by Jo Bartosch, spiked
The horrific Stephen Ireland case shames the ‘LGBTQ+’ movement.
It’s hard to fault the cast-iron cojones of the men running Pride in Surrey (PiS). In June, Its founder and former chief executive, 41-year-old Stephen Ireland, was sentenced to 24 years for raping an ‘extremely vulnerable’ 12-year-old boy he met online. Yet the new leadership pressed on with PiS this year as though nothing had happened, even going so far as to hail the event, which took place last weekend, as ‘spectacular’.
On the day there were, inevitably, a few hiccups. A gay activist known online as ‘Mr Menno’ managed only a few steps toward the parade with his placard, which read ‘Puberty blockers = anti-gay’, before security and police marched him away. (It’s a shame law enforcement wasn’t so quick off the mark with Ireland.) Later, feminist journalist Julie Bindel was escorted from the ticketed afterparty. Her offence was to ask Zöe Franklin, the Liberal Democrat MP in the local seat of Guildford, what had been done at this year’s event to ensure that no one as dangerous as Ireland could be in a position of authority again. Ireland had been able to appoint himself both director and head of safeguarding at PiS – a position that put him in charge of its ‘helpline’ for vulnerable queer children.