The government is facing mounting pressure to extend or even scrap the current consultation on the Gender Recognition Act, which sets out its aims to make changing gender easier.
The consultation closes at 11pm on Friday 19th October.
Read our guidance on how to respond here.
Last Tuesday MPs who had gathered at a meeting on the subject in the House of Commons said they did not want journalists allowed in to ask them questions. The meeting was sponsored by David Davies MP and organised by a women’s rights group opposed to the proposals. Many MPs had attended because their constituents had asked them to.
MPs afraid of standing up to be counted
The Sunday Times journalist, Nicholas Hellen, said on twitter that MPs wanted journalists to leave the room because they did not want to be named in the press ‘for their own safety.’ Last Saturday The Times reported on the results of a poll by ComRes which showed that most Conservative MPs opposed the changes, but that two thirds of them didn’t speak out publicly for fear of being branded ‘transphobic.’ At first glance this may not look like ‘fear for their own safety’, but more a case of fear of what transgender and LGBT activists will say to them on social media. However, women’s group Woman’s Place has had at least one bomb threat made against it for organising public debates on this consultation, not to mention transgender activists calling up every single venue it had booked and harassing staff into cancelling the events.
Your MP needs YOU to encourage him or her to speak out
Your MP needs to hear from you about why the proposals are a bad idea and indeed why they are dangerous. You can use our guide to the Gender Recognition Act consultation to make the most important points as well as providing some evidence for them.
Your MP needs to realise that they are elected to reflect the opinions of constituents and more widely to consider the welfare of all of society when legislation is being proposed. You are the best person to say this to your MP, because at the next general election you have the power to vote him or her out.
Tell your MP to write to the Prime Minister
Please tell your MP to contact the Minister for Women and Equalities, Penny Mordaunt, who has been very enthusiastically promoting the legal proposals.
Even better, your MP could contact the Prime Minister about all of this. It is worth reminding your MP that Theresa May did not even turn up to vote on the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 yet as Prime Minister she is now responsible for pushing through proposals to make it easier for people to change gender.
Trans activists want a Labour government to change the law
Britain’s most influential transgender rights activist is Stephen Whittle, a female-to-male transgender person who is professor of Equalities Law at Manchester Metropolitan University. Whittle drafted the Gender Recognition Act and was the Specialist Adviser to the Women and Equalities Committee in Parliament in its Transgender Equality Inquiry (page 7). Whittle told the Guardian this Thursday that the Labour Party supports plans for gender self-identification, and so trans activists now aim to get Labour into power at the next general election.
Warning to all political parties
The press may lazily follow trans activists and try to paint this debate as a party political war between Labour and the Conservatives, or perhaps paint it as a culture war. Actually what this is is impending cultural collapse. All the political parties have caved into the transgender lobby. This is why everybody needs to write to their MP now so that they know that most people in this country will not tolerate any of these transgender demands.