Now they're criminalising parents

Transactivists' sinister obsession with child sexuality in Scotland enters a frightening new phase. We can't let it stand.

‘Supporting Transgender Pupils In Schools: Guidance for Scottish Schools’. 2021. Scottish Government. p.46

IN TRANSGENDER PSEUDOSCIENCE, a child’s understanding of himself and the world is dynamic and subject to change—with the exception of his perception of his gender which, it is claimed, is innate. A child is encouraged to believe that his sex is assigned, rather than determined, and that he can change it. At the transubstantive moment of declaration, the male literally becomes female. From that moment forward, he must be given access to spaces reserved for reasons of safety and dignity for females, including toilets, changing rooms, and prisons.

Shortly, if the Scottish Parliament has its way,¹ any parent, teacher, health care worker, or pastoral care worker in Scotland who teaches basic biological science to a child with the aim of helping them navigate the insurmountable contradictions that exist between scientific fact and transgender ideology can be sent to prison for up to seven years.

So it’s reasonable to ask—how is such coercively reformative policy even being considered?

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One clue is that advocates of such coercively reformative approaches to social change enjoy an especially powerful position in Scottish politics. The imposition by force of new standards and reforms, often at the expense of individual freedoms or traditional values, finds natural resonance with Scotland’s socialist instinct. For a Regional Administration desperate to confect regional difference, to foment identity grievance, and to divert attention away from its legislative incompetence, such policies—repackaged as “socially progressive”—are therefore a political gold mine.

So “socially progressive” lobbying in Scotland is a growth industry. In the period 2021-2024, Scottish taxpayers forked out over £24 million to fund it² —an astonishing sum, given the catastrophic cuts to services required by a £19 billion deficit in Scotland’s mismanaged public finances. And prominent in the list of recipients of this firehose of money are institutions that advance agendas referred collectively to as “LGBT”.³

There’s no reason to doubt that the majority of people employed in the LGBT industry are upright citizens who mean well. But given the influence that this industry has on public policy, we should not overlook its troubled history in Scotland—or the long shadow its troubled history casts today.

For example. One of its members, Ian Dunn, was a prominent Scottish gay rights campaigner and co-founder of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE). PIE promoted acceptance of adults having sex with children, and campaigned from 1974 to 1984 for the legalisation of sex between adults and children.⁴ The Ian Dunn Memorial Award for Activism was established after his death in 1998. One notable recipient of the award is Patrick Harvie, an LGBT activist and Scottish Green Party MSP. Another is Tim Hopkins, an LGBT activist and Director of the charity Equality Network, which receives £1,509,852 of Scottish taxpayer money to advance its “LGBTI” agenda.⁵

Another member, James Rennie, was a prominent Scottish gay rights campaigner, and Chief Executive of the charity LGBT Youth Scotland. In 2009, he was jailed for raping a baby, and for leading one of Scotland’s largest paedophile rings.⁶ LBGT Youth Scotland receives £863,671 of Scottish taxpayer money to advance its “LGBTQ+” agenda.

Given the scale of LGBT industry funding, and the extent to which Scottish institutions have been infiltrated by its activists, it is not surprising that those institutions are changing. One institution changing particularly rapidly is Scotland’s education system.

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A sense of the profound change taking place in schools can be gained from reading the Regional Administration’s “Supporting Transgender Pupils in Schools: Guidance for Scottish Schools”⁷. This was written for the administration by Stonewall, a charity that advances the LGBTQ+ agenda, and which receives £317,002 of taxpayer money. Here’s a flavour (my emphasis):

There is no law in Scotland which states that only people assigned male at birth can use men’s toilets and changing rooms, or that only people assigned female [at birth] can use women’s toilets and changing rooms. This is instead done by social convention. (p.26)

As a matter of scientific fact, the sex of a human is observed, not assigned, at birth. And the social convention is established on the fact that women are disproportionately the victims of predatory sexual behaviour perpetrated by men, that the risk from such predatory behaviour increases in spaces where women are required to be partially or fully undressed (such as toilets and changing rooms), for which dedicated spaces are a simple and effective remedy.

