A newly formed lesbian, gay and bisexual alliance group in the UK has come under heavy criticism for making their focus of issues pertaining to ” the right of lesbians, bisexuals and gay men to define themselves as same-sex attracted.” and for excluding the transgender community, prompting some to label it transphobic for its vision that ” gender is a social construct.”

Bev Jackson, a co-founder of the Gay Liberation Front one of the first gay activists groups formed after the Stonewall riots of 1969 and spokesperson for the LGB Alliance, told  Britian’s The Independent: “​We did not, do not, exclude trans people. Several trans people attended the meeting, one as a guest speaker. We are not attacking trans people.

“Our group focuses on sexual orientation. This has become necessary, because lesbians in particular, and recently gay men too, are suffering from the confusion between sex and gender. Lesbians and gay men are people who are attracted to others of the same sex. I fought for their rights to be respected fifty years ago and am sad that I need to defend those rights again today.”

Stonewall UK , Britain’s main LGBT activism and charity group has been trying to distance itself from the new group after reports have claimed the that major supporters and donors of the new LGB group have left Stonewall and are now supporting them.

Paul Twocock, Stonewall’s interim CEO said: “There is no truth to reports of Stonewall ‘splitting’, so please ignore the alarmist headlines.

“These stories don’t refer to any current Stonewall staff or trustees. There is no equality for lesbian, gay and bi people without equality for trans people. We’re all united in our mission to achieve acceptance without exception for all LGBT+ people.”

LGBTQ+ rights activist Alok Vaid-Menon, took to Instagram to condemn the group. 

“A new trans + non binary exclusionary alliance organization between cis lesbian, gay, + bisexual people was just announced in the UK as a reaction to the quote rise in ‘gender extremism.’ Let’s be clear: the real extreme gender ideology is the colonial gender binary forcibly imposed on indigenous peoples across the world, erasing thousands of alternative gender-sex systems, responsible for countless murders of trans + gender variant people + spreading the pervasive myth that we are ‘new.

Feminism without respecting trans women & non-binary people is just patriarchy,” they continued. “Reducing women to their genitalia & reproductive capacity is just misogyny. Fortifying gender and sex binaries is not progressive, it is racist and conservative.”

Comments on Twitter have also not been kind to Britain’s new LGB Alliance.

Does the LGBTQIA+ umbrella always have to be together? Or should specific sub-sections of our community be allowed to work separately or together on their own issues without being labeled “phobic”?

Leave your comments below.