The coalition has encountered political obstacles in its two and a half years of life, such as the housing law, the gag law or, at the time, even the labor reform; but there is an ideological issue that not only tenses the bipartisan government but also generates conflict in the organizations that support it, especially in the PSOE: the trans law. The socialists have asked for now to extend the term of amendments to the norm promoted by Irene Montero while the internal powder keg reaches the Ethics and Guarantees Commission of the party with complaints, on the one hand, against feminists who campaign against gender self-determination and , on the other, against the secretary of LGTBI Policies, Víctor Gutiérrez.
The battle for self-determination, which recognizes the freedom of people to choose their gender without requirements, was one of the bloodiest in the coalition for months. The then vice president Carmen Calvo lost that fight and the socialists assumed the approval of the trans law in the Council of Ministers. However, gender self-determination and some issues related to minors do not finish convincing Pedro Sánchez’s party, which intends to propose modifications to the agreed text, although it has not yet determined which ones.
That is why the Socialist Group has requested an extension of the deadline for the presentation of amendments in Congress, putting the Ministry of Equality on alert, which fears that the approval of the norm will be delayed beyond December (the date that United We Can ). “The commitment is the approval in December of the trans law without setbacks in rights for trans and LGTBI people with respect to the proposal presented by the Government”, they warn from the department of Montero, where they consider it “essential” that the period for the presentation of amendments closes on October 19. In the PSOE no deadlines are set and they assure that they will determine it “week by week depending on what is needed.”
Beyond the threat of delaying the law, the matter has reached unprecedented limits of entrenchment within the PSOE, where there is a deep division between those who support free gender self-determination as a right of transsexuals and those who issue warnings about the possible consequences it may have on the fight for women’s equality.
The confrontation has reached the internal organs of the PSOE. Specifically, to the Federal Ethics and Guarantees Commission, which is responsible for ensuring compliance with the party’s statutes. According to República, two separate letters were sent against a group of socialist militants contrary to the law, among which are the former vice president Carmen Calvo, the member of the Council of State, Amelia Valcárcel, or the former deputy Ángeles Álvarez; and on the other hand against the LGTBI secretary, Víctor Gutiérrez, favorable to the norm.
Socialist sources assure elDiario.es that the Ethics and Guarantees Commission has received the complaints. In Ferraz they maintain that this is an independent body of the Executive and that it only reports to the management when a decision has to be made based on its resolutions. What they emphasize is that the news they have is that they are unsigned texts. Although various sources consider that the matter will come to nothing, the entrenchment in the management is worrying. “It’s crazy,” expresses a socialist high command who, like many, prefers not even to comment on the matter, aware of the internal shock it generates. “There are human rights being violated and we here denouncing ourselves,” laments another of the sources consulted, favorable to the law approved by the Government.
The first of the documents details over 19 pages some of the interventions contrary to the trans law by prominent feminists of the party, among which is also the former leader Matilde Fernández for expressing in an act of the Madrid Ciudad group that if they wanted to advance “in equality between women and men, less trans and more real feminist agenda”. Although it asks for the opening of files for all of them for serious or very serious offenses – which can end in temporary suspension of militancy, temporary disqualification from public office or definitive expulsion from the party – the argument basically focuses on the promoters of the Socialist Feminist Association (FeMes), especially in Valcárcel, and the Alliance Against the Erasure of Women (Ángeles Álvarez).
The document collects interventions and comments on social networks that the complainants consider to be “attacks” on transsexual people and even on Pedro Sánchez himself. “There is a coordinated and encouraged strategy especially by a group of organized people, militants and public and organizational officials of the party, some of them, who intends to impose their criteria against what is established by the 40th federal congress and put an end to the Trans and LGTBI Law, also undermining and as has been demonstrated the dignity of trans people, “says the letter. “The bold attack of this group of compañeras on that bill is irreparably damaging the image of the entire socialist family,” he adds.
The promoters of this complaint consider that the attitude of Valcárcel, Calvo, Álvarez and another dozen socialists violates articles 85 and 86 of the PSOE statutes for, in short, going against the decisions of the party.
They are the same articles referred to by those who demand the dismissal of the LGTBI secretary of the PSOE, Víctor Gutiérrez, in another letter addressed to the Ethics and Guarantees Commission and in which the complainants accuse him of “misogyny”. The trans law plans behind this conflict given that the first episode they allude to in the complaint is the controversy that Gutiérrez aroused this summer by celebrating that he had moved away “from the very first political line to certain voices that have done a lot of damage and that they had contrary positions” to the norm, in reference to Calvo. “The PSOE has had a misstep that has been able to redirect”, he assured in a talk organized by UGT on the occasion of Pride. Those words set the party on fire and Sánchez himself intervened.
Social networks have become the main thread of the battle. In fact, Ferraz has decided to close all the accounts of the secretariats and channel the information only through the social networks of the PSOE under the premise that the majority had hardly any activity. Precisely, it was the LGTBI secretariat that once again heated up the atmosphere by charging against the Feminario program, an annual meeting organized by the Valencia Delegation for Equality in which Calvo and the Minister of the Presidency, Interior and Justice participated, among others. Gabriela Bravo. “They do not represent the position of the PSOE”, assured the tweet: “[La secretaría] regrets that this type of debate spaces are not very plural and that they do not accept diverse positions”.
“An organic position has to publicly assume the resolutions agreed upon in the party congresses. Under no circumstances is the publication on Twitter, on August 10, of this federal official in which he openly identified prostitution as sex work admissible, “adds the text, which calls for Gutiérrez’s dismissal as LGTBI official of the party. His words were interpreted as a regulationist position of prostitution against the abolition to which the PSOE committed itself in its 40th Congress.
The intention of the Ethics and Guarantees Commission of the PSOE is to settle this matter at its next meeting, still without a date.
