UKIP vows to gut LGBT rights in extreme new manifesto

LGBT+ activists were described as child abusers at the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party’s conference on Friday, as it launched a new manifesto that takes drastic new anti-LGBT stances.

UKIP faced a mass exodus of LGBT+ members earlier this year in protest at its increasingly hardline views.

For several years, the party attempted to distance itself from homophobic views often expressed by its representatives, but leader Gerard Batten has launched a new manifesto that swings the party’s direction heavily against LGBT+ rights.

The manifesto pledges to oppose LGBT-inclusive primary school education, explaining: “UKIP opposes gender confusion ideologies and the implementation of compulsory LGBT-inclusive relationships education in primary schools.”

At the party’s conference, UKIP Families and Children spokesman Alan Craig said: “I consider it to be child abuse when adults go into primary schools and try and get them to question whether they’re actually born one way or the other. That is child abuse.”

LGBT+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell told PinkNews: “This stance reinforces UKIP’s reputation as a hard right, anti-LGBT+ political party. It clearly does not care about the welfare and human rights of LGBT+ people.

“These school initiatives are designed to combat ignorance and prejudice, and to make life easier to LGBT+ pupils.

“UKIP has made it clear that it does not care. It is content for no action to be taken to tackle anti-LGBT+ bullying, depression and self-harm.”

The party also vowed to make sweeping changes to anti-discrimination and hate crime laws that currently protect LGBT+ people and other minority groups.

The manifesto claims that the concept of “so-called ‘hate speech,’ driven by the political doctrine of Cultural Marxism” has been used to push “extreme left-wing ‘politically correct’ viewpoint[s].”

It vows to “repeal hate speech guidelines,” “scrap the Crown Prosecution Service’s guidelines on ‘hate crime,'” and “repeal the Equality Act 2010.”

The 2010 Equality Act was the law that extended full anti-discrimination protections to LGBT+ people across employment and public accommodations.

But UKIP now claim that it “gives special rights and privileges to certain groups with ‘protected characteristics.'”