The Death of Stonewall

The news that the Supreme Court had ruled that the legal interpretation of the definition of a woman under the terms of the Equality Act 2010 was based on biological sex came as a huge blow to gender ideologues across the nation, but it most certainly came as a bitter blow to the charity Stonewall.

Stonewall began its life as a campaign group for the promotion of the rights of gay, lesbian and bisexual people and, since its inception in 1989, has carried out remarkable work on behalf of these groups. Noteworthy campaigns have included the repeal of the ban on lesbians and gay men from serving in the armed forces, pressing for changes in the law to allow gay and lesbian couples to adopt children in the same manner as mixed sex couples, equalisation of the age of consent for all adults to 16 years of age and the introduction of civil partnerships for same-sex couples.

With these laudable aims achieved and with gay marriage passed into law in England and Wales in March of 2014 and in Scotland in the December of the same year, the final major campaigning hurdle for Stonewall had been cleared. With the legalisation of gay marriage, Stonewall faced a dilemma: should the charity devolve its work to the regions, essentially breaking itself up and focusing its future work in local areas and on local issues, or should Stonewall remain a national charity and seek a new social justice cause, which would maintain its status, budget and sizeable staffing headcount. 

Stonewall chose the latter option: Their new social justice cause was Gender Ideology.

What is Gender Identity Ideology?

Gender Identity Ideology, more often termed simply as Gender Ideology, holds the belief that gender – the differences which exist between human males and females – is not based on biological sex, but is in fact a social construct, inculcated in children from birth – from their parents initially, then through schooling and then wider society as they grow into adults.

Gender Ideology holds the belief that the ‘gender identity’ of a person can be incongruent with that person’s biological sex. In essence, gender ideology asserts that a person’s gender is a feeling that comes from within and, if it isn’t in accord with that person’s biological sex, it must be affirmed – both by law and by wider society.

In the event of there being an antagonism between a person’s gender identity and their biological sex, which can manifest itself in a condition known as ‘gender dysphoria’, then medical interventions including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and operations to remove genitals and breasts can be deployed to help the person find their ‘authentic self’.

Gender Recognition and the Two Acts of Parliament

There are two important acts of parliament which interact with each other and upon which Stonewall has based its campaigning work since 2014 – the first is the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the other is the Equality Act 2010.

The Gender Recognition Act 2004 allows people who have gone through a process of ‘socialisation’ as a person of the opposite sex for at least two years and have a formal diagnosis of Gender Dysphoria from a doctor to receive a Gender Recognition Certificate, which would legally change their gender. There is no requirement under this act to go through any medical intervention (what used to be called a ‘sex change’) in order to attain a Gender Recognition Certificate.

The Equality Act 2010 affords legal protections against discrimination, harassment and/or victimisation for people with ‘protected characteristics’, which includes religion, race, sex, disability, sexual orientation and gender reassignment. It is an act not without its controversy – for instance when the law came into effect, some Christian charities which assisted in the adoption of children were forced to close because they precluded themselves from adopting children to gay couples for religious reasons. Meanwhile the act provides for ‘indirect discrimination’, however this term and the provisions within the act have been incredibly difficult to prove and have been very patchy in their application.

Gender Ideology and Stonewall

Stonewall’s dramatic change in strategy and emphasis which came after the legalisation of gay marriage has meant that they have largely set aside their campaigning work for the rights of lesbian, gay and bisexual people and have focused instead on promoting gender ideology – even when that campaigning has, in the views of some activists, had a deleterious effect on the rights and interests of lesbian, gay and bisexual people.

Stonewall’s decision to pivot towards promoting this ideology has included pressing for changes to both the Gender Recognition Act 2004 and the Equality Act 2010 to allow people to ‘self-identify’ into whatever gender that they believe is most appropriate for them and, in turn, be free to gain access to single-sex spaces – including changing rooms, toilets and women’s rape crisis centres, on the basis of this gender identity.

Stonewall’s gender ideology activism over the last ten or so years has resulted in:

• Stonewall delivering training and training materials for organisations, including trade unions and public sector employers, which represents gender identity ideology as settled fact despite many of its tenets, including that gender is assigned at birth, that gender is a spectrum, that individuals can identify into any gender that they choose and that the definition of lesbians and gays is not same sex attraction but same gender attraction, are disputed by many within the LGBT community and beyond.

