In more not-news, the Stonewall demonstration has been cancelled, following their partial U-turn over marriage equality and complete U-turn over the Journalist of the year award nominations.

There are still outstanding issues. Stonewall are explicitly against opposite-sex civil partnerships and want to preserve that as something “special” for LG(b) folk. There is an argument that opposite-sex civil partnerships are not an LGB issue, but that fails on two counts: Firstly, Stonewall should not be against them, as they are, on that score but should leave them alone. Secondly, and more importantly, Bisexual folk might want to get a Civil Partnership rather than a Marriage despite being in an opposite-sex relationship. (For those who want to continue to work towards Equal Marriage, the Equal Love campaign is worth a look.)

There is also the “FIT” video Stonewall produced. If you haven’t seen it, the relevant clip is available on YouTube. Whilst bad (It uses the word “Tranny”) it’s not screaming-and-throwing-things-at-the-computer bad, more just bang-head-on-desk-in-frustration bad. The director, Rikki Beadle-Blair, has publicly apologised for this and the apologies are very genuine. I believe any problems with this video are probably down to Stonewall not being a Trans organisation and thus being unable to get any real input on what is or isn’t acceptable in such a video rather than any failings on the part of Rikki. Stonewall should have realised this and steered clear of the topic.

And the last point is Stonewall’s apparent consultation with the government on the Gender Recognition Act. Fortunately, I suspect we’ve been banging on the door of the government hard enough for the last few months that they’re not likely to take too much notice of Stonewall without checking with us first.

Despite all that, I think calling off the demonstration is the right thing to do. We have a set of smaller points which doesn’t work so well at a demo when you only have seconds to get the message across to attendees. We’ve proven that the LGBT communities can rally a large amount of grass-roots support if necessary and thus have secured major concessions from Stonewall under the threat of a demonstration. If it went ahead now, there would be no reason for anyone else we threaten to protest to back down.