January is when many of us lose sight of dry land in a sea of tax bills and post-Christmas debt. But spare a thought for Stonewall, the once-formidable gay rights charity now listing badly. Its income has collapsed from a 2021 peak of around £11.5 million to £4.7 million today, a fall of close to 60%. Reserves, which stood at roughly £2.4 million as recently as 2022, have dwindled to just £92,000. Staff cuts and restructuring were required simply to keep the organisation afloat.

A Stonewall spokesperson said the charity had undergone “a significant period of transformation and change over 24/25”, citing “economic uncertainty” and what they described as “significant reductions in funding” for LGBTQ+ organisations globally, amid a wider “pushback on rights and freedoms”.

But what looks like damage from a shift in the political weather is in fact the consequence of long-ignored rot below the waterline. The leak began more than a decade ago, when Ruth Hunt was at the helm of the charity. It was under her leadership that Stonewall formally committed to embedding trans-inclusive work across the organisation, a strategic shift supported by external funding from the US-based Arcus Foundation, a major philanthropic backer of trans advocacy. Having set this new course, Hunt jumped ship and sailed on to the House of Lords.

Since 2015, the official Stonewall line has been that lesbians can have penises and gay men vaginas. This doctrinal shift shaped guidance, workplace training, and public lobbying. Under Hunt’s successor Nancy Kelley, the charity lurched from one self-inflicted media collision to another, most memorably the claim that lesbian sexual boundaries were analogous to racism, and the suggestion that gender-critical feminists were comparable to antisemites. These were not momentary lapses of judgment. They were the predictable result of an ideology which treats homosexuality as a prejudice to be corrected, rather than a reality to be defended.

Since then, Stonewall’s ship has been dragged between Scylla and Charybdis. On one side lies the ever-present threat of denunciation as transphobic, from unhinged and increasingly impotent activists. On the other sits the stubborn pull of material reality and common sense. Faced with this choice, successive CEOs and chairs have steered ever further into abstraction.

Once a powerful lobby group that reshaped law and public opinion, Stonewall now occupies itself with campaigns of steadily diminishing relevance. Over the past five years, the charity has spaffed millions in taxpayers’ money on causes ranging from an app for reporting LGBTQ+ “hate incidents” to an asexual hub and a suite of resources urging schools to “centre trans students and staff”.

The latter includes transition care plans which demand whole-school compliance; advice that pupils and staff should use whichever facilities they “feel most comfortable” in; guidance on sleeping in the dormitory that reflects a student’s “gender identity”; and the provision of “non-binary” facilities. Since the Supreme Court ruling on the meaning of sex last year, this guidance now appears to sit firmly on the wrong side of the law.

Children have paid the highest price. Data from the-now disgraced Gender Identity Development Service showed that, of those referred, three-quarters of adolescent girls and half of boys were same-sex-attracted. The implications were so clear that clinicians joked there would soon be no gay kids left. Instead of sounding the alarm, successive Stonewall CEOs promoted the myth of the transgender child, endorsing a medical framework in which gender non-conformity and nascent homosexuality were treated not as ordinary human variation but as defects requiring clinical intervention.

Stonewall disputes the suggestion that it drifted off course. A spokesperson claimed it remains focused on “continued hostility and opposition to marginalised groups including LGBTQ+ communities, and specifically trans+ and non-binary people”. In the past 18 months, a new chief executive has been appointed and new strategic goals published. While acknowledging “an underlying deficit in recent years, which our 24–25 financial results still reflect”, Stonewall said recent action was already “reflected in positive financial results in the first half of the financial year 25–26”.

Stonewall once existed to challenge the pathologisation and suspicion of homosexuality. Today, it has helped normalise both. The charity’s moral bankruptcy is finally reflected on its balance sheet. It is what happens when an organisation abandons its compass and then acts surprised when it runs aground.

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Josephine Bartosch is assistant editor at The Critic and co-author of Pornocracy.

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