There has been mounting concern over Stonewall’s “extreme transgender politics” — even amongst supporters — as the LGBT lobby group’s power over scho0ls and elsewhere is on the rise.

The Times reported on Thursday that “leading members of the lesbian, gay, transsexual and intersex community” have spoken out against Stonewall’s dogmatic stance on transgender issues, accusing it of “demonising as transphobic” anyone who voices views which dissent from the NGO’s stance on transgender access to women-only spaces.

In a petition which notes that the Government’s consultation on allowing individuals to change sex on the basis of “self-identification” is due to end later this month, campaigners including former Queer Up North campaigner, Jonathan Best; transsexual rights activist, Miranda Yardley; former Stonewall fundraiser, Kate Harris, and feminist journalist Julie Bindel stressed it was “important that there should be debates amongst us all about transgender politics and the rights of women and girls”.

“Stonewall disagrees and calls debate on this matter of public policy transphobic,” the signatories said, accusing the NGO of “undermin[ing] the sex-based rights of women and the concept of homosexuality itself” in its “uncritical” adoption of extremist transgender politics.

They write: “Stonewall’s promotion of the concept of ‘gender identity’, which has it that a man or woman is anyone (of either sex) who identifies as such, is also undermining the basis of lesbian, gay and bisexual identities as orientated around same-sex attraction.

Proactive Transgender agenda established in British schools by government https://t.co/um01J2URgi — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 14, 2017

“Lesbians in particular are coming under pressure to accept male-bodied trans women into their spaces and as sexual partners.”

Asserting that the LGBT group “has made mistakes in its approach”, the petition urges it commit to “fostering an atmosphere of respectful debate, rather than demonising as transphobic those who wish to discuss or dissent from Stonewall’s current policies”.

The petition, and its accompanying letter to The Times, comes at a time when Stonewall holds increasing power over British classrooms. As Breitbart London reported in February, the group was behind an “LGBT-inclusive” update to all of British education giant Pearson’s textbooks, which sees far-left, so-called “social justice” activism pushed across every part of the curriculum.

As well as providing ‘free’ training on how teachers in Britain can best “celebrate” homosexuality, the charity was also behind recent draft education guidelines in Scotland which ordered that children be told “your gender is what you decide” upon first arriving at school at the age of five.

According to “the agenda promoted by Stonewall”, anyone who does not conform to gender stereotypes is likely to be transgender, journalist James Kirkup noted in the Spectator this week, stating it was not surprising that many people were “deeply uncomfortable” with what is being dictated by such advocates that “enjoy immense influence in public life today”.

MPs Call For Transgender School Training and Fast Tracked NHS Sex Changes https://t.co/5Ww5YH4crJ pic.twitter.com/mHNP67mAII — Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) December 2, 2016

Kirkup also stressed, however, that he was “no social conservative” and even that he was against the idea that there were “traditional values” which need defending, insisting that opposition to the transgender lobby was needed to counter “harmful populists”.

But Scottish Christian David Robertson has warned that — from a Christian perspective — children are outright being “indoctrinated” and harmed by transgender ideology.

In the Scotsman earlier this year, he wrote: “The greatest potential harm is when activist teachers, or those keen to get a ‘Stonewall award’, indoctrinate ­children with this ideology. I think of the young girl telling the speaker at a nativity service – ‘you can’t say Mary was a woman. How do you know that?’ or the primary girl coming home upset and asking her parents if she was a boy or a girl because her teacher had said she could choose.

“Or the primary schools where ­every classroom and corridor is covered in LGBT Scotland posters declaring ‘We celebrate Transgender Visibility’ – ‘He, She, They’ or ‘Respect ­everyone’s gender identity, use the pronouns people ask you to use.’

“Apart from being impressed that primary school children are familiar with the ­concept of pronouns, what disturbs me is the level of indoctrination and social engineering going on in our schools, most of it without the knowledge or approval of parents.”

Indeed, this week Kesgrave High School, an institution in Suffolk, was praised by local media for its achieving a Stonewall award in “diversity” shortly after staff were trained by the charity on how to promote homosexual lifestyles in the classroom.