Starbucks must stop funding harmful trans agenda

American coffee company Starbucks is aiming to raise a minimum of £100,000 for the transgender lobby group Mermaids through sales of a special edition mermaid cookie in their stores.

The company launched a controversial advert announcing the scheme, depicting a transgender person being called by their chosen ‘transgender name’ by a Starbucks barista.

The hashtag #whatsyourname was launched in conjunction with the advert, with Mermaids CEO Susie Green stating that “the funds raised through #whatsyourname will allow us to make a meaningful change to our helpline that supports young trans people and their families who are so desperately in need of access to information and reassurance.”

Mermaids ‘unfit for purpose’

Mermaids has been the subject of a number of scandalous headlines in recent months, which have revealed what many members of the public already suspect – that this ‘charity’ is unfit for purpose.

Under the direction of former IT manager Susie Green, whose own child ‘transitioned’ at age 16, Mermaids has evolved from being an amateur support group run by parents for other parents of children suffering gender confusion, to being seen as the UK’s leading authority on ‘transgender children’. Green has no professional medical qualifications.

Experimenting on children

Concerns have been raised previously as to the motives of Mermaids. Previously they have lobbied for children as young as 12 to be allowed to take puberty blockers in order to later ‘transition’. The use of puberty blockers in young children is seen by many medical professionals as experimental and dangerous, with long-term effects still unknown.

When the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) opened in 1989 at London’s Tavistock clinic, it received two referrals. However, the number of referrals in the last 10 years has risen some 2,500%, with 97 referrals in 2009, to 2,590 in 2019. This includes 10 3- and 4-year-olds.

In April 2019, five members from the GIDS quit, citing how they had been put under huge amounts of pressure to fast-track children as young as three onto treatment for gender identity disorder, or else face accusations of ‘transphobia’. Staff reported that Mermaids were helping families to write letters of complaint if their children were not immediately prescribed puberty blockers, with one letter even signed by Susie Green herself.

Revealing emails

In July 2019, news broke that Mermaids had breached confidentiality of vulnerable children by publishing emails from parents directly onto the internet where anyone could read them. The emails contained intimate details about the children along with personal, identifying details, such as names, addresses and medical records. Other revealing emails showed trustees’ concerns about Green’s leadership, accusations from parents calling the organisation a ‘cult’, and complaints that residential weekends put children at risk because of ‘alcohol problems’.

Peddling false information

A secret recording was also released last year of one of Mermaids’ training sessions in a UK primary school. In it, a member of Mermaids’ staff demonstrated a disturbing lack of knowledge, peddling fake facts, an incorrect understanding of the law, and junk science. When one of the school governors attempted to challenge the inaccuracies, he was bullied into silence.

Christians should not support dangerous trans ideology

There have been calls to boycott Starbucks for their funding of Mermaids until it drops the #whatsyourname campaign. It would be practically impossible to boycott everything that supports the LGBT agenda – but Christians should prayerfully consider boycotting Starbucks on this occasion. Any company that proudly supports an ideology that harms children by pushing them to ‘transition’, experiments on vulnerable young people, and teaches false information and junk science, must be made to think twice.