“I wish you a very nice pipebomb in mailbox.” Would it really be so unreasonable to expect a public statement of condemnation from the Prime Minister and Lord Herbert, his new Special Envoy on LGBT Rights, when one of the UK’s greatest writers and ambassadors, who has inspired and delighted a generation of children across the globe, is subjected to abusive murderous ideation in retaliation for her supporting women’s right to single-sex spaces? Why the deafening silence?
On 19 July, JK Rowling shared on social media that appalling “pipe bomb” message that she had received, with the reflection: “To be fair, when you can’t get a woman sacked, arrested or dropped by her publisher, and cancelling her only made her book sales go up, there’s really only one place to go.” On the same day, she wrote: “(N)ow hundreds of trans activists have threatened to beat, rape, assassinate and bomb me I’ve realised that this movement poses no risk to women whatsoever.” This sub-category of self-ID fanatics has succumbed to a disconnection from normal human relations and standards of acceptable conduct that expresses itself in a hatred towards women framed in imagery of violence and contemptuous sexual subjugation. Engagement in discussion and civil discourse is not a courtesy that would be extended to a category of people they so violently despise.
Given his dogged reticence, perhaps we might try to infer Lord Herbert’s unspoken views from what he has actually chosen to say. Such as, “I wouldn’t like to see the Government in any way take a side in what some are seeing clearly as a culture war on these issues,” (Times interview, 3 July): “these issues” being such matters as gender self-identification and the question of whether Government departments should unsubscribe from the Stonewall Diversity Champions Scheme.
Does JK Rowling have no claim, then, to this “kindness and tolerance” that he advocates? Are we to assume that the LGBT+ lobby has provided him with a special rainbow Sorting Hat that determines who is, and who is not, worthy of such beneficent grace?
In the Times interview, we are told Lord Herbert “says that he delivered a stern warning to his colleagues in Government wanting to join the battle against the LGBT activism. A warning he says that Johnson echoed”. Although Lord Herbert stated that the Government did not agree with all Stonewall’s demands – gender self-identification being a case in point – his endorsement of Stonewall UK was nonetheless effusive, heaping on praise for having “done brilliant work over the years to promote equality” and claiming Stonewall had “pointedly” been invited to the recent Pride Reception by the Prime Minister.
By contrast, LGB Alliance – the only national organisation dedicated to campaigning for the rights of same-sex oriented rather than “same-gender” oriented people – seems to have been “pointedly” snubbed from the reception. Lord Herbert’s adulation notwithstanding, the cash-register Stonewall of today is a far cry from the brave and worthy Stonewall of yesteryear; and the Government cannot legitimately claim to be protecting women’s and children’s rights by opposing transgender self-identification, while at the same time enthusiastically promoting and funding the very lobbyist outfit that is championing this obscene ideology.
Lord Herbert at Prime Minister’s Pride Reception (Twitter @nickherbertcbe)
Lord Herbert, who sounds depressingly like the “Special Envoy for Stonewall UK”, continues in his interview with further advice on the question of “taking sides”: “I don’t think that’s what the Government should be doing. I don’t think that’s what the Prime Minister wants us to do. I believe that that’s the view the Prime Minister takes and that’s why he said to the Cabinet this week that he wants to see kindness, tolerance, openness. That’s why he held the Pride reception. That’s why he’s appointed me as envoy. He is sending a very clear message about this, and I think he’s right to do so.”
Does JK Rowling have no claim, then, to this “kindness and tolerance” that he advocates? Are we to assume that the LGBT+ lobby has provided him with a special rainbow Sorting Hat that determines who is, and who is not, worthy of such beneficent grace?
Deranged LGBT+ lobby extremists who threaten and degrade women are not some kind of exempt category who should enjoy special dispensation from public condemnation, from the law, and from normal expectations of acceptable human conduct. Their abhorrent actions should not be glossed over as though they have some special entitlement that the rest of society does not possess.
Lord Herbert’s extremely ill-advised failure to issue a statement of public condemnation risks being interpreted by many as tacit condonation. Privately, we can obviously be certain he would never countenance threats of this kind, so why doesn’t he issue a public statement?