The Jesuit aphorism “Give me the boy, and I'll show you the man” expressed the power of conversion early in the life of a child to shape their character as an adult. By rejecting science, misleading schoolchildren with the pseudoscientific claim that their sex is arbitrary, and undermining long standing and well-founded social conventions for the safe regulation of relationships between men and women, schools in Scotland are engaging in an insidious form of conversion practice.⁸

And, as it turns out, the LGBT industry has a lot to say about conversion practices.

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In July 2020, the industry submitted petition “PE1817L: End Conversion Therapy”, calling on the Scottish Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to ban the provision or promotion of so-called “LGBT+ conversion therapy” in Scotland.⁹ The petition gained fewer than 6,000 signatures. But as evidence of the power of the LGBT lobby, it was debated by Parliament and passed to the Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee—the committee, composed largely of members of Ian Dunn Memorial Award recipient Patrick Harvies’ Green Party, that disbursed £24 million on such matters.

In November 2021, the Scottish Parliament, without any consultation with the public, announced that it had committed to “ending conversion practices as comprehensively as possible”, and was appointing an “expert group” i.e. activists from the LGBT industry, to devise the necessary legislation.¹⁰

In October 2022, the activist group published its demands.¹¹ They are nothing if not ambitious. LGBT ideology conversion practices, they claim, are not unlawful. But any effort to protect a child from LGBT ideology conversion practices (this effort confusingly redefined—presumably deliberately—as ‘conversion practice’) should be a criminal act. The definition of ‘conversion practice’ i.e. efforts to protect a child from LGBT conversion ideology—should be as wide as possible, extending to anywhere in the world. Accusation of criminality should extend to associates of the accused. Lack of intention to harm should not be admissible as defence. Procurement of consent from the child should not be admissable as defence. Conviction should attract a prison sentence of up to seven years. Children should be separated from their parents. Health and pastoral care workers should be stripped of their livelihoods. Churches should be stripped of their charitable status. LGBT conversion ideology activists should be given wide reaching powers to discover and criminalise anyone who opposes their ideology.

In an especially Orwellian touch, such coercively reformative legislation does not, in the opinion of LGBT activists, lead to the unlawful restriction of the freedom of speech, religion and belief of parents, health care workers, and pastoral care workers because “a prohibition of the practice is justified and necessary” (ibid. p3).

LGBT activists are well aware of the risks inherent in their bold attempt to legally privilege LGBT conversion practices by criminalising opposition to them, and take active measures to mitigate those risks. In December 2022, the Scottish Parliament’s Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee met to receive the LGBT activist’s demands.¹² LGBT activist and Scottish Green Party MSP Maggie Chapman began by confusing her role as an LGBT activist with her role as a Member of the Scottish Parliament sworn to represent all of her constituents. After referring to “our report”—by which she meant, “their report”—she crudely redefined LGBT conversion practices as “affirmative care”, and asked her fellow LGBT activists: “How do we ensure ‘affirmative care’ is still OK? Because we all know it’s important”. LGBT conversion practice is OK, we learned, because—unlike a loving parent’s concern for their child’s wellbeing and happiness—it “validates and supports the identity and lived experience expressed and stated by an individual”.

The hearing makes startling listening.

These people really—really—want unfettered access to your children.

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At its core, trans ideology—like many ideologies—is a deception originating in a particle of truth. Is there prejudice in Scottish society towards gay people, or women, or black people, or people who wish to act as members of the opposite sex? Of course. And towards white people, and to boys, and to the ginger haired, and to almost any other group you can define distinguishing attributes for. It’s inherent in human societies.

But is Scottish society as a whole, to use their term, “transphobic”? Outside of the £28-million-a-year LGBT industry of activists that depend for their livelihood on the perception that the claim is true, there is no evidence to support it.

On the contrary. Most people—including me—believe that everyone should be able to live without fear, and to pursue happiness in whatever form that takes—on the condition that it does not interfere with the ability of another to do the same.

