Stormont, the home of Northern Ireland’s assembly, has never exactly been a place associated with social liberalism. So Steerpike was surprised to find that the Ulster parliament – where the Bible-bashing Ian Paisley held court for so long – has spent thousands of pounds on controversial LGBT+ charity Stonewall.
Freedom of Information requests by Mr S found that the Assembly paid £7,500 to be members of the organisation’s ‘diversity champions programme’ between 2018 and 2021, with the Northern Ireland executive spending a further £1,440 for Stonewall seminars on leadership, allyship and promoting mental health since the beginning of 2020.
Other recent diversity courses hosted by the executive include an LGBT workshop in 2018 – back when same-sex marriage was illegal there – along with transgender and ethnic awareness seminars. More recent ‘webinars’ in pandemic times have included ones on racial equality, racial discrimination and mental health. How times have changed!
Still, Stormont has some some way to go until it can match the enthusiasm of another devolved body. For Sadiq Khan’s Greater London Authority gave more than £20,000 to Stonewall as part of its membership of the Stonewall scheme between 2018 and 2020, even holding a bake sale in 2019 to raise an additional £500 in funds for the charity.
Indeed more than 300 pages of emails and documents were submitted by the GLA as part of its application for Stonewall’s Workplace Equality Index, now disclosed under FOI law. They highlight just how much the thousand-strong army in City Hall care about their right-on credentials, with strict rules in place on everything from ‘coarse or vulgar humour’ and ‘referring to someone using ageist terminology.’ That’ll sort the crime rate out.
Naturally, though the star of the show is Sadiq Khan himself. The GLA’s submission references the Mayor in glowing terminology, of the kind usually found in hagiographic Soviet literature. Unfortunately though, Mr S gets the sense that GLA mandarins had a hard time bigging up their boss’s achievements. So desperate were they to include ways in which Khan has ‘championed LGBTQ+ equality within the GLA’ that they were forced to include his approval of:
The flying of a custom Pride flag outside City Hall, which incorporated the bi flag, trans flag, and POC inclusive Pride flag, making it the most intersectional Pride flag ever flown outside a UK Government building. Sadiq Khan’s approval of the flag was a powerful symbol of the GLA’s support for LGBTQ+ equality both for GLA staff and Londoners.
Inspiring stuff.
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