Dear Editor,

For the second week in a row, you carried a full-page ad by the LGB Alliance. It is important to point out that group does not represent even a significant minority view among LGBT people in Scotland. It is a small group whose principal agenda seems clear – to oppose full recognition and acceptance for trans people.

The claims in the adverts are false. No-one in Scotland is telling young lesbian, gay or bisexual people, or young people who are gender non-conforming, that they must be trans. No-one is telling lesbians (or anyone else) who they must have relationships with.

Young people should be free to explore their own identity, without pressure or bullying. People should be free to choose their own relationships, and if they wish, to call themselves lesbian, straight, pansexual, queer, etc as they see fit.

It is the LGB Alliance which it seems wishes to deny those freedoms. Apparently it thinks that a lesbian who chooses a relationship with a trans woman can no longer call herself a lesbian.

And it seeks to block the availability in schools of positive information about trans people, making life much harder for young people who are trans. In effect, it wants a new section 28, aimed at trans people.

It is disappointing that a small group of people who apparently lived through the days of section 28 cannot see that the way they are treating trans people now is just the way we as LGB people were treated back then.

Equality means very little unless it is equality for all.

Yours sincerely,

Tim Hopkins

Director

Equality Network