Bake Off’s Matt Lucas dubs LGB Alliance an ‘anti-trans group’ that doesn’t represent gay people
So, who is going to take over from Matt Lucas in the Bake Off tent? (Getty/Jeff Spicer)
Matt Lucas hit out at the LGB Alliance as an “anti-trans hate group” after it was welcomed to the upcoming Conservative Party Conference.
The charity and political group was founded in 2019 in opposition to Stonewall’s policies on transgender inclusion. Its website says it promotes the interests of lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but its goals have largely focused solely on trans people.
The group’s followers have hounded mental health charities, midwifery magazines and animal rescue centres that advocate for trans rights, and the group itself recently compared LGBT+ inclusion to bestiality.
Despite this the Tories have agreed to provide the group with a promotional stand at the Conservative Party Conference next week, a decision that has dismayed many in the wider LGBT+ community.
Matt Lucas made his thoughts clear in a tweet on Thursday (30 September), saying: “The LGB Alliance is an anti-trans group. That’s all it is. It doesn’t represent me or any gay people I care to know.”
The Great British Bake Off host is among the best-known queer people on British television, though he himself has faced criticism in the past for the use of transphobic stereotypes in Little Britain sketches.
Lucas has apologised for the inclusion of the character, as well as the show’s use of Blackface and other outdated stereotypes.
“If I could go back and do Little Britain again, I wouldn’t make those jokes about transvestites,” he said in 2017. “I wouldn’t play Black characters. Basically, I wouldn’t make that show now. It would upset people.”
The LGB Alliance has yet to respond to Lucas’ tweet. It has previously denied that it is a transphobic group, claiming on its website that this accusation is a “myth”.
“The issues and priorities for people who are attracted to the same sex (homosexual/bisexual) are different from those of transgender people, and so, with a number of organisations focused on trans people and trans issues, our focus is on lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people and their issues,” they write.
When it applied for charity status the LGB Alliance claimed to the Charity Commission that its purposes are the protection of human rights and the promotion of equality for LGB people.
But in a March 2020 speech, LGB Alliance director Bev Jackson said the organisation was formed “to challenge the dominance of those who promote the damaging theory of gender identity”.
The Charity Commission’s decision to register the LGB Alliance as an official charity is now subject to an appeal lodged by the trans children’s charity Mermaids.
“Charitable status is for those who serve the public good,” said Jolyon Maugham, director of the Good Law Project.
“Denigrating trans people, attacking those who speak for them, and campaigning to remove legal protections from them is the very opposite of a public good. We do not believe they meet the threshold tests to be registered as a charity.”
