Stonewall’s new chair on trans rights, JK Rowling and the future of the LGBTQ+ movement
Today in Focus
The Guardian
4.6 • 5.9K Ratings
🗓️ 20 April 2026
⏱️ 30 minutes
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| 0:00.0 | This is The Guardian. |
| 0:09.0 | Today, a year after the Supreme Court judgment on trans rights, does Stonewall have a future? |
| 0:23.9 | If you know anything about the fight for gay rights in the UK, |
| 0:26.4 | you will have heard of Stonewall. |
| 0:30.4 | From its founding in 1988, it had one clear purpose to overturn Margaret Thatcher's ban on teaching children about homosexuality. |
| 0:34.7 | Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have |
| 0:40.7 | an inalienable right to be gay. |
| 0:43.9 | All of those children are being cheated of a sound start in life. |
| 0:49.4 | Yes, cheated. |
| 0:50.9 | Section 28 banned teachers from promoting the idea that it was okay to be gay, |
| 0:55.8 | or what the law called pretend family relationships. |
| 0:59.8 | After 12 years of relentless campaigning by Stonewall, |
| 1:02.5 | the legislation was repealed in Scotland in the year 2000, |
| 1:06.1 | followed by England and Wales two years later. |
| 1:09.1 | And that's not all Stonewall has achieved. MPs will vote at around 10 o'clock tonight on whether to lower the gay age of consent. |
| 1:15.6 | It pushed to equalise the age of consent, to lift the ban on gay people in the military, |
| 1:20.6 | and to give gay and lesbian people the right to get married. |
| 1:23.6 | Britain's lower House of Parliament has voted to back a law legalising same-sex marriage. |
| 1:28.2 | Without equal marriage, it was still looked at in some way as different, as less valid or less important. |
| 1:33.1 | And that simply doesn't reflect life in this country anymore. |
| 1:35.8 | But 38 years after it was formed, Stonewall's future is uncertain. |
| 1:40.4 | Its income is halved. |
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