while watching reports from the alba party women’s conference that took place this afternoon, we saw something that we thought must be wrong.  but it wasn’t.  ilga world – the international lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and intersex association – is an organisation that we hadn’t heard of until today. just over a year ago they released, as part of a 200-member caucus of other groups, something called “the feminist declaration”. it’s a mostly-innocuous document of demands about women’s rights, but buried in the middle of it is a very disturbing section.  the world health organisation defines “adolescents” as people aged from 10 to 19.  so the only possible interpretation of “end the criminalization of adolescents’ sexuality” is a reduction in the age of consent to 10 years old. indeed, a slightly earlier paragraph of the declaration is more explicit about it:  ”eliminate all laws and policies that punish or criminalize same-sex intimacy, gender affirmation, abortion, hiv transmission non-disclosure and exposure, or that limit the exercise of bodily autonomy, including laws limiting legal capacity of adolescents, people with disabilities or other groups to provide consent to sex”  while it doesn’t go into more detail, one would like to imagine that the intent would be to remove laws limiting capacity for consent only within that age group, ie to make it legal for all adolescents to have sex with each other, rather than to let older people have sex with them. but it doesn’t actually say that anywhere.  even if it did, alert readers will note that that would still make it legal for 19-year-olds to have sex with 10-year-olds, and to put it very mildly that seems a somewhat controversial position.  so who are the organisations signing up to this “feminist” demand under the ilga umbrella? on its list of member organisations, sure enough, appear the names of lgbt youth scotland and stonewall scotland.  just 12 years ago lgbt youth scotland was at the centre of scotland’s biggest ever paedophile scandal, with its chief executive james rennie sentenced to life imprisonment for a string of offences.  so it seems remarkable that (a) it appears to be set on embroiling itself in such a contentious demand, and (b) that the scottish government is funding it with taxpayers’ money to do so, even allowing for the fact that until 2017 one of lgbtys’ directors was snp mp alyn “daddy bear” smith.  so we must apologise to margaret lynch – who penned an excellent article for this very website just days ago – for even momentarily doubting what she told the alba women’s conference. it appears that it’s entirely true – the snp are indeed paying lobby groups with your money to try to reduce the age of consent in scotland to 10.  we wish we could be confident that the danger of that actually happening was only theoretical.
wings over scotland