From June 29 to July 1, 2022, the UK will host the first “global” LGBT-themed conference in London, 50 years after the first official “London Pride” marches.
The event will be titled “Safe to be me. A global equality conference“, and representatives of numerous countries will be invited. This “[…] will be the largest event of its kind and will focus on legislative progress, against violence and discrimination and in order to ensure equal access to public services for LGBT+ people.”
Eighteen officials and three British government departments are working to plan the conference, under the leadership of Foreign Secretary Liz Truss. The premises of universal harmony and respect for everyone’s diversity, however, are already floundering amidst the controversy.
At the heart of the matter is Stonewall, a well-known organization promoting the rights of LGBT+ people, previously in the eye of the storm due to assignments revoked by national and international bodies, now accused of imposing an univocal and in turn discriminatory vision and version. As so often happens, this is a case of inclusion that aims to exclude.
According to an article in The Telegraph, Stonewall and another LGBT+ organization, the Kaleidoscope Trust, would collectively manage everything related to the event planned for the summer, including money. Above all, the money.
According to the article, there is also another aspect to consider, namely the fact that “the event risks proving to be a momentous clash between lesbians and feminists, who claim that biological sex is immutable, and activists of transgender ideology who argue instead that a person’s gender identity overrides sex.” Moreover, only a few days ago Prime Minister Boris Johnson pointed out the importance of biological sex, thus sparkling anger among LGBT groups.
In short, between economic interests, questions of “associative” prestige and more strictly ideological factors, the trans festival planned for the summer is not set to start out with the best auspices.