As an appeals court in the U.S. recently noted in a case now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the “trans” community is not politically powerless. As such, it hardly needs special protection. Allison’s case is unnerving because, it seems to me, her former chambers, upon learning that an employee was a devout adherent of a religious denomination that Stonewall deems anti-trans, would also terminate that person’s employment to appease the petulant Stonewall. As a lawyer, I feel that I can adequately and equitably serve people whose beliefs or views I do not share. I certainly wouldn’t lurk behind the potted plants to leap out and attack “trans” people. Their concern for “feeling safe” is hyperbolic on a juvenile scale.
Ha! The 'trans community' is THE single most powerful political entity I have seen in my life time. Unsurprising, as it is largely compromised of wealthy, white middle aged men. Who now identity as women. The narrative of victimhood is carefully crafted and utterly bogus.
“The targeted group is portrayed as a powerful menace that is taking control of the major institutions in society and depriving others of their livelihoods, safety, freedom of speech and general well-being … The targeted group is portrayed as preying upon children … The targeted group is blamed for the current problems in society and the world.”
That appeal court case is brilliant and very important and referred to in the latest episode of the Mess featuring Kara Dansky (plus amazing video from a New York council meeting):
Even if we accept for the sake of argument that the “protest” made by Stonewall to GCC did not meet the threshold for inducing GCC’s breach of EA, that same threshold does not apply to the evaluation of Stonewall’s conduct by parties such as GCC who have ended up severely penalised, with trashed reputations, for acting the way they did. They know perfectly well that it was Stonewall ‘wot dun it’.
In a rational world you would expect that any business that has acted illegally having been the recipient of a Stonewall nudge & wink would immediately terminate relations with them. Ok, that doesn’t get Stonewall humiliated in court, which would be nice, but it should be terminal for them as a trusted adviser.
Not an expert on discrimination law or charity law. But find it hard to believe that the Charity Commission have nothing to say about Stonewall’s conduct. If not on this, on the pushing of employment policies that allow self identified trans people to use opposite sex changing rooms. This is not compliant with the Equality Act. And then there was contacting schools with inappropriate information. Time for the sort of complaint that LGB Alliance faced from Mermaids.
Precisely. The Public Inquiry is so urgent because the very bodies that should have stopped this in its tracks - the Charity Commission, the EHRC, the Children's Commissioners - have been so deafeningly silent and compliant. We have been left entirely unprotected and as individuals have had to raise the money and take on the enormous emotional burden of fighting this in court.
But didn’t you lot all say that the complaint against the LGB Alliance was a gross attempt to silence a charity’s freedom of speech? Surely you can’t endorse such tactics being used by your own side.
LGB Alliance was not giving incorrect legal advice to employers to whom they had charged money. Nor trying to contradict sensible advice about children identifying as trans to the latter’s health detriment. Whereas Stonewall was. It’s about how a charity should act. Lying about the law and charging for it is not OK. It’s quite different from exercising freedom of speech.
No, the Charity Commission to decide if conduct fits with charity law. If necessary the courts. I simply offer an opinion. But the courts won’t consider that a single space for women should be open to opposite sex people identifying as women if they don’t have a GRC and possibly even if they do.
The Charity Commission *has* decided that Stonewall’s conduct fits with charity law, though. That’s how Stonewall came to be a registered charity (and to retain that status for many, many years).
Thanks for your very helpful analysis, Sarah. I need to read through the judgment though I doubt I will be able to add to your analysis. What I keep coming back to is: GCC were not going to take action; then Stonewall complained; then they did take action.
Dusty
NB And I have asked my support cat and he agrees 😂
Yes. That’s striking isn’t it. I recall from the original hearing the ludicrous panic that gripped them as they faced a ‘Twitter storm’!! They were led by their Marketing Manager and they chucked out any consideration of respect for the Equality Act: indeed many senior members didn’t even know what it was as criminal lawyers.
But that isn’t true at all, Dusty. Bailey complained of multiple detriments (acts of discrimination), some of which happened *before* Stonewall wrote to GCC: see para 36 of the judgment. So you and your made-up cat would appear to have a poor grasp of the facts.
What a peculiar person this is. What on earth is the point of accusing you of having a 'made up cat' ?? He seems absurdly confrontational for anyone wanting a genuine discussion; so I assume he doesn't.
