The Good Law Project’s Jo Maugham notes that almost every supposed expert witness in the High Court puberty blockers case was dodgy. Most have overt links to anti-LGBT, anti-abortion Christian Right groups, notably the ADF and the Heritage Foundation.

As Maugham writes:

Even if you do not care to listen to the views of the trans community you should be deeply alarmed that these or some of these highly marginal figures in world medicine are influencing the law around healthcare for children in the UK.

And if you do not care about the trans community – but you do care about abortion rights or gay rights – you should be deeply alarmed at the influence those who are no friends of ‘progressives’ are gaining in the UK.

One of the things I find particularly disgusting about this is that it’s been happening in plain sight for years. There is a co-ordinated attempt by the Christian Right to use trans people as a wedge issue for a wider attack on LGBT+ rights and on women’s reproductive freedom. This particular case is just a particularly despicable example, but the religious right is behind pretty much every anti-trans legal case and is funding a great deal of the supposed grass-roots anti-trans groups. And since this verdict they have been talking openly about using this case as a springboard to attack abortion and contraception, which was the game plan all along.

Very little of this is happening in secret, and yet the entire UK press and broadcast media chooses not to investigate or report on it. Instead, they are complicit. Shame on them.