A Declaration of Independence for the LGB

LGB International launches

At long last, it’s happened. Lesbian, gay, and bisexual organisations from around the world have launched LGB International and formally declared independence from the trans and queer movement. And thank God for that.

My own refusal to be tied to a misogynistic, deranged, and increasingly violent trans/queer movement has seen me attacked, harassed, blacklisted, and maligned for more than a decade. It is a relief to now see the resistance to the alphabet mafia has gathered serious momentum and is growing too loud to be ignored.

For years we’ve been told “we’re stronger together.” What that’s meant in practice is lesbians and gays being strong-armed out of our own spaces and accused of bigotry for having sexual boundaries. “Together” has meant “sit down, shut up, and pretend sex is negotiable.” It has meant our funding, our resources, our organisations have been coopted for causes nothing to do with us. No more. LGB International is about reclaiming what is ours; the movement built by and for people who are same-sex attracted.

Our rights were not won on some fuzzy notion of “gender identity.” They were won with an understanding of the hard reality of biological sex. Lesbians are women attracted to women. Gay men are men attracted to men. Bisexuals are attracted to both sexes. Simple, clear, non-negotiable. But in recent years, this has been swallowed up by a TQI+ free-for-all that has replaced clarity with confusion, and sex-based rights with a hierarchy where gender identity trumps everything.

And don’t tell me I haven’t been warning about this. I have been banging this drum for years. Years ago I wrote that LGB is fundamentally different to the TQ+ and gay rights were won by open debate, not by silencing dissenters. I said plainly that gender ideology was trampling over women and children, and the LGB.

Let’s be absolutely clear about the differences here. LGB is about sexual orientation based on sex. TQ+ is about gender identity based on feelings.¹ Many of us LGB people want to defend single-sex spaces, protect children from sexualisation and medical mutilation, safeguard fair sport, insist on evidence-based healthcare, and hold the line on language and reality. The TQ+ agenda is to force institutions to elevate self-declared gender above sex, to demand compelled speech, and to treat disagreement as violence. These two things are not the same movement and pretending they are has been a disaster.

LGB International’s Mission

LGB International and its national affiliates exist to promote and defend the rights and interests of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. We organise, meet and advocate based on the reality of biological sex and sexual orientation and without any political affiliation.We defend freedom of speech and advocate for our rights and interests and protest against discriminatory policies and practices, including in employment, education, housing, health care, partnership, family and other areas. We highlight the dual discrimination faced by lesbians (as women and homosexuals) and support the legal right of separate assembly based on biological sex and sexual orientation.We advocate for the right of adults and young people to mature, develop and explore their sexuality and personalities without gender identity ideology. Children should be protected from medical transition treatments. We combat harmful misinformation and disinformation about gender identity ideology which particularly targets lesbians, gay men and bisexuals.

This split isn’t about cruelty or exclusion; it’s about honesty. LGB people have distinct needs and interests that cannot and will not be negotiated away. We deserve our own voice at the table without being vetoed by activists who are not same-sex attracted but who presume to speak over us. There may be some LGBs who disagree, sure. Good. I’d rather have an argument than be erased.

Those crying “division” need to realise the division already happened when they told lesbians to accept males as “women,” when they accused gay men of bigotry for not wanting sex with females, and when they emptied the word “sex” of all meaning. We’re not creating a split. We’re refusing to keep swallowing the poison.

I know plenty of people are sick to death of rainbow-washing. You roll your eyes at the rainbow crossings painted on the street, the “GayTMs” plastered in glitter, and the police marching around in politicised uniforms instead of doing their actual jobs. I get it. None of that nonsense makes life any safer or freer for lesbians, gay men, or bisexuals. It’s corporate branding and political virtue-signalling dressed up as progress.

To those who sneer, “no one cares you’re gay, shut up about it,” understand that we’d love nothing more than to shut up about it. We’d happily get on with our lives, fall in love, pay our bills, and be left alone like everyone else. But before we can do that, we have to fight off the poison that’s been pumped into our movement by the TQ+ industry. We didn’t ask for gender ideology to hitch itself to our cause and rot it from the inside. We didn’t ask to be told that same-sex attraction is offensive or that our boundaries are bigotry. This is about clearing out that rot so that our relationship with the wider public can be restored.

