Glasgow City Council to fly Pride flags more often and to protect trans rights
Politicians from all parties backed the motion
Pride flags are to be flown more often by Glasgow council as politicians voted to ensure policy protects LGBTQ+ rights particularly trans people.
A council meeting heard trans people are being “dehumanised and made out to be deviants” as councillors agreed that anti LGBTQ+ “sentiment has no place in a democratic society.”
Councillor Elaine Gallagher said trans people’s lives are being used as a “wedge issue” as she brought a motion to council, which gained unanimous support, from all parties last week during Pride month.
The motion from the Scottish Greens politician who is the city’s first openly trans councillor called for the council’s “measures to ensure protection of equality and human rights will include protection of vulnerable LGBTQ+ people to the limit of its ability.”
The trans debate
Claiming anti trans rhetoric is being framed as “debate,” Bailie Gallagher said: “On the one side of this debate there is a group of people who want to be able to live their lives. On the other side there is a group who want the first group not to have human rights or frankly to exist at all.”
She said “gay people were presented 30 years ago as a threat to women and children” and referred to the introduction of Section 28, which banned local authorities and schools from ‘promoting homosexuality.’
Quoting crime statistics, Councillor Gallagher said: “There were nearly 30,000 offences of child abuse recorded last year. There remain only 250 trans people of any identity convicted for any reason.”
She added that the “predominant threat of gender violence is from cis gender men.”
Councillor Gallagher continued: “There is no reason for a man to go through the upheaval, bureaucracy and physical pain of gender transition when all he needs to do is follow a woman through a door.”
Cross-party support
She called for the council to support the movement “to protect equality and to uphold the identities of people who are doing no harm and only want to live authentic lives.”
Seconding her motion, fellow party councillor Holly Bruce said: “As a cis gender woman I will never understand what it is like to be trans. With that comes unique privilege. I’d like to address that privilege today from the outset.”
Councillor Eva Murray, Labour, said: “The attacks on the trans community have escalated in recent months. Much of those attacks are fuelled by malicious misinformation intent on dehumanising trans people and making them out to be deviants in society. It is not only words – there have been legitimate threats to life against another human simply because of how they identify. It is utterly vile and if you are a true trans ally you will not hesitate to stand up against those creating the hostile environment.”
Every party backed the Scottish Greens motion without making changes including the SNP, Labour and Conservatives.