Barry M

"With every mistake, we must surely be learning..."

[FearBuck @FearedBuck]

Jude Bellingham stopped to speak with a disabled reporter and did so in Spanish so the reporter could understand ❤️

[Georgia Meadows @MsGrgaMeadows]

It's good to hear that the bill is finally progressing.

However, we cannot truly ban conversion therapy while it's government policy to legally treat trans women as men and trans men as women.

That is fundamentally the position of a conversion therapist.

[Vlad Ncl @VladNcl]

Tonight i got punched during my youtube livestream in Ireland, crazy

[ani @anaisbetts]

I don't think a lot of people know or realize this - not only were Queer people victims of the Holocaust, when everyone else was freed, Queer people were *re-imprisoned*

Imagine what that must have felt like.

[Nancy Pelosi @SpeakerPelosi]

A decade ago, 49 beautiful souls were stolen, more than 50 others injured and countless traumatized in the horrific hate-fueled attack at Pulse Nightclub.

Today, we remember those we lost, honor the courage of the survivors and hold their loved ones and the entire LGBTQ+ community in our hearts.

[NOH8 Campaign @NOH8Campaign]

10 years ago today, 49 lives were taken at Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, FL.

Today we remember them by name. We remember the joy they brought, the people they loved, the dreams they carried, and the impact they continue to have on so many lives.

Their stories did not end that night. They live on through their families, friends, and communities, and through those building a world with more love and less hate.

Forever remembered. 🏳️‍🌈❤️ #NeverForgotten #NOH8

[jude martin @judecambridge]

Private Eye:

[Peccadillo Pictures @peccadillopics]

David Hockney passed away peacefully peacefully a his home on 11th June. This is sad news, but lets celebrate the life and work of an amazing artist who's bold sexuality radiated through his remarkable body of work.

A statement from Hockney’s representatives said: “David Hockney’s enduring legacy reflects his underlying enthusiasm for life, his outstanding sense of humour, his immense generosity and his investigative curiosity encapsulated by his signature phrase: Love Life."

More from The Guardian here: https://t.co/MT2MKZJ8yv

[Georgina Hollifield 💚 @sp4rkl3jumpr0p3]

This will be a complete disaster for any teenagers living in abusive households or for LGBT+ youth

[Steph Richards: (She/her) - Say NO to hate. @PompeySteph]

Why “Splitting the T from the LGB” Was Never Grassroots - And Why It Matters Now.

Over the past decade, we’ve all watched the debate around "trans rights" intensify in the UK.

What’s often missing from that conversation is a simple, uncomfortable truth: the push to separate “the T” from the rest of the LGBTQ+ community did not begin here...nor was it organic.

It was a strategy. - and it was imported.

A Divide‑and‑Conquer Playbook:

In 2017, senior figures in the US Christian Right openly described a plan to “separate the T from the LGB” as a way to weaken LGBTQ+ equality.

This wasn’t speculation — it was said on stage at the Values Voter Summit in 2017 and documented by the Southern Poverty Law Centre, and amplified by Right Wing Watch.

The logic was brutally simple:

Trans people were seen as the most vulnerable group.

If you isolate them, you weaken the whole movement.
If you frame trans rights as a "threat to women and children", you create a wedge.

Sound familiar?

The UK Connection. By 2018–19, UK political actors and media outlets were echoing the same narratives.

Groups like the LGB Alliance emerged with messaging that mirrored US talking points almost word-for-word.
Even their founders acknowledged the influence of US organisations like the Heritage Foundation — a group with a long history of opposing LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive freedom.

This wasn’t a coincidence - it was a pipeline!

Why This Matters for All of Us:

When you trace the origins of today’s anti‑trans rhetoric, a pattern becomes clear:

The same organisations pushing anti‑trans policies are also pushing anti‑abortion laws. The same funders opposing gender recognition reform and access for trans people to single sex spaces are also fighting against contraception access, dignity in dying and sex education.

