Pride in Surrey have hit out at the LGB Alliance and Surrey Police & Crime Commissioner Lisa Townsend, branding the Alliance a ‘hate group’ and Townsends rhetoric ‘exclusionary’.
Representatives of the organisation attended the protest of the LGB Alliance conference seeking to raise awareness of Townsends anti-trans views.
“We think that the LGB Alliance is a hate group and we cannot abide their trans exclusionary agenda” Kel Finan-Cooke, head of PR and communications for Pride in Surrey, told us outside the venue.
“The police and crime commissioner for Surrey Lisa Townsend is giving a speech here today and we have made it our mission to call out Lisa Townsend whenever she is displaying these views.”
Townsend, who was recently elected as Surrey’s Police & Crime Commissioner representing the Conservative Party, has hit out at Stonewall claiming their trans inclusion work is a ‘danger to women’ and has advocated for potentially infringing the Equality Act when it comes to trans inclusion.
Finan-Cooke also criticised the Charity Commission’s decision to grant the LGB Alliance charity status:
“We’re doing everything we can at pride in surrey to work with the charity commission to have their charity status removed, we don’t believe they should have charitable status. The misinformation that’s coming out of this conference all today, we’ve already had a tory MP come out and tell us children are being sterilised when they identify as trans and this is just simply not true. This is misinformation and people are hearing this and believing this and we can’t allow an organisation that’s got the profile of the LGB Alliance to be spreading this kind of information because people are misinformed and basing their opinions on misinformation.”
When we asked if Pride in Surrey’s views are shared by other LGBT+ Pride organisations, Finan-Cooke has this to say:
“Overwhelmingly most pride organisations are against the LGB Alliance, they do not represent us. We are entirely different groups. Pride organisations are here to represent our whole community and we are pride with the T. We are not going to pull the ladder up behind us, and exclude from trans people because gay people have already gained rights, it’s about fighting for our whole community, it’s about allies fighting for our community and it’s about equality.”
The LGB Alliance have been held up in the UK media as representative of a significant portion of the LGBT community. But according to Pride in Surrey, this is very much not the case.
Here is our full interview with Kel Finan-Cooke:
