By Jo Bartosch
Let’s be honest—if you’re gay, lesbian or bisexual, you could do a lot worse than Britain. Sure, we’ve got our problems, but we also have legal protections most of the world can only dream of. We can marry, adopt, and enjoy an equal age of consent. If someone attacks us for who we love, the law is firmly on our side.
But you’d never know it if you listened to ILGA World. The international NGO recently announced that Britain had plummeted from 17th to 22nd on its annual Rainbow Map. Apparently, we now rank below Estonia and Montenegro.
ILGA-Europe’s Executive Director, Ato Chaber—who, of course, goes by ‘they/them’—called this drop a sign of “acute democratic erosion.” In response, some British MPs clutched their progress pride lanyards in horror: Olivia Blake said she was “exceedingly embarrassed,” while Tim Roca lamented that we’d “fallen behind countries we once led.”
The Rainbow Map grades countries from 0% (gross violations) to 100% (full legal equality), based on laws affecting “LGBTI people’s human rights.” But strip out the categories about gender identity and intersex (more correctly known as ‘disorders of sexual development’), and Britain is actually joint fourth for LGB rights—alongside Sweden, France, and Portugal.
So what explains the dramatic slump? Well, ILGA didn’t like the UK Supreme Court’s recent ruling on the Gender Recognition Act. This is because the court confirmed that gender self-ID was never law here, and that holding a gender recognition certificate doesn’t grant access to opposite-sex spaces.
While ILGA might object, it was clearly a win for lesbians and gay men who want to maintain single-sex spaces—on dating apps, at events, in support groups. The judgment even clarified protections for women who identify as men, confirming they’re still entitled to maternity rights. Yet naturally, ILGA spun it as a harbinger of fascism.
The reason ILGA hit out at the UK was because the Supreme Court ruling was a reminder to lobby groups which overstepped the mark; if you want to change the law, do it through Parliament, not by dodgy workplace training and awards schemes. That’s not a sign of oppression, it’s simply how democracy works.
But ILGA hasn’t really been about gay rights for some time. It now champions “SOGIESC rights”—that’s Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Gender Expression, and Sex Characteristics.This expanded initialism has come with a budgetary increase. In 2023, ILGA World raked in £3.4 million, with more than £2 million of that coming from governments.
According to ILGA-Europe’s Advocacy Director, Katrin Hugendubel, democracy is being “eroded quietly across Europe, like a thousand paper cuts.” One such grievous nick? Hungary stating the obvious in its constitution: “the mother is a woman and the father is a man.”
The gendercrat also took aim at Britain, accusing us of “following the Russian playbook.” Because in ILGA-land, defending same-sex rights and maintaining legal clarity is akin to Kremlin style authoritarianism.
The UK was given zero across five separate “Legal Gender Recognition” categories. Never mind that the Gender Recognition Act hasn’t changed since it passed two decades ago—according to ILGA, it’s somehow deteriorating by the year. This is because, like its UK member organisation Stonewall, ILGA has perfected the business of victimhood. And fear has become a lucrative marketing strategy.
Those of us who’ve sunk into the comfortable sofa of middle age may take ILGA’s dramatic press releases with a pinch of salt. But younger LGB people—bombarded with headlines about rising hate crimes—are being raised to believe they live in a country that despises them. It’s no wonder so many are anxious and alienated. All this, to sustain the careers of international lobbyists.
To keep this ideological expansion alive, ILGA must continually depict countries like Britain as regressive, and paint any challenge to its worldview—however reasoned, however democratic—as evidence of an imminent far right putsch (ironically, their overreach and distortions make this more likely). But for same-sex attracted people, the real threat today isn’t a mythical rollback of rights, it comes from organisations like ILGA that undermine the existence of same-sex attraction.
So let’s reject the fear mongering and say it loud and proud: Britain is still one of the safest, freest places on Earth to be lesbian, gay or bisexual. The only thing sliding backwards is ILGA’s credibility.