The same narratives used to target trans people are now being used to undermine women’s rights more broadly.

This isn’t about “debate.” It’s about rolling back equality — strategically, systematically, and internationally. The UK Is Not Immune - in fact, the UK is viewed as a "bridgehead" for Europe and beyond. That's why the UK "debate" is so toxic.

We’re now living through the consequences:

1: A dramatic rise in anti‑trans hate crimes over the last ten years.

2: On average, 7 trans hostile articles each day in the right-wing press. A media landscape saturated with lies, misinformation and moral panic.

3: A political environment where trans people are treated as a culture‑war commodity.

4: A growing willingness to pit marginalised groups against each other.

And yet, the public conversation still treats these developments as if they emerged spontaneously — as if they were simply the result of “concerns” or “questions” rather than a coordinated campaign.

We Can Choose Better:

The truth is this: trans people were never the threat.

The threat comes from those who benefit when communities are divided, rights are eroded, and fear is weaponised.

The UK has a proud history of standing up for fairness, dignity, and equality.

We can honour that history by refusing to import someone else’s culture war — and by recognising that none of us is safe when any of us are targeted.

Because equality isn’t a zero‑sum game.

And solidarity is how we win.

Happy Pride - let's keep calling this out!

https://t.co/ijmUgAP0m9

[Bloody Disgusting @BDisgusting]

Buffy the Vampire Slayer actor Anthony Head has passed away at 72 years old.

Head played Rupert Giles in 121 episodes of Buffy.

He also starred in Repo! The Genetic Opera, and once played Dr. Frank-N-Furter in a London production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show in the '90s.

[Nadia Whittome MP @NadiaWhittomeMP]

Alongside colleagues, I have tabled a motion to disapprove the Equality Act 2010: Draft Code of Practice for Services, public functions and associations. We cannot support it, and we have a responsibility to our trans constituents to resist it.

This motion is currently the only available mechanism through which Parliament can reject the EHRC’s Code of Practice; if it is debated and passed within the 40-day scrutiny window, it would prevent the Code from being issued by the EHRC and coming into force.

Please email your MP asking them to sign EDM 240. 

The Code will exclude trans people from services and facilities that they have long used without issue, putting them at increased risk of harassment and violence, and effectively pushing them out of public life. 

It ushers in an era of enforced segregation for trans people, the policing of which will be outsourced to service providers, including businesses, charities and public bodies. 

In the statement to the House of Commons yesterday, the Minister even suggested that where members of the public are unsure of someone’s gender within a single-sex facility, “most people will have the common sense to step in where necessary or, if they are concerned, to alert a member of staff.”

Meanwhile, this guidance does not give clarity and confidence to organisations that want to be trans-inclusive. Its impact also extends beyond the rights of trans people. The government’s own Equality Impact Assessment warns that “women who are considered masculine may face greater scrutiny” and that disabled people could face adverse impacts.

The Code represents a profound rollback of rights, which will affect trans people directly and erode the principles of inclusion, dignity and equality upon which all our rights depend.

This guidance must not become statutory; the government should withdraw it and instead legislate to clarify and protect trans people’s rights, privacy and inclusion.

https://t.co/odTmOAIejk

[Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️‍⚧️ @LeftieStats]

🚨BREAKING | Labour MP Nadia Whittome has tabled a motion to REJECT the EHRC bathroom ban "guidance".

If MPs back her motion, the EHRC guidance will be rejected and will not be implemented. Motion is co-signed by Green MPs Hannah Spencer and Sian Berry.

[retrocvnt @retrocvnty]

If you make a top 100 tv shows list and don’t include shows like Buffy, The X-Files, Twin Peaks etc I just can’t take you seriously

[cez @cezthesocialist]

If you don’t see what’s happening here, if you still think there is zero media bias against the Left, and no smear campaign going on against the Greens, you are completely deluded.

