Between absurd victim ideology, controversial surgeries, and rainbow-washing, Pride is becoming increasingly controversial
This piece was originally published in French on 11 June 2025.
Gender identity ideology appears to be on the wane, certainly in the United Kingdom. June is Pride Month, but we are hearing much less about it this summer than we did in recent years.
Pride had long moved on from its roots as a protest by gay and lesbian people against the discrimination and harassment that was all too common in previous generations. These days, their rights are well established in national law and underpinned by the European Convention on Human Rights.
But events need a purpose, and Pride found new ones. New letters were combined with the LGB, first the T – for transgender people – but the additions didn’t stop there. Webster’s dictionary lists LGBTQQIA as an abbreviation for “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, questioning (one’s sexual or gender identity), intersex, and asexual/aromantic/agender”.
Why asexuals – apparently those who don’t experience sexual desire or attraction – should fear harassment or discrimination is hard to understand, but perhaps there is power in being a victim and Pride has certainly taken an interest in protecting self-identified victims. Aromantic people, on the other hand, may have sexual feelings but they do not have romantic feelings, at least according to the dictionary. They could just as easily be described as people who like sex without strings attached. Victims? Hardly!
But that did not stop businesses handing over large sums of cash to sponsor Pride events. They still do. At Pride in London this year, the corporate partners include Coca-Cola, Deutsche Bank and Lidl, together with other top brands. The Mayor of London and Westminster City Council are listed as supporters. This truly has become an event for the establishment.
But elsewhere in the UK, the sparkle has begun to tarnish. It was recently announced that Liverpool’s annual Pride event and the city’s March with Pride have been cancelled amid “significant financial and organisational challenges”. According to the board of directors, rising costs and difficulty securing national and local funding made it impossible to host Pride in Liverpool this year.
Perhaps businesses are beginning to realise that the LGBTQQIA rainbow is not the best way to signal their virtue? Lurking behind the T in the abbreviation is a movement that has promoted itself to children who are confused about their sexuality or perhaps just anxious about the thought of adulthood. So-called “gender-affirming treatments” – including irreversible, mutilating surgeries – are a shocking outcome of gender identity ideology.
One Irish plastic surgeon based in the United States and with a huge social media following dubbed herself “Dr Teetus Deletus”, referring to her surgical removal of healthy breast tissue. Dr Sidhbh Gallagher – to use her real name – has said that she does up to 500 of these surgeries every year. In 2022, it was reported that one a month involved a girl under the age of 18.
Dr Gallagher might now be wise to spend some of her profits on legal representation. Back in January, Donald Trump signed an executive order that prevented children and young people under the age of 19 from accessing gender-affirming care. Now, the FBI is urging people to report healthcare providers who work with children. On 2 June, the FBI’s official social media account posted: “As the Attorney General has made clear, we will protect our children and hold accountable those who mutilate them under the guise of gender-affirming care”.
But whatever the future might hold for surgeons who have made money by removing healthy tissue from youngsters in distress, businesses would be wise to think again about the events that they choose to sponsor. Their reputations might be affected, and not in a good way.
While the Mayor of London and Westminster City Council are still on board with Pride, other local authorities in the UK are taking a very different stance. At the local elections in May, Nigel Farage’s Reform UK won overall control of ten local authorities in England, including Kent and Durham.
Kent County Council will not fly a Pride flag this summer. Linden Kemkaran, the leader of the council, said that her new administration had little time for “special interest groups” or the flags that represent them.
Meanwhile, the new deputy leader of Durham County Council defended the decision to remove an LGBTQ+ Pride flag at the council headquarters. Darrent Grimes, who is gay, said the party was not anti-gay but was “anti-tokenism”. Grimes said that he was proud that the council was flying the Union Flag along with the flags of England and County Durham. He added: “Flying our national and local flags is an act of unity. Swapping them out for niche political symbols is just more toxic identity politics.”
This is a different kind of politics to what we have seen over the past ten years, when administrations appeared to bend over backwards to show their support for the LGBTQQIAP lobby. It is a change that I find refreshing, and I write that as a transgender person. That lobby has not represented me. At times, in fact, I have felt actively persecuted by them. I don’t think the way they do – I don’t believe in gender identity, for example – and I have been audacious enough to voice my own opinions. When I wore a T-shirt stating, “Transwomen are men. Get over it!”, attempts were made to remove me from an elected position within the trade union movement, for apparently “propagating hate speech against the trans community.” So much for inclusivity – it certainly didn’t include differences of opinion.
