‘LGBT’ is over – whether the BBC likes it or not

Sexuality and gender are two completely different things. So credit to Donald Trump for this return to common sense

Michael Deacon, Columnist

THE TELEGRAPH

04 February 2025

No one under the age of 30 will believe me. But when I was a student, all the way back in the late 1990s, my university had an LGB Society.

No, there wasn’t a letter missing. That, in full, was the society’s name. Because in those days, everyone used to say “LGB”. There was no such thing as “LGBT”.

So, if you’d knocked on the society’s door and asked, “Where’s the T?”, its members would probably have pointed you down the corridor to the cafe.

And if you’d said, “No, T as in ‘transgender’. Why does your sign only say ‘LGB’?”, they’d probably have replied: “Because LGB stands for ‘lesbian, gay and bisexual’ – which are all forms of sexuality. Transgenderism, by contrast, has nothing to do with sexuality. It’s to do with gender identity, which is something completely different and unrelated. Having a society for ‘lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people’, therefore, makes no more sense than having a society for ‘lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trainspotters’. Obviously we’ve got nothing against trainspotters. We’re just saying that there’s no logical reason for them to be added to the name of our society.”

Still, as I say, this was all a terribly long time ago. At some point, in the years since, things changed. Suddenly it was no longer acceptable, anywhere in the English-speaking world, to say “LGB”. A “T” had to be added, at all times, to make “LGBT”.

Why? The reason is simple. Radical activists forcibly combined the two in a cynical attempt to manufacture public support for gender ideology. Most people already supported gay rights. Now they felt obliged to support both. After all, “LGBT” meant that you couldn’t support one and not the other, didn’t it?

Activists reinforced this impression by using the mantra “No LGB without the T”, which falsely implied that gay rights were only secured in the first place thanks to the efforts of trans people. In gratitude, gay people were supposed to repay trans people by supporting all of the latter’s demands, from the right to undress in women’s changing rooms to the right to compete in the women’s Olympic weightlifting.

At long last, though, it looks as if “LGBT” is on its way out. Under Donald Trump, the US federal government has formally ceased using the term. The Department of State’s website, for example, now provides gay Americans with travel advice under the heading “LGB travellers”. Not “LGBT”, or “LGBTQIA+”. Just “LGB”. Since the advice refers specifically to countries where homosexuality is illegal, saying “LGB” is only common sense.

We may have to wait, however, for Britain’s elites to move with the times. In our schools, pupils are currently being made to celebrate an event known as “LGBT History Month”. A film about the alleged benefits of cross-sex hormones and chest binders (to help female teenagers look male by strapping down their breasts) will be shown to children as young as 11.

Meanwhile, I suspect it will be quite some time yet before our national broadcaster accepts defeat, and reverts to “LGB”. Last month, in a news story on its website about the jailing of a rapist who identifies as “non-binary”, the BBC thoughtfully respected the rapist’s preferred pronouns, which are “they/them”. Apparently, “they” threatened “their” victim, a girl aged 14, with a knife.

The day the BBC stops worrying about hurting the feelings of violent men who rape underage girls, we’ll know that sanity has finally been restored.

END