For the second time in her political career, Kemi Badenoch is taking charge of the Department for Equality (now merged with the Women’s Department), amid criticism from the LGBT+ public. She was appointed by the new UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Tuesday (25th).
Speaking in Parliament, Badenoch responded to Pink News CEO Ben Cohen calling her “antitransgender”.
“What I wanted to say as we begin a new era of equality is that the Equality Act is a shield, not a sword. It exists to protect people of all stripes, young or old, male or female, black. or white, gay or straight,” Badenoch explained.
She also stressed that she is implementing “a compassionate equality strategy” and that she should not be distracted by “people using Twitter to insult or accuse MPs”.
The activist magazine accuses Badenoch of working to close Britain’s children’s sex reassignment clinic, Tavistock, and having an intense dialogue with Keira Bell. The young woman, who regretted her gender change at the age of 16, switched to her birth sex and sued the British clinic.
The UK’s National Health Service (NHS) plans to ban surgery and hormone treatments for those under the age of 18 and issue new guidelines for doctors, in addition to closing Tavistock.
Pink News cites Badenoch as one of the key articulators of these changes alongside the LGB Alliance, a UK charity whose stated aim is to defend gay, lesbian and bisexual rights but is viewed by campaigners as transphobic.
The minister has also been criticized in other matters. In a speech that received widespread internet coverage, Badenoch questioned some antiracist movements. “The ideology that sees my blackness as victimization and their whiteness as oppression is against the law,” he said.
On the climate agenda, she has repeatedly stressed that she believes in reducing carbon emissions, “but not to the point of bankrupting the UK to meet that target”.
nightmare of work
Minister Olukemi Olufunto Adegoke, born to a Nigerian family, has been called “the Labor Party’s worst nightmare”. Badenoch joined the Conservative Party in 2005 at the age of 25 and is now described by The Guardian as “a rising star” for the Conservatives.
The daughter of doctors from Nigeria, she lived in the African country until she was 16, then crossed the United States before coming to the UK. Before she went to college, she made sandwiches at fast food joints.
Married, mother of three and an engineer by training, Kemi Badenoch held various positions in the Conservative Party before being elected MP by Saffron Walden in the east of the country in 2017.
She was Minister of State in the Department for Leveling, Housing and Communities and the Equality portfolio (where she was Secretary of State) from September 2021 to July this year. She left the executive branch that month to run to succeed Prime Minister Boris Johnson but failed to reach the final round of the Conservative Party contest.
She then took over as Secretary of State for International Trade and Chair of the Trade Committee on September 6 under the lightningfast government of Liz Truss, until this week when she was appointed to the Department for Women and Equality.