• Stonewall gave advice on the legal interpretation of the Equality Act 2010 to Essex University which, following an independent report commissioned by the university which published its findings in May 2021, was found to be based not on an interpretation of the law as it stood, but of the law as Stonewall would have preferred it to stand, which not only was illegal but placed the university in a position where they were potentially liable to litigation.

• Stonewall attempted to suppress an investigation, carried out by the BBC and published in October 2021, into lesbians being pressured into having sex with trans women, making the claim that debating the issue was tantamount to ‘sexual racism’. Stonewall’s CEO at the time, Nancy Kelley, framed the reporting of the issue by the BBC as ‘transphobic’ and made the leap that lesbians who wanted to have sex with only female-bodied people were also transphobic.

• Stonewall has fully supported the experimental medicalisation of children and young people experiencing gender dysphoria, many of whom have pre-existing co-morbidities and/or traumas which are likely to resolve with puberty as becoming gay or lesbian adults. Such medical interventions have led to sterility, loss of bone density, loss of sexual function and negative impacts on cognitive development. Stonewall also spoke out against the Judicial Review ruling in 2020 in the case of Keira Bell v Tavistock (the only NHS gender clinic for children and young people), which raised serious concerns about these medical interventions and the ability of children, some as young as 12 years of age, to give informed consent to them. 

Stonewall’s strategy to promote gender identity ideology promotion since 2014 has centred on stifling, suppressing and attacking opposing opinions, accusing critics of transphobia, of hatred, of holding hard-right views or a combination of all three, and had adopted a strategy of infiltrating public and private organisations at their highest levels using covert and opaque methods and influencing policy, whilst at the same time avoiding public scrutiny or democratic processes, coining slogans such as ‘No Debate’ as a validator of this strategy.

The Diversity Champions Scheme

Stonewall also operates an employer engagement scheme known as its Diversity Champions Scheme. According to Stonewall’s own website, “An inclusive workplace can increase your financial success, attract and retain employees, and tap into a unique and loyal consumer base.” Employers pay a fee to Stonewall, who in return offer them training for their staff and assess the employer against its own standards and are then ranked in a top 100 list of ‘top employers’ in their Workplace Equality Index.

For the employers themselves, this scheme is a fantastic opportunity for companies to engage in ‘rainbow washing’ – in effect to performatively ally with the LGBT ‘community’ in order to distract onlookers from the nefarious activities of the company itself. Some companies with more that slightly shady histories that fit this bill include HSBC, which laundered $881m for Mexican drug cartels. Meanwhile, the bulk of the top 100 from 2024 are law firms, universities, media outlets and public sector employers.

The Diversity Champions Scheme is in effect a mechanism by which an organisation who signs up to the scheme pays Stonewall a fee for the charity to lobby it, with the accusations of conflict of interest which accompany it.

A 2021 BBC investigation into the charity revealed that Ofcom, the communication regulator, rulings that it had made against broadcasters were submitted to Stonewall to be used against its Workplace Equality Index. These rulings included complaints of transphobia made to Ofcom. Ofcom claimed that there had been no conflict of interest in submitting these rulings to Stonewall, but declined to release details of Stonewall’s findings on these rulings. Ofcom left the Diversity Champions Scheme in August 2021 but continued to submit information to Stonewall for the Workplace Equality Index.

Cuts in Stonewall’s Funding?

In February 2025, it was reported through various media sources that the US Government under the presidency of Donald Trump had decided to cut overseas aid, which included donations from the Global Equality Fund (GEF), which is overseen by the US state department. It has given Stonewall more than £500,000 between 2021 and 2025. Stonewall’s CEO Simon Blake warned that jobs may be lost: according to the Charity Commission, they employ 114 staff.

According to the BBC’s report, Stonewall’s accounts show that the GEF paid grants worth £137,254 in 2021-22, £204,442 in 2022-23 and £233,583 in 2023-24 – a grand total of £575,279 over a period of three years. It seems to stretching the limits of credibility to claim that staffing would need to be halved owing to a shortfall of roughly £190,000 per year – taking into account pensions and National Insurance obligations and estimating workers’ wages to be somewhere near the national average, Stonewall would at worst have to cut no more than four staff on such a drop in funding.

In fact, in the period of 2023-24, Stonewall received funding from organisations including the Foreign and Commonwealth Development Office (£151,840), the National Lottery Community Fund (£226,085), the Scottish Government (£106,505) and the Welsh Government (£100,000).

