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Stonewall chief criticised for Uganda gay ban remarks

By Ewan Somerville

STONEWALL’S boss has been accused of incorrectly suggesting that gendercritical campaigners support Uganda’s gay ban.

Nancy Kelley, the chief executive of the charity, lashed out at “anti-gender” and “trans-hostile” groups after the African nation passed a law making it illegal to identify as LGBT. In a tweet yesterday, Ms Kelley shared a video of the Ugandan parliament applauding the move, writing: “The anti-gender movement has been funnelling cash and strategy into countries around the world for decades. This is ‘winning’ for them. This is the world we enable with our complacency. Solidarity to our LGBTQ family in Uganda.”

She added: “Many trans-hostile individuals and actors like to pretend the UK anti-trans moral panic is a distinct phenomenon. It isn’t.”

But her comments triggered a widespread backlash from gay and women’s groups who accused her of homophobia and called for her resignation, while pointing out the lack of evidence for such a broad assertion.

Gender-critical activists interpreted Ms Kelley’s comments as an attack on them, though Stonewall later claimed that she was referring to an anti-un international movement.

Bev Jackson, the co-founder of the charity LGB Alliance which formed in opposition to Stonewall’s gender identity stance, said Ms Kelley’s tweet was “utterly disgusting”. “Trying to equate LGB activists with fanatical and wellfunded evangelical homophobes is really the lowest of the low,” she said.

LGB Alliance sponsored Uganda Pride last year and also invited Isaac Mugisha, the chair of the Ugandan Pride movement and the leading opponent of hostile laws in the country, to its London conference. It organised a meeting between him and an LGBT group of Parliamentarians.

Kate Harris, another co-founder of the group, said: “We should be united in our commitment to do all we can to support [gay Ugandans] and reverse this appalling legislation.”

Homosexual acts are already illegal in Uganda but the new Bill introduces many criminal offences, including the death penalty, and makes merely identifying as gay illegal for the first time.

Heather Binning, from the Women’s Rights Network, said: “This is a resignation matter for Kelley. We hope that she has the courage to resign.”

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2023-03-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

2023-03-25T07:00:00.0000000Z

https://dailytelegraph.pressreader.com/article/281539410207014

Daily Telegraph