Jimmy Somerville blasts ‘anti-trans’ LGB Alliance for using his song: ‘How f*****g dare you?’
Jimmy Somerville. (Getty)
Bronski Beat singer Jimmy Somerville has blasted gender-critical organisation LGB Alliance, telling them not to use the song Smalltown Boy.
The Glaswegian singer posted a clip online strongly condemning the group, which has been criticised for its anti-trans campaigning, telling them not to use the hit which reached number three in the UK singles chart in 1984.
“It has come to my attention that the LGB Alliance is using Smalltown Boy in a film called Generation Gay,” Somerville said. “LGB Alliance is anti-trans. I would never allow anything of mine to be used by such a group.
“We will do everything we can as soon as possible to have Smalltown Boy removed from this film. How dare you? How f*****g dare you?”
Generation Gay was published on LGB Alliance’s YouTube page on Thursday (21 November), as part of its 2024 conference.
The clip features a panel of individuals discussing a “new threat” to gay men, which it likens to homophobic arrests of the 60s. It has since been taken down because of a reported copyright violation.
LGB Alliance co-founder Bev Jackson responded to Somerville’s post by suggesting, bizarrely, that the former Communards frontman – one of the very first openly gay pop stars – was “nothing to do with the gay rights movement”.
Somerville has long been a member of gay culture in London and been open about his sexuality.
Jackson went on to say: “We are not part of the TQ+ movement that denies the existence of homosexuality and panders to the current fashion for ‘gender identity’ that is harming so many young LGB people.
“If you think some gay men have vulvas, and some lesbians have penises, you have nothing to do with the gay rights movement I was part of.”
LGB Alliance has historically campaigned on so-called “biological definitions of sex” and has often been accused of transphobia. Not only has the group made efforts to erode trans rights in the UK, it has rallied against the use of words such as “queer” to describe LGB people.
In a 2023 report which surveyed its members, the alliance’s supporters claimed that homosexuality has “very little to do with transgender” and accused trans rights activists of being “TQ+ lobbyists”.
LGB Alliance Ireland was labelled a “far-right hate group” in a Global Project Against Hate and Extremism report in 2022.
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