From these four benefactors alone, Stonewall was given £584,430 in a single year – more than double the amount that they received from GEF. Simon Blake’s prophecy of doom suggests that the charity is either losing a lot more than just US Government funding, hence the staffing cuts, or has used the cut in funding which was widely reported in the media as an opportunity to make swathes of job losses. At the time of writing, it is not clear whether there actually have been job losses at Stonewall, but it appears that the charity’s business model, which was to take sizeable fees from companies signing up to their Diversity Champions Scheme alongside the largesse of state-backed and state-adjacent entities, is proving to be outmoded.

The Supreme Court Decision

The Supreme Court’s decision on April 16th came after a protracted legal battle between the Scottish government and a campaign group called For Women Scotland.

The case centred on the legal interpretation of the term ‘gender’ and how it should be applied within the purview of the Equality Act. The Scottish Government contended that ‘gender’ should be interpreted to mean ‘gender identity’, which would mean that biological men who had a Gender Recognition Certificate stating that they were legally female were allowed under the Equality Act to access spaces designated for women. Meanwhile, For Women Scotland has always maintained the view that the term ‘gender’ means biological sex, an argument that carries some merit given that the term ‘gender’ has usurped ‘sex’ in many aspects of society, including legally.

The three Supreme Court judges adjudicating the case determined unanimously that the term ‘gender’ as applied under the Equality Act 2010 was based on biological sex: A landmark ruling which has reverberated around the western world and put organisations like Stonewall, which had advocated most strongly for the term ‘gender’ to be legally interpreted as ‘gender identity’ and even (incorrectly) advised organisations that this was in fact the legal interpretation of the term, in an extremely difficult position.

The Supreme Court decision has effectively fatally undermined the Gender Recognition Act in that the gaining of a Gender Recognition Certificate will not in itself allow a person to access spaces which are not in accord with their biological sex – in effect a Gender Recognition Certificate has been rendered legally meaningless.

Since the Supreme Court ruling, organisations like the NHS have behaved in a distinctly cowardly manner. Despite being warned by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) on April 17th that they would be ‘pursued’ if they did not alter their gender policies to reflect the clarification which the ruling gave, County Durham and Darlington NHS Trust, the trust at the centre of the controversy surrounding the Darlington Nurses, refused to alter their policy (which was drafted in accordance with NHS England guidance) and prohibit biological men from accessing women’s changing areas.

NHS England have been forced to intervene, urging the trust to make the changes required following the Supreme Court ruling “with speed”. The fact is that gender ideologues have been able to dictate gender policy in employers and organisation including the NHS, the BBC, the judiciary, academia, the police, the media and other so-called pillars of ‘civilised society’ for many years and, despite the clarity provided by the Supreme Court ruling, these organisations are in no mood to make the legally required adjustments to their internal policies before the EHRC publishes its updated code of practice following a six-week consultation period.

Conclusion

Stonewall reached a fork in the road in 2014: To devolve itself to the regions or to follow the money, which in Stonewall’s case was to pursue the promotion of gender ideology. It is this decision which could prove ultimately catastrophic for a charity with a proud and honourable record in fighting for equality for lesbian, gay and bisexual people, but has spent the last eleven years abandoning the very people that it was established by and established to serve.

Stonewall has been at the vanguard of promoting gender ideology in every section of ‘civilised society’ – from academia to the media, the judiciary (notwithstanding the Supreme Court decision on April 16th), the police and the third sector, among others.

Stonewall has used its Diversity Champions Scheme to lobby employers to implement gender ideology in their policies, has provided legal advice which has been shown to be incorrect and has made those it advised liable to litigation and has provided training to employees which has implied that gender ideology is, rather than an ideology which has been the subject of intense criticism and debate, is settled and immutable fact.

As I wrote in my article on Hannah Ingram-Moore and the scandal surrounding the charity for which she was a trustee, charities and the wider third-sector under capitalism serve a key purpose, which is to fill the breaches created by capitalism itself. Whilst most charities are founded by essentially good people with well-intended aims, as the realities of capitalism permeates every level of these organisations they change in character into full-blown commercial and profit-making operations. Stonewall has been no exception to this.

It appears that we are seeing the decline and fall of Stonewall, and it is unlikely that history or indeed many of the people that the charity was supposed to serve will judge the charity, particular its history from 2014 to date, particularly kindly.