Denise Findlay, an Alba candidate, posted on Twitter, “Margaret Lynch on queer theory – the next move is to reduce the age of consent to 10 years of age. LGBT youth and Stonewall Scotland have signed up to this and have received over 1 million pounds of Scottish Government funding.”
Margaret Lynch, who apparently originated this comment is another Alba candidate, and one who in the blog Wings Over Scotland on 31 March referred to transgender women as, quote, “crossdressers – but not real women”. Denise Findlay later deleted her Tweet, but not before she had managed to set the heather on fire among the transphobic Twitterati.
What Lynch and Findlay are alluding to is a declaration read out in the United Nations on 9 March 2020 by the International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA), which adopted the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women, 25 years after their declaration, commonly known as “the Beijing Declaration”. The declaration, which it’s critics have been very careful to omit it’s origins lie with the UN, has some paragraphs which have been carefully cherry-picked, and taken completely out of context, to claim that the IGLA are promoting paedophilia.
When one looks at these paragraphs, and takes them in context, we can see that far from harming children and adolescents they in fact aim to protect them and to further their individual rights. The passages come from clause 14 in the declaration, with the critics very carefully picking out 14a and 14g, as follows:
14. Respect the rights of all individuals to exercise autonomy over their lives, including their sexualities, identities and bodies, desires and pleasures free from all types of discrimination, coercion and violence, and fully realize sexual and reproductive rights, and ensure bodily autonomy, integrity and sovereignty, by taking the following actions:
a. Eliminate all laws and policies that punish or criminalize same-sex intimacy, gender affirmation, abortion, HIV transmission non-disclosure and exposure, or that limit the exercise of bodily autonomy, including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex or sexual and reproductive health services or laws authorizing non-consensual abortion, sterilization, or contraceptive use;
g. End the criminalization and stigmatization of adolescents’ sexuality, and ensure and promote a positive approach to young people's and adolescents’ sexuality that enables, recognizes, and respects their agency to make informed and independent decisions on matters concerning their bodily autonomy, pleasure and fundamental freedoms;
Now, let’s go through this carefully.
“Respect the rights of all individuals to exercise autonomy over their lives, including their sexualities, identities and bodies, desires and pleasures free from all types of discrimination, coercion and violence”
That statement right there speaks of the right to bodily autonomy, and that everybody should be free of, quote, “coercion and violence”. That right away tells us that nobody has the right to coerce or force anyone else against their will, and that includes over their sexualities, identities (which can include gender), and their bodies (which of course can include gender corrective surgery). The declaration goes on to state that it is their aim to “fully realize sexual and reproductive rights, and ensure bodily autonomy, integrity and sovereignty” This again is about autonomy over ones life and body; with the goal being that everyone has the sexual and reproductive rights, which no other person has any right to dictate.
So we come to the part the transphobes are pouncing upon;
“Eliminate all laws and policies that punish or criminalize same-sex intimacy, gender affirmation, abortion, HIV transmission non-disclosure and exposure, or that limit the exercise of bodily autonomy, including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex or sexual and reproductive health services or laws authorizing non-consensual abortion, sterilization, or contraceptive use”
Those who are trying to play “GOTCHA!” with the SNP are concentrating upon that line, “including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex” to try to make out that this means a lowering of the age of consent – when it does no such thing.
Their argument is that the United Nations defines adolescence being from between 10 to 19 years of age, and there is where the “reduce the age of consent to 10 years of age” claim comes from. In fact, under the UN definition, one may already be classed as an adolescent, but still be beyond the age of consent in many countries, including Scotland, where the age of consent is 16. Can we assume then that if Margaret Lynch and Denise Findlay do not want ‘adolescents’ being able to consent to sex, that while falsely claiming that LGBT Youth, Stonewall Scotland, and the SNP seek to lower the age of consent to 10, they would in fact like it raised to 20 years old? Or would it be farcical of me to make any such claim? As farcical as them attempting to smear two vital LGBT charities and the democratically-elected Scottish Government? Indeed, could it be I’m taking them out of context? Hey, I’m merely playing their game, and they can hardly blame me for jumping the shark and making false accusations in exactly the same way they are.
So we come to paragraph g.
“End the criminalization and stigmatization of adolescents’ sexuality, and ensure and promote a positive approach to young people's and adolescents’ sexuality that enables, recognizes, and respects their agency to make informed and independent decisions on matters concerning their bodily autonomy, pleasure and fundamental freedoms”
Again, here the transphobes are concentrating upon “End the criminalization and stigmatization of adolescents’ sexuality” and are trying to claim that this means removing the protection in law for children, when again, it is saying no such thing. In fact, all this paragraph does is recognise that adolescents do indeed have attractions and sexual longings. Yes, that’s right, Missus, they do – as most parents of teenagers, particularly teenage boys, will tell you. Trust me, that funk you smell in the bedroom of any teenage boy is not just from dirty socks. I sincerely doubt that I was alone when I was a teenager of turning my bedroom into some sort of ‘masturbation furnace’.
