Mick Hartley

The latest from the Allison Bailey case:

Stonewall operates like a “criminal protection racket” as it presses companies and public bodies to embrace the ideology of transgender self-identification, a lawyer has claimed.

Allison Bailey, a lesbian barrister, has accused Britain’s most prominent campaign group for LGBT rights of being “complicit in a campaign of harassment” against her and others who have questioned its policies and interpretation of equality law.

Bailey is bringing a discrimination claim against Stonewall and her barristers’ chambers, which she accuses of bowing to pressure from the group to discipline her for making allegedly so-called gender critical comments on social media.

Garden Court Chambers and Stonewall deny all allegations of wrongdoing.

I don't see how they can deny it with any kind of good faith, given that the documents speak for themselves. Basically, Stonewall to Garden Court Chambers: you currently employ someone with gender critical beliefs…this doesn't fit with your membership of our diversity champions scheme…what are you going to do about it? But good faith from Stonewall and its supporters has always been in short supply.

Bailey, a criminal law barrister, founded the LGB Alliance in 2019. The group argues that there is a conflict between the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, and those who are transgender. The alliance opposes many of the charity’s policies.

Bailey told a central London employment tribunal this week that she had lost work and income as a result of the involvement of Garden Court Chambers with Stonewall’s “diversity champions” scheme, which she said was “exclusive” and “discriminatory” of her beliefs.

The scheme has faced wide-ranging criticism recently for allegedly misrepresenting the legal position regarding single-sex spaces in workplaces. At the tribunal hearing, Bailey claimed that Stonewall representatives had recommended that Garden Court change the pronouns she and he to they and their.

Giving evidence yesterday , Bailey said: “The fact that Stonewall considered sex language unacceptable and to be replaced by gender neutral language had wider implications for me within [the chambers].”

She said that the charity used its scheme “to embed the concept of gender identity” within government departments and the voluntary sector in a way “outside the law”.

Bailey went on: “Stonewall and its diversity champions scheme would be exclusive of me. It declared people with my views as being hateful and bigoted. They declared an intention to discriminate against lesbians like me.”…

At the hearing, Ijeoma Omambala QC, representing Stonewall, questioned Bailey over how her chambers had supposedly been enthralled by the charity.

The barrister said that once the chambers had joined the scheme, they were “induced to follow the objectives of Stonewall”.

Bailey added that the focus was “to advance a policy position on trans rights and gender identity that go way beyond the law. In the UK, with the exception of Ireland, LGBTQ equality at law has been achieved, what hasn’t been achieved is gender identity”.

She added: “Stonewall is a very powerful organisation and it can confer protection or it can take it away.

“The inducement that Stonewall offers with its scheme is reputational protection or reputational harm, it’s like a criminal protection racket.”

Sounds about right to me.

Allison Bailey is fighting an important case in the battle against the intransigence of gender ideology. Good luck to her.