So if a man invites me to participate in the fiction that he is a woman then, provided that I am not compelled to do so i.e. to deny scientific truth, and provided that doing so harms neither him nor someone else, I’ll do so. I’ll further stipulate that most people will.

What I cannot do, in participating in that fiction, is legitimise something that would result in harm to others.

Allowing men, by pretending that they are women, to enter spaces where women are vulnerable, harms women. Confusing children about biological science at a time when they are at their most vulnerable, and destroying the barriers we have in place between them and those who would exploit their confusion to violate them, harms children.

We cannot let it stand.

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We’ve been here before, and recently. Last year, objections to the Regional Assembly’s attempt—instigated by the LGBT ideology activist community—to place convicted male rapists in women’s prisons were rejected with the naive claim that criminally minded men would not take advantage of misguided legal protections and lowered barriers to women to gain access to them. Within days, they were proven wrong.¹³

The LGBT ideology activist community that has lobbied for sex between adults and children, and produced a paedophile rapist and group ringleader, now claims that paedophiles will not take advantage of legal privileges and lowered barriers to children to gain access to them.

Do we have to wait for them, through some horrific tragedy, to be proven wrong before overturning these new demands?

If you think we shouldn’t, you might care to write to your MSP or, outwith Scotland, to your MP, to share your concern. The Free Speech Union provides a template that makes doing so as easy as possible. Time is short. Do please use it.

Richard Lyon
Edinburgh, May 2024

1. Scottish Government. ‘Ending Conversion Practices’. 2024. 9 January 2024. http://www.gov.scot/news/ending-conversion-practices-1/.

2. Scottish Government. ‘Equality and Human Rights Fund: Projects Funded’. n.d. Accessed 12 January 2024. http://www.gov.scot/publications/equality-and-human-rights-fund-projects-funded/.

3. …or “LGBTQ+”, “LGBTI”, “LGBTQIA+”, “LGBTQQIAAP”, etc. For a helpful guide to the rapidly expanding list of of potential components, see e.g. ‘List of LGBTQ+ Terms’. 2020. Stonewall. 28 May 2020. https://www.stonewall.org.uk/list-lgbtq-terms.

4. ‘Paedophile Information Exchange’. 2023. In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Paedophile_Information_Exchange&oldid=1184580963.

5. No allegation of misconduct by either Mr Harvie or Mr Hopkins is intended or implied.

6. Carrell, Severin. 2009. ‘Scottish Paedophile Ring Found Guilty of More than 50 Charges’. The Guardian, 7 May 2009, sec. UK news. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2009/may/07/scottish-paedophile-ring-guilty-child-abuse.

7. ‘Supporting Transgender Young People in Schools: Guidance for Scottish Schools’. 2021. Scottish Government. http://www.gov.scot/publications/supporting-transgender-young-people-schools-guidance-scottish-schools/.

8. Trans ideology claims an absence of any meaningful relationship between sex and gender, and rejects cultural, traditional, and religious perspectives that conflict with their preferred interpretation of it.

9. ‘PE1817 End Conversion Therapy’. 2020. 16 July 2020. https://www.parliament.scot/get-involved/petitions/view-petitions/pe1817-end-conversion-therapy.

10. ‘Ending Conversion Practices’. 2021. 18 November 2021. http://www.gov.scot/news/ending-conversion-practices-1/.

11. Behrens, Paul. 2022. ‘Expert Advisory Group on Ending Conversion Practices: Report and Recommendations’. http://www.gov.scot/publications/expert-advisory-group-ending-conversion-practices-report-recommendations/.

12. Equalities, Human Rights and Civil Justice Committee. 2022. Scottish Parliament: Scottish Parliament TV. http://www.scottishparliament.tv/meeting/equalities-human-rights-and-civil-justice-committee-december-13-2022.

13. ‘Nicola Sturgeon: Rapist Isla Bryson “almost Certainly” Faking Trans Status - BBC News’. n.d. Accessed 12 January 2024. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-64501436.