What we actually want is simple: the freedom to live our lives openly, without discrimination, without harassment, and without the threat of violence. We don’t need or want a rainbow flag shoved in your face at every turn. We don’t need banks and airlines performing allyship. We want equal treatment under the law and a society where being same-sex attracted isn’t a liability. That’s it.

Maybe one day we can make advocacy organisations redundant because society simply treats us as people.

The creation of LGB International and the formal split from the trans/queer juggernaut makes this more possible. For too long, our legitimate goals have been buried under an alphabet soup of demands that have nothing to do with us. When every demand gets rolled together, people rightly see the whole circus as a cultural power grab rather than a fight for basic fairness. By drawing a clear line, we can get back to what matters: protecting same-sex attracted people from real harm, without asking the world to repaint itself in rainbows.

We can all guess how this will play out in New Zealand. The media will either ignore it entirely, or they’ll frame it as if LGB International is some kind of hate group. Those are the only two modes of coverage we get. Silence, or smear.

When a movement emerges that challenges the orthodoxy of “LGBTQI+,” most journalists don’t see a story about same-sex attracted people reclaiming our voice. They see a threat to the tidy narrative they’ve invested years in. So rather than ask why lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals feel compelled to break away, they’ll slap on the “controversial” label and hunt for a way to link us to bigotry. It’s easier to demonise than to deal with the uncomfortable truth that gender ideology has corrupted what was once a successful human rights movement. And remember most of these journalists and editors are heterosexuals.

We’ve seen it before. Stuff churns out rainbow puff pieces by the dozen while ignoring the real-world consequences of policy on women and children. RNZ runs endless features celebrating “inclusion” but can’t bring itself to platform dissenting voices without framing them as dangerous. The NZ Herald has perfected the trick of reporting women’s concerns about sport or safety only to bury them under quotes from activists calling those women hateful. When the group I was previously the spokeswoman for, Speak Up for Women, tried to host public meetings, the coverage wasn’t about the issues, we were smeared as a “hate group” and venues were pressured to cancel. Massey University deplatformed me, Dr Holly Lawford-Smith, Meghan Murphy, and (current Race Relations Commissioner) Dr Melissa Derby as a result. And when Posie Parker came to Auckland, the violence at Albert Park was whitewashed, with Stuff and RNZ calling the mob a “celebration of love.” The pattern is always the same: dodge the substance, reach for the smear.

That’s exactly what we can expect now. If the media cover LGB International at all, it’ll be with scare quotes, loaded framing, and the inevitable attempt to link us with the “far right.” But the public is not as stupid as our media think they are. Ordinary New Zealanders can see the difference between a movement grounded in sex-based reality and one that insists biology is offensive. So yes, the papers might ignore this news, or worse, smear it. But no amount of lazy headlines from Stuff, RNZ, or the Herald will stop us.

To genuine allies, including trans people who recognise the difference between basic courtesy and the wholesale rewriting of reality, you’re welcome at the table. This isn’t about shutting doors; it’s about setting boundaries. You don’t have to agree with us on everything to see the sense in defending biological reality and the integrity of same-sex attraction. But make no mistake, LGB people will be back in the driver’s seat of our own movement.

That means we set the priorities. We fight for achievable goals, not abstract identity politics. We will not stand for violent mobs marching in our names dressed in black and covering their faces. We condemn the overt sexual performance and predatory nature of autogynephilic males. We call out the grift of so called “rainbow pledge” organisations that fleece companies in exchange for a stamp of approval based on indoctrination of queer theory.

We also demand a return to debate rather than denunciation. Our movement was built on persuasion and open argument, not on silencing, shaming, or cancelling those who disagree. We’ve seen that what happens when the conversation is policed by outrage mobs is people retreat, common sense gets abandoned, and the public turns away in disgust. We will not play that game anymore.

Above all, we are reclaiming the wheel of our own movement. For too long, LGB people have been passengers on a bus driven by activists who don’t share our destination and who have steered us straight toward a cliff. That era is over. We’re taking back control, and we’re setting a course grounded in reality, fairness, and the defence of same-sex attracted people everywhere.

1. Note that the ‘I’ stands for Intersex and their inclusion in the alphabet soup is problematic also. They are not ‘feelings’ based either. They are people with disorders of sexual development. However, they do not belong with the LBG either.