ILGA Europe Turns The Screw
ILGA Europe Turns The Screw
Running to stand still on the treadmill of demands
In February this year, ILGA Europe released their report on LGBTQI+ equality, which contained a scathing and highly partisan critique of the UK by the chapter authors (representatives from Gendered Intelligence, Equality Network, Stonewall and Rainbow Project). For a thorough breakdown of the report, please see this twitter thread, which outlines the biased and partisan rhetoric pervading this section.
Yesterday, ILGA Europe followed this up with their updated league tables, ranking all countries in their report in terms of human rights.
Here’s where the UK is on the current leaderboard - languishing in 14th with a score of 53.39%:
Nancy Kelley of Stonewall was quick to highlight that the UK was backsliding and that this represented a serious and urgent setback in the fight for human rights and equality:
But here’s where we were just seven years ago, in 2015 - not only in the top spot, but with a far more healthy score of 85.55%
So how did this happen? Despite no legislation to reduce LGB or T rights in the UK in the intervening years, we haven’t just been overtaken by other, higher-scoring countries - our absolute percentile score has gone down.
Despite the framing of Stonewall’s CEO, the reason we have fallen in the rankings in seven years is not because the UK has reversed gains on equality legislation and human rights, but because ILGA Europe change the scoring system, year on year, to target specific ideological aims.
The 2015 scoring criteria are here and consist of 48 individually weighted points, 24 (50%) of which relate specifically to sexual orientation, or general freedom of speech.
The 2022 scoring criteria are here, and consist of 74 points, which are again presumably individually weighted, but this time the weighting has not been made available. 29 (39%) of which relate specifically to sexual orientation, or general freedom of speech.
ILGA make the data available, but again this does not include the actual weighting for each specific point, and - also - awards some sort of partial marks when a measure is part implemented, eg. available only in some regions. I have taken this data and used it to see what the score would be if each point was equally weighted here, and while this is not perfect it does give an indication to within a couple of percentage points as to where the scores are coming from - but it is clear that even within categories, ILGA are still weighting individual measures arbitrarily (as in previous years) and it is not possible to see which criteria they consider being greater or lesser importance.
The overall change in 2022 though is an expansion of gender identity demands. For example countries are marked down unless they allow parents to change the legal sex of their children at any age, without medical diagnosis:
By constantly shifting what constitutes “rights” in this way, the ILGA leaderboard acts like a ratchet, pushing calls for legislative change in a specific direction and creating the impression that countries whose legislative framework has not changed are somehow backsliding. It creates a thoroughly irresponsible climate of fear and threat - as if rights are being undermined or taken away - which is extremely effective at pushing organisations to play catch up with… Malta.
Yes, in the new ranking, top of the leaderboard is the corrupt basket case that is Malta, where abortion is illegal. Because abortion isn’t an important human right for anyone in the LGBTQI+ rainbow is it? Apart from lesbians and bisexual women anyway, but that is of little concern to LGBTQI+ focused organisations, whose obsession is gender identity above all else. It doesn’t matter that according to ILGA Europe, Malta seems to lack sexual orientation discrimination protections for healthcare, goods and services, which would seem of day-to-day importance to LGB people:
No, what really matters is that Malta has a clean sweep of everything gender identity related. Self id and medicalisation, without restriction, age limit, or ability to consent, no right for spouses to exit a marriage when their partner transitions, and definitely no pesky psychological or medical gatekeeping:
What ILGA Europe demands as “rights” now - and penalises the UK for not enshrining in law - is that parents should be able to medicalise gender nonconforming children before they have the capacity to consent, without medical cause.
But if that’s what you actually want, take heart, because medical tribunals are already only too happy to oblige, and the Good Law Project are currently taking legal action against NHS England to force them to comply.
Meanwhile, the UK is significantly marked down compared to 2015 by the addition of several other new areas of discrimination, like “sex characteristics” and - predictably - a ban on gender identity conversion therapy:
Again, organisations that have gained an international reputation through their work on LGB equality are leveraging that in pursuit of ever increasing gender identity focus, shifting the goalposts and dishonestly creating the impression of urgency to incoherent and quite regressive demands. They have adopted a belief system that erases the very basis of homosexuality, and treat adherence to this worldview - and any and all demands that spring from it - as non-negotiable.
Never mind that telling a same-sex attracted youth they are really a heterosexual member of the opposite sex is conversion therapy, but this is again of scant concern to Stonewall et al, who believe that sex is gender identity, and that male and female bodies don’t exist. It is by their past reputation that these lobby groups are able to convince dozens of well-meaning MPs across the political spectrum to sign up to the sterilisation of LGB youth, believing themselves to be doing the right thing.
ILGA Europe have created a system whereby a specific ideological belief - that gender nonconforming children should be affirmed as the opposite sex and medicalised as early as possible, at the behest of their parents, with zero medical oversight or gatekeeping, and that talking therapy to ease distress and reconcile a child with their sexed body should be banned - is a right, and that the UK is failing for not having signed up to it.
The leaderboard - and the manufactured perception of “falling behind” - is a tool for lobbying political leaders, who unquestioningly believe what they are told by organisations who built up a reputation pursuing LGB equality, but whose focus now is almost exclusively on enshrining a specific belief in gender identity in law, at any cost.