The debate so far:

• Marian Halcombe, The Peter Tatchell Foundation: Attack Dogs of an Authoritarian State, 5^th September 2025
• Peter Tatchell, Attack Dogs of an Authoritarian State: Peter Tatchell Replies, 11^th September 2025
• Marian Halcombe, Reply to Peter Tatchell, 11^th September 2025

In any argument with Peter Tatchell, one large point must be conceded at the beginning. During much of the twentieth century, the British State persecuted adult gay men for consensual acts in private. The laws that sent police spies into bedrooms and filled courts with hypocritical denunciations can only be described as evil. The same can be said of the restrictions that deterred men from expressing their sexuality in other ways when no question of coercion arose. Peter Tatchell took a leading part in pulling down this structure of evil. He may not have received all the credit he deserves from the gay establishment. But he has always received it from the Libertarian Alliance. On this point there is no ambiguity: he fought against tyranny, and he was right.

The difficulty arises in what has followed. Mr Tatchell once opposed the illegitimate use of state power. In the past decade, he has increasingly supported it, and now he sometimes advocates the use of state power against his opponents. He insists that I misrepresent his Foundation. He has replied to my article of 5 September, and says I have ignored his record of defending unpopular opinions. I do not ignore it. He has shown, in many cases, that he will stand up for Christians or conservatives whose views about sexuality are punished. He opposed the denial of banking services to Nigel Farage, and on that matter I salute him. He provides sufficient evidence that he is not, in the old-fashioned sense, a censor. I am pleased to accept this.

But censorship is not simply a matter of police truncheons and pre-publication licensing. We live in an expanded state, where permission is required to keep almost any business in being. A restaurant cannot open without licences, inspections, and planning consent. A bank cannot function without a state charter. Internet services exist only by the good grace of regulatory regimes. Once this machinery is used to shut down dissent, the effect is censorship, whether or not anyone is dragged before a magistrate. To suppose otherwise is to ignore how censorship works in a world of bureaucratic control.

That is why I quoted his own words. He declared:

Our campaign is calling on local councils, planning authorities, MPs, mayors and student unions to oppose new Chick-fil-A franchises, unless the company announces a permanent halt to funding for anti-LGBT+ campaigns, organisations and individuals.

That is not a call for consumers to avoid buying chicken sandwiches. That is a call for the state and its satellites to withdraw permission to trade unless a company first renounces certain beliefs. I can see no way to interpret this except as a weaponisation of the state to punish dissent. Mr Tatchell may not call for imprisonment. He may not seek direct prohibition of speech. But his words show how easily a regulatory system is turned into a machinery for enforcing ideological conformity.

Let me widen my critique. In 2018, Mr Tatchell wrote on the Friends of Europe blog that “equal rights are not enough.” By this he meant that it is not sufficient for people to be treated equally before the law. He proposed instead that schools must be used as instruments of propaganda. His words deserve to be quoted at length:

To combat intolerance and bullying, education against all prejudice – including racism, misogyny, disablism, xenophobia, ageism, homophobia, biphobia and transphobia – should be a stand-alone compulsory subject in every school. Equality and diversity lessons should start from the first year of primary level onwards, with no opt-outs for private or faith schools and no right for parents to withdraw their children.

These lessons should be subject to annual examination, ensuring that both pupils and teachers take these lessons seriously; otherwise they won’t. A pupil’s equality grades should be recorded and declared when applying for higher education and jobs, as it is in the interests of everyone to have universities and workplaces without prejudice.”

This amounts to a programme of compulsory indoctrination, starting at age five, with grades determining life chances. It is not enough to live quietly within the law. Every child must be tested and certified in his degree of conformity to a public orthodoxy. Those who hesitate or dissent will find themselves denied access to universities or professions. This is not liberty. It is the blueprint for a total state.

The issues to which such compulsory instruction would apply are not trivial. They include:

• whether the races are equal in capacity;
• whether the sexes are equal in ability;
• whether sex outside heterosexual monogamy is wise or moral;
• whether medical transition is advisable;
• whether mass immigration benefits host communities.

No side of any of these is self-evidently true. Every position rests on assumptions that are themselves matters of dispute. For the authorities to classify one side as “hate” is as much an abuse of power as criminalising disagreement about the Nature of Christ or the sources of religious knowledge. Let attacks on life and property be punished by law. But let every opinion stand or fall according to evidence and persuasion.

What Mr Tatchell recommends would instead produce in schools an atmosphere of hysterical conformity, of spying and malicious informing. The experience of the Soviet bloc shows that such environments are destructive of truth, and that propaganda cannot permanently suppress debate. Even in police states, banned opinions outlast the bans. They flourish again like weeds once the pressure is lifted. The plan is unworkable in the long run. But in the short run it is sinister, and no libertarian can watch its progress with indifference.

I repeat: I do not accuse Mr Tatchell of wanting prison for his opponents. But his method amounts to censorship all the same. A restaurant denied planning consent unless it recants is not free. A child marked for life as “prejudiced” because he disagrees with the teaching is not free. A teacher sacked because he declines to instruct in the latest orthodoxy is not free. Censorship in modern England does not always arrive in the form of a police constable. More often it arrives in the form of regulatory discretion, council “safeguarding,” or professional disqualification.

What, then, would I ask of Mr Tatchell? It is simple enough. Whenever he proposes a campaign, he should ask himself whether it would be possible in a country without an extended state. Could it be carried out solely by persuasion and voluntary action? If so, it is legitimate. Boycotts, leaflets, letters, and public debate fall into this category. But if it requires the mobilisation of local councils, planning committees, or licensing authorities, then it crosses into coercion. So too with compulsory indoctrination in schools. These are not methods of persuasion but of compulsion. They rely on the state to force attention and punish dissent. They are therefore illegitimate.

I appreciate this is difficult in practice. We live under a state apparatus that agrees with much of what Mr Tatchell believes. It is not easy to tell enthusiastic supporters that their support is unwelcome. It is harder still to tell them that it is illegitimate. But this is the dividing line. Persuasion is liberty. Coercion is censorship.

Nor do I overlook the fact that much of what Mr Tatchell seeks to oppose is distasteful. There are opinions about race, sex, and sexuality that I dislike. There are organisations to which I would never give a penny. But the test of a free society is not how it treats the respectable and the moderate. It is how it treats those whose opinions are eccentric or plain offensive. If we silence them by denying their ability to earn a living, or by filling schools with propaganda, then we have destroyed liberty in everything but name.

Let me return to where I began. Mr Tatchell did honourable work when he fought against the criminalisation of private homosexual conduct. He fought then against an overmighty state. It would be a misfortune if, having helped pull down one structure of oppression, he now worked to build another. I therefore make my appeal to him again: when you plan a campaign, ask whether it would still be possible in a society without an extended state. If it would, then proceed. If it would not, then please reconsider.

We are not enemies. We agree on the evil of past laws. We agree that banks should not be allowed to discriminate politically, since they are state-licensed monopolies. We agree that violent threats must be punished. Where we differ is over whether the regulatory state should be mobilised to enforce ideological conformity. I say no. Persuade as much as you like. Publish, boycott, argue, and protest. But do not bring in councils, regulators, or compulsory curricula. To do so is to replace liberty with soft totalitarianism.

That is the line I urge Mr Tatchell to see—and, once he sees it, to remain always on the better side.

Related posts:

The Peter Tatchell Foundation: Attack Dogs of an Authoritarian State Attack Dogs of an Authoritarian State: Peter Tatchell Replies The Graham Linehan Arrest and the Regime’s War on Dissent A Small Victory in a Losing War: The UK Government Retreats on Encryption

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