The fundamental point here is that Stonewall did *not* make a complaint at all. It sent an email, or “protest” in the Employment Tribunal’s words, telling GCC how strongly it objected to Bailey’s behaviour. That protest pleaded with GCC to “do the right thing” (an entirely open-ended request which might have been met by, for example, a statement by GCC reaffirming its support of and commitment to Stonewall’s values, such a statement being something GCC would have been perfectly entitled to publish given its Article 10 rights).
The fact that GCC, on the Employment Tribunal’s findings, fed Stonewall’s message into a disciplinary process which ended in a series of discriminatory acts by GCC, is not Stonewall’s fault.
The case may well have been very different if Stonewall had invoked a formal disciplinary process whereby a complaint triggers an investigation, a hearing, and a sanction drawn from a closed list eg reprimand, suspension, expulsion. In that scenario, if all of the substantive outcomes provided for by the process would have constituted discrimination, it may well be argued that Stonewall intended GCC to select one of them and thereby it caused, or attempted to cause, discrimination.
So, for example, in 2021, when a Daily Mail journalist made a formal complaint against me under my rabbinic college’s code of conduct, outraged that I manifested my gender identity beliefs by criticising Kathleen Stock, said journalist probably did cross the section 111 line in that the only possible outcomes to her complaint under the disciplinary process were that it would be dismissed (an outcome she plainly did not intend) or that it would result in a discriminatory disciplinary sanction against me (the outcome she plainly did intend, albeit she didn’t get her way).
But that isn’t anything like what happened here - and your own views on Stonewall’s “evil” nature obviously should not have swayed Mr Justice Bourne.
I have made the point I thought tolerably clearly in my post. Stonewall knew all it had to do was send some sloppy bollocks indicating its displeasure and that would instantly have a powerful impact on the organisation receiving it. That is the relevant context which the court ignored. I appreciate a court cannot enter into Public Inquiry territory - where I consider we now firmly are - but it should not ignore relevant context. Garden Court did NOT act like 'specialists in equality law'. They acted as bigoted discriminators and rightly paid the price. The actions and reactions of Stonewall, and the likely consequences, carefully nurtured over the years are very relevant here. This is part of the evil Parliament was supposed to be rooting out.
You did indeed make clear your opinion that “Stonewall knew all it had to do was send some sloppy bollocks indicating its displeasure and that would instantly have a powerful impact on the organisation receiving it.”
However, that was not a finding of fact that the Employment Tribunal made. Indeed I can’t even see that the Employment Tribunal was invited by Bailey to make such a finding. So it’s hard to fault the appellate judge for not taking it into consideration.
Sigh. That is the very essence of my challenge. The ET and the appellate court SHOULD have considered this. It was a perverse failure to not take this very relevant context into consideration. Whether this can go any further in the court context is unlikely. But we absolutely need a Public Inquiry into how the hell Stonewall was allowed to get away with this for so long, and an attempt to quantify the damage it has done to public life.
Then why didn’t Bailey make such an argument before the Employment Tribunal? And lead evidence?
When the Employment Tribunal made a finding of fact directly contrary to your argument here, why didn’t she challenge that finding on appeal?
Even if you’re right (which you can probably sense I dispute), you seem to be expecting the various judges to have considered arguments of their own motion and to rule on issues of fact not put to them by the parties. That can’t be right.
I dunno Rabbi. Ask her. This is my substack where I set out MY views. We aren't in court now. You clearly don't like my views but that is sadly for you irrelevant to my continuing to air them.
I already worked out whose Substack this was, thanks.
But if YOUR views constitute criticism of a judge for failing to make findings of fact he wasn’t invited to make, YOUR views are a little bit flawed and I don’t need your permission to point that out.
As an appeals court in the U.S. recently noted in a case now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, the “trans” community is not politically powerless. As such, it hardly needs special protection. Allison’s case is unnerving because, it seems to me, her former chambers, upon learning that an employee was a devout adherent of a religious denomination that Stonewall deems anti-trans, would also terminate that person’s employment to appease the petulant Stonewall. As a lawyer, I feel that I can adequately and equitably serve people whose beliefs or views I do not share. I certainly wouldn’t lurk behind the potted plants to leap out and attack “trans” people. Their concern for “feeling safe” is hyperbolic on a juvenile scale.
