Gay Men's Network: Tavistock 'Primarily A Homophobic Medical Scandal'
Brought to the UK by 'dangerous extremism'
Responding to the Cass Review, Gay Men’s Network said yesterday that the Tavistock GIDS clinic “was primarily a homophobic medical scandal” because the vast majority of children involved were same-sex attracted as they became adults.
In their 30-page response, GMN calls the Cass Review “a damning indictment of the NHS’ vulnerability to malign ideological actors,” deploring that “a ‘standard of care’ that was harmful to a largely same-sex attracted cohort was ever embraced as a norm.”
Clinicians have known for decades that supermajorities of dysphoric children will be same-sex attracted at adulthood. Along with everything else science knew about the human life-cycle, that disturbing fact was forgotten in the rush to “affirm” cross-sex ideation in children.
The authors, former Crown prosecutor Dennis Noel Kavanagh, scientist Hassan Mamdani, and Jonathan Hayward, Director of GMN, call the Cass Review “a watershed moment for gay rights” and “a damning indictment of gay politics that this reality check was ever necessary.”
They “call for a full Public Inquiry as to how, in the twenty first century, the NHS came to effectively recreate gay conversion therapy by prioritising ideology over evidence and disregarding mainstream expert voices pointing this out.”
Although GMN embraces the conclusions of the Cass Review, they argue against any future randomized trials of so-called gender affirming medicine in youth, as “there are no circumstances in which a clinical trial having gay youth as live test subjects could be conscionable.”
“The evidence of institutional homophobia at the Tavistock suggests the likely live subjects for any trial would be largely same sex attracted youth and we object in the strongest possible terms to any such study,” the authors write.
Because “blocking puberty is an experimental and unethical act visited disproportionately on same-sex attracted youth,” GMN “see no circumstances in which it would be proper or ethical to conduct a trial of these drugs on children.”
GMN cites the testimony of whistleblowers Dr. David Bell and Sonia Appleby that activist clinicians at Tavistock refused to consider the role of homophobia in a medicalization regime that “feels like conversion therapy for gay children.”
Tavistock personnel reportedly shared a dark joke that there “would be no gay kids left” as a result of their actions. Lesbians girls “at the bottom of the heap” in their schools were encouraged to think of themselves as boys in the wrong body.
“Same-sex attracted people have been treated as second-class patients and failed by a service which medicalised homosexuality,” the authors say. Despite the excellent work by Dr. Hilary Cass, they argue the role of homophobia in the scandal “is not given the prominence it should have” in her final review.
“Concerns as to homophobia were hushed by an institution more scared of being accused of transphobia,” GMN write. “This was a new form of gay conversion therapy, and it is a damning indictment of the NHS that it could happen.”
The GMN response is a good sign that the Cass Review will not stop reverberating through British politics.
The authors “ask the Charity Commission to consider an urgent investigation into Stonewall to establish how spreading medical misinformation can possibly be reconciled with the purpose of a charity being to act to the public benefit.”
Moreover, “given Stonewall’s proven tendency to misrepresent equality law,” GMN argue “that such an investigation is long overdue.”
“We call upon the Charity Commission to exercise such powers as are necessary to prevent the spread of medical misinformation and we specifically call upon Stonewall and Mermaids to stop spreading the falsehood that ‘puberty blockers’ represent either a pause for time to think or can be said to be reversible,” they write.
Further criticism goes to unnamed “charities who often warned against weaponising suicide for political objective[s]” yet “fell silent when faced with the threat of an accusation of transphobia,” a reference to Samaritans, among others.
GMN decries complacent media, remarking on “an open secret that the BBC is captured at editorial level by gender ideology and seemingly beholden to a staff gender network.” They call for an investigation into why “a notionally impartial broadcaster in effect chose a side in a national debate.”
Leaving no political quarter, GMN point out that Conservatives were in charge while a homophobic ideology “took hold despite the best efforts of government. This suggests deep dysfunction in how the state is operating and what it can do to combat dangerous extremism” (emphasis added).
The GMN response denounces “Conversion Practices Bans” as “homophobic” and calls for the withdrawal of such proposed legislation in Scotland and Wales.
“Puberty is the same either side of national borders and it is time to stop treating paediatrics as a political football,” they write.
Finally, Gay Men’s Network observe this has been “a sobering moment for gay rights.”
It demonstrates that the very organisations and bodies that should have protected gay youth actively supported an ideology harmful to them. It further serves as a dire warning as to the dangerous nature of a fashionable belief system which has been shown to be entirely unevidenced.
In the wake of the Cass Review, Labour politicians are already altering course at Westminster. The new politics of ‘gender identity’ may then devolve from London to the progressive ranks at Holyrood and the Senedd.
Shabana Mahmood is the ‘shadow secretary’ of justice. She is likely to win election to the real office with her party next January, and now she has thrown in her lot with author J.K. Rowling by name, as well as Maya Forstater by reference.
Remarking that gender critical women should not be “stigmatized” or subject to “the rule of the mob,” Mahmood said that “biological sex is real and is immutable.” People “shouldn’t be in the position of losing their jobs for having views that are perfectly legal, and that they are perfectly entitled to express.”
In other words, the days of silencing concerns about antigay hate and extremism in medicine with the magic word “transphobia” are all but over in England, and maybe Britain as well.
Likewise with the thought-terminating hashtag #nodebate: MP Dawn Butler stood up yesterday to correct the parliamentary record on misinformation she had previously passed along from Stonewall.
Gay Men’s Network say that there should be consequences for such lies — and Parliament seems to be listening.
It's great news that Shabana Mahmood MP, as Labour's shadow Justice Secretary, has come out in favour of "gender critical" freedom of speech, and as a believer in the immutability of biological sex: and even referring by name to JKR -- as the GC heroine and curse of transactivists.
Especially added to the recent apologies of Wes Streeting MP as shadow Health Secretar, for his previous adherence to the transactivist line (and the fact he's not been fired from his post by Starmer), Mahmood's declaration leaves me much more hopeful that a Labour government would resist and reduce the relentless hold of transactivism over all our major institutions, rather than propping it up.
Though I still can't quite bring myself to vote for re-election of a vociferously transactivist and misogynist local Labour MP.
Did you get any press on this? I hope so. This will be the nail in the coffin for gender ideology, if one is needed after Cass.