What conclusions are we to draw from Lord Herbert’s silence? One of the primary duties of a Special Envoy on LGBT Rights must surely be to keep his own side in check. By asserting proper boundaries, he should be acting as a solid role model to young people who may identify with the LGBT+ initialism, instead of signalling that it is fine to be a bystander when it suits you. Many young extreme gender ideologues will also be gauging what kind of behaviour is tolerated in the public square, and how much misogynistic abuse they will get away with.
An LGBT+ movement that fails to condemn outrageous and illegal behaviour from members of its own constituency will see its own reputation, and that of its representatives, increasingly damaged. Lord Herbert’s extremely ill-advised failure to issue a statement of public condemnation risks being interpreted by many as tacit condonation. Privately, we can obviously be certain he would never countenance threats of this kind, so why doesn’t he issue a public statement?
Many will interpret his public silence – accurately, in my view – as being motivated by fear, and as signalling capitulation. Lord Herbert will know only too well how quickly the Jacobins of the LGBT+ lobby misrepresent the views and actions of any heretic who fails to sign up to the whole extreme gender ideology credo.
He must know that, as soon as he defends JK Rowling’s right to express her opinion on single-sex spaces, and as soon as he publicly condemns the many violence, rape and death threats, then Lord Herbert himself will become the new target of LGBT+ lobby misrepresentation and vilification.
Let us also remember that JK Rowling’s opposition to gender self-identification is at least supposed to be the very same position that is held by the Prime Minister. Though we cannot know whether Mr Johnson’s shyly-held stance isn’t simply one of temporary political expediency. Perhaps all this recent Government LGBT+ bosh and bilge – the new Special Envoy, the Number 10 Pride Reception, and next year’s global LGBT+ conference – are happening merely in order to keep Stonewall sweet and to soften us all up for the eventual imposition of transgender self-identification legislation of the kind that would please the Prime Minister’s woke influencers and his paragon-of-the-moment, archwoke President Biden, as the Government strives for a UK-USA trade deal.
Tweet to JK Rowling: “I wish you a very nice pipebomb in mailbox”
On the subject of the Prime Minister’s 2022 LGBT+ genderfest – “Safe To Be Me: A Global Equality Conference” – the Government should spare a thought for all the gender-critical women for whom being “Safe To Be Me” is becoming increasingly difficult precisely because of the blind eye being turned to hate-filled misogynists who send rape and death threats. This is an inevitable outcome of the Government’s craven approach to the war on women’s fundamental rights, which is increasingly characterised by the extreme libertarianism of “devil take the hindmost”: a nihilistic moral bankruptcy and supreme dereliction of duty.
If it is anyone’s job to speak out against this extremism, then this duty surely falls to Lord Herbert as the Special Envoy. When he fails to speak out, and when so many other politicians, celebrities, and high-profile people fail to speak out, a clear message is sent to the misogynistic perpetrators of the present and the future: a message that they can now threaten and abuse women with impunity.
A brand-new injunction has been nailed on to the extreme LGBT+ credo: “Thou shalt not speak out against those who attack our opponents”, and it looks as though the Government is obediently falling into line.
A very worrying cultural shift is now in evidence, in what seems to be a new era of undisguised hatred and contempt towards women. Accordingly, the bar of tolerated abuse of women at the hands of a cadre of hateful extremists in the LGBT+ constituency is being raised very considerably. At the same time, so many of our politicians are choosing not to speak out against this abuse because they are frightened of becoming targets themselves.
It is one thing for the lobby groups themselves to remain silent while women are threatened by the most unhinged members of the demographic community whose political goals such groups represent. It is a far graver matter when the Government and its representatives also choose to respond with timorous silence. A brand-new injunction has been nailed on to the extreme LGBT+ credo: “Thou shalt not speak out against those who attack our opponents”, and it looks as though the Government is obediently falling into line.
Opposing the escalation of this rainbow totalitarianism is hardly an illegitimate engagement in a “culture war”. It is instead an assertion of the good citizen’s duty to protect fundamental human rights: a responsibility where the Government, in thrall to the misogynistic and homophobic LGBT+ lobby, is lamentably failing. Our Special Envoy on LGBT Rights – who might be more appropriately named “His Excellency, the Ambassador for Stonewall” – is signally failing to advocate for his exhortation to “kindness, tolerance, and openness” where it is most urgently needed.
Gary Powell is a gay man and has been active in gay politics since 1980. He is the Research Fellow for Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity at the Bow Group and the European Special Consultant to the Center for Bioethics and Culture.
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