Ha! The 'trans community' is THE single most powerful political entity I have seen in my life time. Unsurprising, as it is largely compromised of wealthy, white middle aged men. Who now identity as women. The narrative of victimhood is carefully crafted and utterly bogus.
Hallmark of hate speech (https://decisions.chrt-tcdp.gc.ca/chrt-tcdp/decisions/en/item/6766/index.do.
“The targeted group is portrayed as a powerful menace that is taking control of the major institutions in society and depriving others of their livelihoods, safety, freedom of speech and general well-being … The targeted group is portrayed as preying upon children … The targeted group is blamed for the current problems in society and the world.”
Are you trying to stir up antisemitism deliberately or accidentally?
If those words and/ or my ethnicity move you to antisemitism, that’s on you.
That appeal court case is brilliant and very important and referred to in the latest episode of the Mess featuring Kara Dansky (plus amazing video from a New York council meeting):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMnPc1gPUnA&t=3s
Dusty
That’s a terrible argument. The Jewish community is hardly politically powerless. Should we be stripped of our protection as well?
surely this references men wearing woman face rather than Jews? It's how I read it.
I suspect the Rabbi may have an agenda
Lucky nobody could ever accuse you of that.
Pamela’s argument appears to be that communities who are “not politically powerless” should not receive the protection of the law.
Even if we accept for the sake of argument that the “protest” made by Stonewall to GCC did not meet the threshold for inducing GCC’s breach of EA, that same threshold does not apply to the evaluation of Stonewall’s conduct by parties such as GCC who have ended up severely penalised, with trashed reputations, for acting the way they did. They know perfectly well that it was Stonewall ‘wot dun it’.
In a rational world you would expect that any business that has acted illegally having been the recipient of a Stonewall nudge & wink would immediately terminate relations with them. Ok, that doesn’t get Stonewall humiliated in court, which would be nice, but it should be terminal for them as a trusted adviser.
I suppose it’s always possible that what you consider to be rugged common sense other people fundamentally disagree with.
Not in a rational world.
How breathtakingly arrogant
Not an expert on discrimination law or charity law. But find it hard to believe that the Charity Commission have nothing to say about Stonewall’s conduct. If not on this, on the pushing of employment policies that allow self identified trans people to use opposite sex changing rooms. This is not compliant with the Equality Act. And then there was contacting schools with inappropriate information. Time for the sort of complaint that LGB Alliance faced from Mermaids.
Precisely. The Public Inquiry is so urgent because the very bodies that should have stopped this in its tracks - the Charity Commission, the EHRC, the Children's Commissioners - have been so deafeningly silent and compliant. We have been left entirely unprotected and as individuals have had to raise the money and take on the enormous emotional burden of fighting this in court.
But didn’t you lot all say that the complaint against the LGB Alliance was a gross attempt to silence a charity’s freedom of speech? Surely you can’t endorse such tactics being used by your own side.
LGB Alliance was not giving incorrect legal advice to employers to whom they had charged money. Nor trying to contradict sensible advice about children identifying as trans to the latter’s health detriment. Whereas Stonewall was. It’s about how a charity should act. Lying about the law and charging for it is not OK. It’s quite different from exercising freedom of speech.
The issue is, who determines which speech is OK (“sensible advice”) and which isn’t (“lying about the law”)? You?
No, the Charity Commission to decide if conduct fits with charity law. If necessary the courts. I simply offer an opinion. But the courts won’t consider that a single space for women should be open to opposite sex people identifying as women if they don’t have a GRC and possibly even if they do.
The Charity Commission *has* decided that Stonewall’s conduct fits with charity law, though. That’s how Stonewall came to be a registered charity (and to retain that status for many, many years).
Decades ago. They need an update.
What a very disappointing judgment!
Thanks for your very helpful analysis, Sarah. I need to read through the judgment though I doubt I will be able to add to your analysis. What I keep coming back to is: GCC were not going to take action; then Stonewall complained; then they did take action.
Dusty
NB And I have asked my support cat and he agrees 😂
Yes. That’s striking isn’t it. I recall from the original hearing the ludicrous panic that gripped them as they faced a ‘Twitter storm’!! They were led by their Marketing Manager and they chucked out any consideration of respect for the Equality Act: indeed many senior members didn’t even know what it was as criminal lawyers.
