘rivals’. Imagine this childishness coming from an anti-suicide charity, denigrating a different anti-suicide charity and calling them a rival. What the fuck.
It’s not really funding they are worried about (or, as already said, they would have to acknowledge that their allies are bigger ‘rivals’); it’s the minds of the general public. They’re rightly worried that if the LGBA raises enough money to advertise more widely, the public might realise that we don’t have to give in to ‘trans’ demands to believe six impossible things before breakfast, let alone celebrate them by elevenses.
tigger:
We should be careful not to give them too much credit. Don’t forget that they seem to believe their cause is sacred and that any undermining of their glorious mission is a sin. They are so mired in this thinking that they genuinely can’t believe that anyone rational and compassionate could possibly disagree. To them, the fact that people might give money to LGBA instead of them is a hate crime committed by LGBA. It proves all by itself that LGBA should have its charitable status removed.
I don’t think there’s any strategy involved at all. I think they’re just so hopelessly lost that they believe the Charities Commission will instantly see that it’s a brilliant argument.
Besides, you know what it’s like when you have to fill in a big, empty form; you’ll put in any old crap just to fill up the page. Perhaps there’s a bit of that, too. But strategy? I doubt it.