Homophobic McCarthyism in modern Britain? The ruthless censorship of homosexuals in such a gay-friendly nation as ours? No way. Won’t happen. Only it has. The LGB Alliance, the only organisation in the UK that caters exclusively to the needs of homosexual and bisexual people, has once again found itself monstered and silenced by Britain’s cultural guardians.

The Telegraph reported at the weekend that a leading figure in the Arts Council, the government body that gives out millions of pounds to art projects, denounced the LGB Alliance as ‘divisive’ and ‘anti-trans’. The LGB Alliance is sceptical of the ideology of transgenderism, which makes it ‘anti-trans’ in the simpleton morality of the new elites. In a virtual Arts Council meeting earlier this year, deputy chief exec Simon Mellor slammed the alliance and said it was a ‘mistake’ for the council to have awarded it £9,000 to make a film about gay people’s contribution to the life of the nation for the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Then, five days after that virtual chat, on 19 April, the grant was withdrawn. The Arts Council insists it didn’t take the decision to withhold funds – that call was made by a secondary funding body, the London Community Foundation. But it is at the very least striking, and more than a tad concerning, that a gay-rights organisation was deprived of Arts Council money shortly after an Arts Council higher-up denounced it as transphobic.

It gets worse. Unofficially, Arts Council employees took to the internet to rage against the LGB Alliance in the most extraordinary and intolerant fashion. Arts Council staff circulated a petition against the funding of the alliance, with one employee describing it as a ‘cultural parasite and a glorified hate group’ whose supporters are ‘neo-Nazis, homophobes and Islamophobes’. Another said the alliance is a ‘hate group’, not unlike the KKK. Formally, the Arts Council may not have issued the edict saying ‘take away the alliance’s money’, but it cannot shirk its part in whipping up hysteria about the alliance, in contributing to the chattering classes’ feverish view of this organisation as a nest of fascists masquerading as gay liberationists. For Arts Council leaders and staff to put about bile about the LGB Alliance and then say ‘It wasn’t us’ when the alliance lost Arts Council money is a bit much.