You’ll notice that the transphobes are very careful to ignore the rest of paragraph g; the part that averts their rights to make “informed and independent decisions on matters concerning bodily autonomy, pleasure and fundamental freedoms”. I hate to inform the doubters, but your teenage daughters and sons do indeed have sexual longings and fantasies, and they do indeed, gasp, masturbate. Quick! Someone pass Margaret and Denise the smelling salts. They and others can live in ignorance in Gumdrop Castle in Lala Land, and do a Helen Lovejoy by throwing up their hands in horror and shouting “Won’t somebody PLEASE think of the children?” all they want, but that does not and never will alter the fact that each and every one of us is a sexual being from puberty onwards – get used to it. Of course, it may be that Margaret Lynch and Denise Findlay never had sexual longings as teenage girls, and never masturbated. To use a well-known Scots phrase, “Aye! Right” (actually, if they didn’t that may explain a lot).
As every adolescent is indeed a sexual being, as you and I are, and were from puberty (deny it all you want – you know I’m telling the truth), they should not be at all stigmatised for that, no matter their sexual orientation or gender identity, and they should be accorded the freedoms to explore those aspects of their personalities, free of interference, free of shame, and free of governmental legislation preventing them doing so. This is all the declaration is saying, nothing more.
It most certainly not the “paedophiles charter” some are making it out to be. And actually, by levelling claims of paedophilia, the panic merchants are wrong again. Paedophilia refers only to the sexual attraction to prepubescent children. The term for sexual attraction to underage pubescent adolescents is hebephilia.
The Beijing Declaration absolutely does not propose lowering the age of consent, and it does not remove the protections in law for children, whether adolescent or prepubescent. In fact, in averring the rights of bodily autonomy, it underlines the right of children to protection from those who would form them. Consider that the overwhelming majority of children who are victims of sexual abuse have no bodily autonomy; they are almost always coerced or forced into sexual activities. In law, those under the age of consent are deemed incapable of consenting to sexual activities, so the onus is always upon the adult concerned, and that is why child sexual abuse is always deemed to be statutory rape.
There are of course a tiny, tiny number of adolescents who do indeed initiate sexual congress, either with another underage person, or with an adult, and guess what? The adult is still to blame, and is still committing statutory rape. Why? Because the adult is supposed to be the responsible one, who should know better, and if they give into the demands of child, they are still the ones to blame. So another aspect of the declaration is that children who do initiate sexual contact should not be stigmatised or blamed for that, because guess what? Children often make mistakes, and get themselves into situations they think they can handle, but realise too late that they are in way over their heads. I like the way sexologist Roy Eskapa put this in his book, Bizarre Sex; that a child may think they can drive a car, but if you were to put a child behind the wheel of a car in traffic, they would be horrified (or at the least would very quickly discover they had got themselves into a situation they could not handle).
Child molesters, be they paedophiles or hebephiles, are among the most manipulative of people in the world. They tend to be inadequate adults who seek control over others. There is certainly a sexual aspect to their actions, but this is allied to a need to assert authority over those less able to defend themselves. In this aspect we can see that the child molester, like all abusers, is a bully, and in the nature of the bully, a coward at heart. Needless to say, vulnerable children, perhaps those who lack confidence, or who already suffering some other kind of abuse, are a magnet to such individuals. They will hone in on them, pretend to love them, and then make their move. The Beijing Declaration in fact seeks to protect adolescents and children from such perverts by asserting that they, and they alone, have autonomy over their own lives and their own bodies.
But
hey, the Beijing Declaration, in asserting that bodily autonomy is
also stating that no-one has any right to dictate the sexual or
gender identities of adolescents and children; that no-one has the
right to tell them, “You’re NOT trans” or “You’re NOT gay”,
or to threaten or coerce them, or indeed subject them to violence.
It seems to me that those against the Beijing Declaration have much
more in common with child molesters than the very children they claim
to be protecting. If
they are denying the gender and sexual identities of young people,
they are certainly abusing them.
And this is one aspect of this latest rhetoric which I do find disturbing. I have been saying since their formation that the Alba Party is full of transphobes. This I have come to expect. I never for one moment suspected them of also being homophobes, particularly as there are some lesbians in the party, but in attacking LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland in making false claims about IGLA, the attackers are partaking in one of the oldest homophobic tropes going. The argument is that because LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland signed up to IGLA, both of these charities must be in some great conspiracy to lower the age of consent, and make the molestation of children legal.