I certainly don’t feel threatened by councils that have decided not to pander to those who use rainbow flags to obscure their authoritarian agenda. In my view, Pride has not been a protest about rights for some years, but more a demand for political power by an intolerant lobby. If businesses and politicians are turning their backs on Pride, that change has not come a moment too soon.
By Debbie Hayton
Debbie Hayton is a teacher and journalist.
Her book, Transsexual Apostate – My Journey Back to Reality is published by Forum
* This article was first published in French by Le Point on 11 June 2025: Dérives transactivistes : le drapeau arc-en-ciel vacille au Royaume-Uni.
Debbie Hayton 
3 replies on “The Rainbow Flag Wavers”
Yay, the good news just keeps on coming! It’s a pity the insane left’s overreach has led to the right goose-stepping its way into local government (and threatening to get into No. 10), but we have to take the wins we can get. To be honest, all the political parties are special interest groups now, their special interest being their own power and wealth.
It’s horrific to think of that Deletus asshole doing 500 double mastectomies of healthy breasts a year, just one demented surgeon in the USA – what are the stats/estimates for this globally? Some of the post-op photos I’ve seen are deeply shocking – young girls trying to look pleased, but staring blankly in the mirror, with crude stitches from one side of their chest to the other, a scar that will always stare back at them reminding of the excavation of their potential for normal motherhood – or in many cases, motherhood entirely – through the lie of gender identity ideology that they could escape being female. Assisted self-harm can’t end soon enough.
Thanks for your courage in speaking out, Debbie.
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“So-called “gender-affirming treatments” – including irreversible, mutilating surgeries – are a shocking outcome of gender identity ideology.” The dark side in a nutshell. Sadly, it turned into a rabid, vicious movement bent on destroying all dissent. I wonder how many young people who were ‘transitioned’ by deluded parents and sinister influencers want to detransition? Does anyone remember that sad young boy Jazz who was transitioned so young and now deeply regrets it after his 15 minutes of fame was up? I remember reading about a young man who said no, he had changed his mind as he was being wheeled in for surgery to remove his genitals and the medical staff and surgeon ignored him. He woke up emasculated and facing a lifetime of physical and medical issues. Shocking that this movement captured the reason and minds of even governments worldwide. Who will compensate these poor young people whose lives are shattered?
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Everything you wrote reflects what I feel. The Pride flag has disgusted me for some time now, and the movement it celebrates no longer seems to be about rights, but about special interests. Every time I see “Trans rights are human rights” on a placard I want to puke.
It should be pointed out that executive orders made by the President do not have the force of law. An executive order is more about the president making a statement of his position — except in the case of Trump, who (in his self-deluded state) imagines that his word is indeed the law.
Despite the fact that trans activists act more like fascists than oppressed people, liberals are still falling for transgender ideology because trans people continue to look pitiful to them — I mean, what can be worse than being “trapped in the wrong body”? Liberals imagine that it is some kind of existential torture that must drive a person mad. We know it isn’t, but you can’t convince liberals of that.
Fiona, although ultra-liberal parents are still, sometimes, pushing their kids into transgenderism, my observation is that the children are leading the way — but not because most of them are trans. Rather, being trans has become a fad, an appealing option for adolescents (girls in particular) to indulge in, girls who have more serious problems (such as autism) which they are desperately trying to fix. They look at boys, who seem to get by in the world better than they do, and they imagine that becoming a boy would cure their problems. But I agree that parents can make things worse. Some parents are delighted to have a “special project” to focus on. Certainly, Jazz Jenning’s mother pushed Jazz into transgenderism when Jazz was very young — too young. Jazz never had a chance to escape his/her mother’s obsessive liberalism.
Unfortunately, as medical technology marches on, I think that transgenderism is here to stay. The medical treatments (and surgeries) will get more and more sophisticated, so much so that it will indeed seem that doctors can truly turn a girl into a boy, or vice versa. Once that happens, and with freedom in Western societies being paramount, “transitioning” will permanently be seen as an option for unhappy children.
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