NEWCASTLE, United Kingdom (LifeSiteNews) – A British court rebuked a local police force for allowing officers to participate in a LGBT “pride” demonstration in uniform, ruling that law enforcement has a duty to maintain neutrality in such contentious matters.
The BBC reported that the case stems from a complaint filed by Newcastle resident Linzi Smith, a self-described “gender-critical” lesbian who objected to Northumbria Police Chief Constable Vanessa Jardine allowing a “contingent of uniformed officers” led by herself to participate in last year’s Newcastle Pride march, some with flags. They “marched in the immediate proximity of those carrying the flags and emblems clearly associated with the gender ideologists’ cause,” according to the complaint.
The police force defended the decision on the grounds that participating demonstrated “the stigma which has traditionally afflicted members of the LGBT+ community will not be reflected” in law enforcement, that it was an “opportunity to engage with people including those who may have less confidence in policing,” and that they were acting with the Public Sector Equality Duty law’s command to “advance equality of opportunity.”
But Justice Thomas Linden rejected those justifications, finding that the choice to let officers participate was “outside the range of reasonable decisions open to her” and that Jardine “created the reasonable impression of partiality in a contested moral and political debate. The Equality Act does not override the police duty of neutrality.”
Smith says she was “delighted” by the outcome. Northumbria Police’s “participation in the Pride march clearly shows where their sympathies lie,” she added. “My hope is Northumbria Police change their ways and follow this ruling. If they do, they will be policing the community for everyone.”
The police department says that in this year’s Pride march, only off-duty officers would be allowed to march, and they cannot be in uniform.
For years, the United Kingdom has been marked by its extreme social liberalism, most recently demonstrated by decriminalizing abortion, and hostility to the free speech of those who dissent from LGBT orthodoxy.
Recently, however, there have been signs of some backtracking. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer acknowledged in April that “a woman is an adult female,” after a High Court ruling that the legal definition of “woman” only refers to actual biological women and not “transgender women” (i.e., men). Last year, a review commissioned by National Health Service (NHS) England was highly critical of the “gender medicine” practice and the medical evidence supporting it, prompting NHS to stop prescribing puberty blockers to children with gender confusion.
