Liz Truss is bad news as PM for LGBT+ people.

So Liz Truss is going to be our next prime minister the day I write this post. This is very bad news for the LGBT+ Community. The next 2 years we have to be vigilant on the policies she will try and sneak in.

Here are 6 reasons why Liz Truss is bad news for us LGBT+ people,

1. Liz Truss has failed to ban conversion therapy

This is a big one for me as I know 4 people who have been through this personally, 2 are now dead, the other 2 are still affected by what this practice did to them, one of them badly 30 years on.

The pseudoscientific, traumatising practice is still legally permissible in all regions of the UK despite repeated mumblings from Truss and others in the equalities office about plans to bring forward legislation.

It has now been more than three years since the Conservative government first pledged to ban conversion therapy. Since then, government ministers have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promise.

This is with debates in Westminster Hall where all parties apart from the conservatives wanted to ban the practice outright, even some conservatives wanted to do this as well.

2. Liz Truss ‘pandered to bigots’ during the leadership contest

As we all know, Trans people are the easy target for politicians these days and during the leadership contest this was even more evident. While

While she was quiet about LGBT+ Rights in the beginning that didn’t last too long – in a hustings on 25 August, both Truss and Sunak denied that trans women are women. Speaking about gender affirming care for minors, she said under-18s “shouldn’t be able to make irreversible decisions about their own future”.

Both she and Sunak were later accused of “pandering to bigots” by former Tory MPs who spoke to PinkNews on the condition of anonymity.

One former minister said: “I’m appalled that all the effort we put into changing the party on LGBT issues over the years has been trashed in a few weeks.”

Also remember she didn’t answer any questions from LGBT Conservatives when other candidates did.

3. Liz Truss has repeatedly hit out at “identity politics”

In 2019, shortly after she became minister for women and equalities, Liz Truss promised that she would move away from the “identity politics” of the left.

“We’ve got to get away from this idea that somebody should be appointed to a job because of – no one wants to be the token woman, you don’t want to feel like you’ve been appointed to a job because you’ve got boobs,” she said on talkRADIO at the time.

“Likewise, no one wants to be the token gay person. I think that we need to think differently about this.”

She was widely mocked on social media when she suggested the women and equalities office should be renamed the “Ministry of Freedom”.

Truss has continued on that trajectory ever since. She has consistently borrowed from the Boris Johnson playbook in her attacks on “woke” culture.

In a column published in December 2020, Truss claimed that efforts to advance the rights of minority groups amounted to people jumping on the “woke bandwagon”.

The bizarre article saw her hitting out at the “woke brigade” which she said is more concerned about the “sins of historical figures” than it is interested in improving life for people around today.

It’s likely that Truss has known for some time that positioning herself as central to the Tories’ “war on woke” would help garner some support within the party.

4. Liz Truss favours “Medical Checks” for trans people who want to legally transition

It was in October 2021 that Truss made it abundantly clear that she opposes self-identification – and that she favours a model whereby trans people must prove they are who they say they are before being granted legal recognition.

Speaking at the Conservative Party conference, she said: “It wouldn’t be right to have self-identification with no checks and balances in the system.

“It is clear process of medical understanding of how that process works, and those medical checks are important.”

Truss said she has “full respect for transgender people”. However, she also said that she agrees with Labour MP Rosie Duffield, who said that “only women have a cervix”.

“[Roșie Duffield] is right that women have cervixes,” she said. “But more than that, she’s also right to be able to express her view… when we try and brush things under the carpet and can’t have an open, honest and sensible debate, I think that’s a huge problem for British politics.”

There are other countries, including allies like New Zealand, who allowed self ID to become the norm. There has been no side effects of having this policy in.

5. Her failure to deliver on gender recognition reform is a big one.

While she said she wanted to reform the Gender Recognition Act to make it easier for Trans People to change there birth certificate and Passport to the gender they identify as, in September 2020 she announced she would not be meaningfully reforming the GRA.

The decision was particularly baffling considering just how much time and energy the government had invested in its public consultation on the subject. It had been widely accepted by LGBTQ+ groups and activists for some time that the GRA, which was enacted in 2004, was outdated and in desperate need of reform.

One of the big issues on the table was self identification. If adopted, self-ID would have allowed trans people to change their legal gender without having to obtain a diagnosis of gender dysphoria from a medical professional, and without answering invasive and often degrading questions about their gender.

The change was fiercely contested by a small but vocal group of anti-trans feminists – and Truss and her government colleagues apparently listened. In the end, they reduced the cost of legal gender recognition and digitised the process. Other reforms that would have actually made life easier for trans and non-binary people were scrapped.

The government’s failure to reform the GRA was criticised in December 2021 by the Women and Equalities Committee, which is chaired by Tory MP Caroline Nokes. The group called on the equalities office to remove the requirement for a gender dysphoria diagnosis by 2023, along with a series of additional recommendations.

It remains to be seen whether Truss will heed that recommendation as prime minister.

6. Liz Truss’ appointments to the equalities watchdog has raised concerns

During her time as equalities minister, Truss had the power to appoint new commissioners to the board of the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), an ostensibly independent body that “promotes and upholds” equality law across England, Scotland and Wales.

She used that power to make two appointments that caused worry in the trans community.

In November 2020, Baroness Kishwer Falkner was named chair of the EHRC, and promptly said that her watchdog would protect “freedom of belief”, including “gender critical” beliefs, and that it is “entirely reasonable” to question trans people’s gender identity.

In December 2021, Truss appointed the barrister Akua Reindorf to the board of the Equality and Human Rights Commission. Reindorf is known in the community for her review of the “de-platforming” of two anti-trans speakers at the University of Essex, which was highly critical of Stonewall’s trans inclusion advice.

Both Falkner and Reindorf will remain in the EHRC even after Truss leaves the equalities office, meaning her decisions could continue to have ramifications for years to come.