Should anyone doubt this, I would point them to the Wings Over Scotland blog of 10 April 2020, The Paedophile Charter. In this odious title (with an incorrect title – see point above about hebephilia), the originator of ‘Wings’, Rev Stuart Campbell, makes the point that both LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland are indeed signatories to the IGLA Charter. He then points to a Guardian story from 2009, telling how a then Chief Executive of LGBT Youth Scotland was one of a paedophile ring convicted of 50 charges of sexually abusing young boys. Campbell states, “LGBT Youth Scotland was at the centre of Scotland’s biggest ever paedophile scandal” Not so. The then Chief Executive was, but not the charity. This is putting two and two together to get five. If LGBT Youth Scotland had been at the centre of a paedophile ring, they would have been closed down long ago.
And in case you missed it, the conviction of the men concerned had absolutely nothing to do with gender identity. None of them identified as transgender. They did indeed molest little boys, and the inference here is that they did so because they are gay. Actually, as any sexual therapist who deals with paedophiles will tell you, even those men who prey upon little boys are almost always heterosexual, and many have expressed horror and even anger when a sexual encounter with another adult male has been suggested to them. Note the point again about paedophilia having a control / power dynamic.
But not happy with thus trying to smear two charities, Campbell jumps the shark even further, and makes the point that until 2017, one of LGBT Youth Scotland’s directors was openly gay SNP politician Alyn Smith, MP for Stirling. Campbell, in totally homophobic language even refers to him as ‘Alyn “Daddy Bear” Smith’. Alyn Smith had no part in the 2009 convictions, has never been involved in any criminal case involving children, but the inference here is that because he was a LGBT Youth director, he somehow must be involved.
How Campbell gets away with these vile accusations is beyond me, and it would give me the greatest of pleasure to see LGBT Youth Scotland, Stonewall Scotland, the SNP, and Alyn Smith sue the socks off him.
Margaret Lynch, Denise Findlay, Rev Stuart Campbell and others are trying to build a conspiracy out of nothing, in much the same way that there are people who try to claim that global finance is controlled by the Jews, or that Bill Gates is trying to depopulate the world. And we could just as easily laugh at them and the rest of the Alba Party, were they not so bloody dangerous. They already have followers believing them, and who are attacking LGBT Youth Scotland and Stonewall Scotland. This could do enormous damage to LGBT people – all LGBT people – in Scotland. I tried to warn people for years that the independence movement had a disturbing number of transphobes. Seems I should have been warning them about homophobia as well.
I’m not even convinced that those named above, and others making these false accusations do not know what they are doing, or the potential for damage it has, and in fact, I don’t think they even care. They claim to want to ‘help’ the SNP to get a supermajority, and to work with the SNP, but they seem intent on attacking the SNP at every turn, even if that means throwing Scotland’s LGBT people under the bus.
The twisting of the IGLA / Beijing Declaration seems to say that they want to deny adolescents their right to bodily autonomy, or that any mention of such should never be heard. It’s not unlike the hugely damaging law of Section 28, which outlawed the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality in schools, which made any mention of being gay illegal, and which led to gay / lesbian young people being stigmatised, bullied, made to feel ashamed and guilty for their sexuality, and did indeed destroy many lives. And if they are seeking to deny young people access to sexual / reproductive health and birth control, well we have already seen the effects of that in some ‘abstinence only’ states in the USA, and some other countries; they end up having the highest incidence of teenage pregnancies, and of teenagers contracting STDs.
All in all, it smacks a bit like some authoritarian, right-wing state, which seeks to enforce sexual and gender laws under some religious pretext, that they know what’s best for children and young people, and anything LGBT is ‘sinful’. Is there any proof for this? Well, we are talking about the Reverend Stuart Campbell – that is a ‘reverend’ of the Universal Life Church; an internet organisation with no legal recognition as an official church – so we may be seeing yet another religious bigot appointing himself moral guardian, and trying to enforce his beliefs upon all of us.
Stuart Campbell does not even live in Scotland, but rather Bath, England. It is true that as a supporter of Scottish independence, I do not want legislation in my country dictated from London – and I don’t want it from bloody Bath, or anywhere else outwith Scotland, either.
And if we ever get independence, but that independence ignores the rights of LGBT people, and castigates them, then I should want no part of that. Any independent Scotland must be just and equitable for all who live here. If we leave one person behind, then we fail as a movement, as a people, and as a nation, and that would be a free Scotland not worth having.
As the song goes, “One of us are chained? None of us are free.”
By the way, when asked why she removed the Tweet, Denise Findlay claimed she was the one being bullied. You couldn't make this shit up.