But that isn’t true at all, Dusty. Bailey complained of multiple detriments (acts of discrimination), some of which happened *before* Stonewall wrote to GCC: see para 36 of the judgment. So you and your made-up cat would appear to have a poor grasp of the facts.
I’ll have to read the judgment Rabbi.
The cat is now very offended 😊
What a peculiar person this is. What on earth is the point of accusing you of having a 'made up cat' ?? He seems absurdly confrontational for anyone wanting a genuine discussion; so I assume he doesn't.
Yes indeed, Sarah!!??
Thanks again for your analysis
Dusty
Things have gone really wrong when stating scientific fact gets you sued.
Gender ideology is completely fake. Starting with its moral foundation, the suicide lie.
The fundamental point here is that Stonewall did *not* make a complaint at all. It sent an email, or “protest” in the Employment Tribunal’s words, telling GCC how strongly it objected to Bailey’s behaviour. That protest pleaded with GCC to “do the right thing” (an entirely open-ended request which might have been met by, for example, a statement by GCC reaffirming its support of and commitment to Stonewall’s values, such a statement being something GCC would have been perfectly entitled to publish given its Article 10 rights).
The fact that GCC, on the Employment Tribunal’s findings, fed Stonewall’s message into a disciplinary process which ended in a series of discriminatory acts by GCC, is not Stonewall’s fault.
The case may well have been very different if Stonewall had invoked a formal disciplinary process whereby a complaint triggers an investigation, a hearing, and a sanction drawn from a closed list eg reprimand, suspension, expulsion. In that scenario, if all of the substantive outcomes provided for by the process would have constituted discrimination, it may well be argued that Stonewall intended GCC to select one of them and thereby it caused, or attempted to cause, discrimination.
So, for example, in 2021, when a Daily Mail journalist made a formal complaint against me under my rabbinic college’s code of conduct, outraged that I manifested my gender identity beliefs by criticising Kathleen Stock, said journalist probably did cross the section 111 line in that the only possible outcomes to her complaint under the disciplinary process were that it would be dismissed (an outcome she plainly did not intend) or that it would result in a discriminatory disciplinary sanction against me (the outcome she plainly did intend, albeit she didn’t get her way).
But that isn’t anything like what happened here - and your own views on Stonewall’s “evil” nature obviously should not have swayed Mr Justice Bourne.
I have made the point I thought tolerably clearly in my post. Stonewall knew all it had to do was send some sloppy bollocks indicating its displeasure and that would instantly have a powerful impact on the organisation receiving it. That is the relevant context which the court ignored. I appreciate a court cannot enter into Public Inquiry territory - where I consider we now firmly are - but it should not ignore relevant context. Garden Court did NOT act like 'specialists in equality law'. They acted as bigoted discriminators and rightly paid the price. The actions and reactions of Stonewall, and the likely consequences, carefully nurtured over the years are very relevant here. This is part of the evil Parliament was supposed to be rooting out.
You did indeed make clear your opinion that “Stonewall knew all it had to do was send some sloppy bollocks indicating its displeasure and that would instantly have a powerful impact on the organisation receiving it.”
However, that was not a finding of fact that the Employment Tribunal made. Indeed I can’t even see that the Employment Tribunal was invited by Bailey to make such a finding. So it’s hard to fault the appellate judge for not taking it into consideration.
Sigh. That is the very essence of my challenge. The ET and the appellate court SHOULD have considered this. It was a perverse failure to not take this very relevant context into consideration. Whether this can go any further in the court context is unlikely. But we absolutely need a Public Inquiry into how the hell Stonewall was allowed to get away with this for so long, and an attempt to quantify the damage it has done to public life.
Then why didn’t Bailey make such an argument before the Employment Tribunal? And lead evidence?
When the Employment Tribunal made a finding of fact directly contrary to your argument here, why didn’t she challenge that finding on appeal?
Even if you’re right (which you can probably sense I dispute), you seem to be expecting the various judges to have considered arguments of their own motion and to rule on issues of fact not put to them by the parties. That can’t be right.
I dunno Rabbi. Ask her. This is my substack where I set out MY views. We aren't in court now. You clearly don't like my views but that is sadly for you irrelevant to my continuing to air them.
I already worked out whose Substack this was, thanks.
But if YOUR views constitute criticism of a judge for failing to make findings of fact he wasn’t invited to make, YOUR views are a little bit flawed and I don’t need your permission to point that out.