The Politics of Division: Who Really Benefits When LGB and LGBTQ+ People Are Pitted Against Each Other?
- SHST
- 11 hours ago
- 6 min read
Something increasingly uncomfortable is happening within the wider LGBT+ community: a significant argument has emerged over whether lesbian, gay and bisexual people should separate themselves from the broader LGBTQ+ movement, with some organisations arguing that LGB people have distinct interests that deserve separate representation.
This debate is real, and it deserves to be discussed honestly. One example is the LGB Alliance, which was established in 2019 and registered as a charity by the Charity Commission in April 2021. The Commission concluded that it met the legal test for charitable status and that its purposes included promoting equality, diversity and human rights.
That legal decision is important to state accurately. Charity registration does not mean that the Charity Commission endorsed every political argument associated with the organisation. It means that, after considering the evidence and applying charity law, the Commission concluded that the organisation met the legal requirements for registration.
People are entitled to disagree about language, policy, representation and the direction of LGBT+ organisations. Legitimate concerns should not be dismissed simply because the person raising them belongs to a minority. Free expression, disagreement and scrutiny are essential to a healthy democracy.
But there is another question we should be asking:
Who benefits when people who have historically stood together are encouraged to see one another as the enemy?
When identity becomes a political weapon
The argument over whether “LGB” and “LGBTQ+” should be separate can become about far more than terminology. When politicians, campaigners and media organisations turn identity into competing political constituencies, there is a danger that genuine differences are transformed into permanent divisions.
One danger of wedge politics is that people are divided into increasingly narrow camps, encouraged to blame another group for their problems, and persuaded that cooperation itself represents betrayal.
That is how political disagreement can become tribalism.
The idea that divisions between LGB and trans people can become part of political wedge politics is not simply an argument made on social media. In a House of Commons debate in July 2021, MPs explicitly discussed attempts to divide LGB people from trans people and described the issue in terms of “wedge issue politics” and culture-war campaigning. That was a political argument made by MPs, rather than a finding that every organisation involved in the debate was deliberately pursuing such a strategy.
That distinction matters.
It would be wrong to accuse every person or organisation arguing for LGB-specific representation of secretly working for a political party or deliberately attempting to create division without evidence.
But it is equally reasonable to ask what happens when legitimate disagreements are repeatedly presented as a battle between opposing tribes.
Because once disagreement becomes identity, compromise can begin to look like betrayal.
Challenge systems , don't turn people into the problem
For me, this is where the conversation can go badly wrong.
The problem is not the lesbian person.
It is not the gay man.
It is not the bisexual person.
And it is not the transgender person.
People can have different experiences, different priorities and profoundly different opinions. None of that makes an entire category of people responsible for the problems faced by another.
The more useful question is what institutions, politicians, campaign groups and media organisations are doing when they place millions of individuals into political boxes and then claim to speak on their behalf.
A lesbian woman should not have to accept that another organisation automatically speaks for her.
A gay man should not have to accept that every organisation using LGBT+ branding represents his views.
A bisexual person should not be forced to choose a side in somebody else's culture war.
And a transgender person should not be treated as though they are responsible for every disagreement surrounding gender policy.
People are individuals before they are political categories.
We can debate sex, gender, language, sport, healthcare, education, single-sex spaces, conversion practices, discrimination and countless other issues without deciding that millions of ordinary people are the enemy.
Don't let politics make our differences more important than our common ground
LGBT+ political campaigning has often involved people with different experiences finding common ground around particular goals. That does not mean everyone has always agreed, or that every issue affecting one group is identical to an issue affecting another.
It means that disagreement does not automatically require hostility.
A lesbian woman can have concerns about a particular policy without hating transgender people.
A transgender person can defend their rights without hating lesbians, gay men or bisexual people.
A gay man can support some LGBTQ+ organisations while disagreeing with others.
A bisexual person can refuse to be pushed into somebody else's political camp.
These positions are not contradictions.
They are examples of people thinking for themselves.
The danger comes when complicated human beings are reduced to political teams.
Once people have been divided into teams, it becomes easier for politicians, campaigners and media organisations to mobilise one group against another.
The result is a culture-war environment in which people can become more important as political symbols than as human beings.
Representation is not ownership
There is also something important about the phrase “original LGB”.
Lesbian, gay and bisexual people obviously existed before the modern collection of initials used to describe the wider movement. But that history should not become an argument that one group owns the movement while another group is an unwanted addition.
At the same time, recognising transgender people does not mean lesbian, gay and bisexual people lose the right to advocate for their own interests.
Both things can be true.
LGB people can have specific issues.
Trans people can have specific issues.
Different organisations can represent different constituencies.
And there can still be common ground where it exists.
The mistake is believing that solidarity requires complete agreement — or that disagreement requires hostility.
Don't allow the vote to become the battlefield
Perhaps this is the most important question of all.
If political actors benefit from communities spending their energy fighting one another, division can become politically useful.
That does not prove that every disagreement has been manufactured, nor does it mean that every politician who discusses these issues is acting cynically.
But it does mean voters should ask difficult questions.
Who is setting the agenda?
Who benefits electorally from the division?
Which claims are supported by evidence?
Which claims are exaggerated, misleading or simply false?
Which policies actually improve people's lives?
And perhaps most importantly:
Are we fighting each other because we genuinely believe the other person is the problem — or because somebody has convinced us that they are?
Those are questions worth asking of every political side.
Truth matters more than tribal loyalty
This is where we need to be particularly careful.
Calling out lies does not mean deciding that everything said by one side is false and everything said by the other is true.
It means applying the same standard to everyone.
If a claim is supported by evidence, say so.
If it is disputed, say so.
If the evidence is uncertain, admit it.
If a politician, campaign group or media organisation gets something wrong, challenge it — regardless of which side of the argument they are on.
And if our own side gets something wrong, we should be prepared to say that too.
Truth cannot depend on which political team benefits from it.
There is a growing temptation in modern politics to treat facts as ammunition rather than something we are all responsible for getting right.
That is dangerous.
Once people become more loyal to a political identity than to the truth, misinformation becomes easier to spread and harder to challenge.
We should not replace one form of tribalism with another.
We can disagree without becoming enemies
There are serious debates that deserve serious discussion. We should not shut those discussions down by accusing everyone who disagrees with us of hatred.
But neither should legitimate concerns become an excuse for treating an entire group of people as the enemy.
The answer is not to force everybody into one organisation.
Nor is it to create ever more boxes and demand that people choose which box they belong in.
The answer is to listen to people as individuals.
To challenge claims rather than identities.
To examine evidence rather than repeat slogans.
To confront discrimination without manufacturing enemies.
And to remember that disagreement is not the same thing as hatred.
Because at the end of the day, the person standing next to you is not a political category.
They are a human being.
Perhaps that is the point we are in danger of forgetting.
The issue should not simply be whether LGB people “belong” with LGBTQ+ people. The deeper question is whether every person, whatever their sexuality or gender, has the freedom to speak for themselves, live safely, disagree openly, challenge powerful institutions and participate equally in society.
We can defend specific interests without declaring war on one another.
We can disagree about policy without denying one another's humanity.
We can question organisations without attacking the people they represent.
And we can demand evidence from politicians, campaigners and journalists without becoming prisoners of our own political tribes.
Because if we allow our differences to become more important than our common humanity, we may discover too late that the people who benefited most from the division were never standing in the middle of the argument at all.
Don't let politics turn neighbours into enemies. Don't let slogans replace evidence. Don't let misinformation replace truth. And don't let tribal loyalty become more important than our common humanity.
Comments