The man arrested was a Reform voter.

[Narinder Kaur @narindertweets]

A sikh woman was horrifically raped in her own home in a racially/religiously motivated attack. This was the 2nd rape of a sikh woman in months.
Yet no one called for the banning of the Tommy Robinson hate marches, even though sikh woman felt too scared to walk outside anymore and carried alarms.
If you ban one march- then you ban ALL marches.
I absolutely stand with the Jewish community. I dont want them to feel afraid walking the streets as much as any marginalised community including my own.

[Harry Eccles @Heccles94]

There are over 18,000 homophobic hate crimes in England and Wales each year.

It’s a national disgrace.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Weird that even the police, in their tweet, though not in the full statement itself, are just airbrushing the fact that he’s being charged with three attempted murders, not two, the third person being a Muslim man he stabbed earlier in the day

[Daniel Lismore @daniellismore]

Trans Rights Won in the High Court Today. Did You Hear About It?
The Office for Students tried to fine the University of Sussex £585,000 for having a policy that said transphobia is not tolerated and that staff should positively represent trans people. It was the largest fine the OfS had ever attempted to levy against a university. It was designed to send a message to every institution in the country about what happens when you protect transgender students and staff.
The High Court threw it out completely today.
The judge found the OfS had closed its mind to any outcome other than finding the university guilty before the investigation was finished. The regulator interviewed Kathleen Stock. It did not interview a single person from the university despite the university repeatedly requesting to be heard. That is not regulation. That is a verdict dressed up as a process.
The judge also found the OfS took a fundamentally flawed approach to deciding what academic freedom even means. The university’s vice chancellor called it a devastating indictment of the impartiality and competence of the OfS, implicating its operations, leadership, governance and strategy.
Kathleen Stock resigned from Sussex after student protests over her views. She was not dismissed. She chose to leave. The OfS built a £585,000 case on the basis that a policy saying transphobia is not tolerated had made her more cautious about expressing her beliefs. The High Court today said that reasoning did not hold and that the process used to reach it was biased from the start.
The OfS said the outcome was disappointing and that it did not accept the finding of bias. Its chairman said he would consider over several weeks whether to appeal. The interim chief executive said he was pleased that a dozen institutions including Sussex had amended policies which restricted freedom of speech as a result of the investigation.
Read that again. The regulator whose investigation was found to be biased, closed-minded and procedurally flawed is describing universities removing trans inclusive policies as a positive outcome it is proud of.
That tells you everything about what this investigation was actually for.
Universities across the country had been watching this case with alarm. A fine of that size for having a trans inclusive policy would have sent a chilling effect through every institution in the country. Institutions would have removed protections for transgender students and staff not because they wanted to but because they could not afford not to. That outcome has been stopped today.
From April 2027 universities could face fines of £500,000 or two percent of their income for failing to protect free speech. The regulator that was just found to have closed its mind to any outcome other than the one it wanted is about to be given even stronger powers.
That part of the story is not over.
But today the University of Sussex stood its ground. Today a High Court judge looked at how this fine was issued and found it could not stand. Today transgender and non-binary students at universities across England got something they have not had much of recently.
A win.
Take it. They are rare enough to be worth naming when they arrive.
Now Let Us Talk About How This Was Reported
The BBC covered this story today.
It reported the High Court ruling. It covered the fine being overturned. It quoted the vice chancellor and the OfS. It explained the procedural findings against the regulator.
It did not use the word transgender once.
Think about that. A case that began because a university had a transgender and non-binary inclusion policy. A fine issued because that policy was deemed to create a chilling effect on gender critical views. A High Court ruling that found the regulator was biased in how it investigated that policy. A story entirely about what protection transgender people deserve in academic institutions.

[Hugo Papé 💚🌱🌍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇵🇸 @HugoPap2]

Why has no one from the political establishment condemned this?

Is it because their rampant anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric probably caused this?