Verdicts · Rights
What the UK thinks about rights
Settled referendums
62
since Jul 2026
Votes cast
12,587
all time, on rights
This week
3,002
votes · 6 referendums settled
Written opinions
625
all time, left by voters
This week's opinion highlightThe most respected opinion this week
“The entire ideology of transgenderism is homophobic conversion therapy.”
Jonathan, debating Yes on “Should 'transgender identity' be removed from the proposed 'conversion therapy' ban?” · read the thread →
6
Respects
Most respected on rights this week
- 1.BenL16 respects
- 2.HonestCompass6516 respects
- 3.JohnnyBoy13 respects
- 4.OftenRight13 respects
- 5.CCWales12 respects
Who answered this week
The 824 placed voters lean Centre Right overall.
H. Left6%
Left19%
C. Left8%
Centre9%
C. Right12%
Right40%
H. Right7%
Regions this week
South EastC. Right
ScotlandCentre
South WestC. Right
LondonCentre
North WestC. Right
YorkshireCentre
East of EnglandC. Right
North EastC. Right
East MidlandsCentre
West MidlandsC. Right
Northern IrelandRight
WalesC. Right
Votes each week
3,002so far this week
56127 Jul
1,0823 Aug
1,53710 Aug
1,12817 Aug
2,56624 Aug
3,00231 Aug
All-time rights highlights
Biggest landslide
YES 91%
Do consumer digital rights need to be improved to ensure access isn't removed on purpose?
91% of 477 votes went the same way.
Closest result
NO 50%
Should Islam be banned?
Decided by 1 vote.
Most debated
YES 70%
Do transgender people pose a threat to women's rights and single-sex spaces?
39 written opinions.
This week
6 settled · 3,002 votes
0% YES
Majority for
NO 40%
527 votes
0 skipped
by @JamesDrummond⏱ Ended 4 Sept 2026
Should 'transgender identity' be removed from the proposed 'conversion therapy' ban?
The verdict
The winning case was not a defence of the bill but an attack on what voters saw as its reach: “Do not criminalise the question.” Yes won by a clear margin, with the room more animated by fears of overreach than by the case for equal protection.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 9%
477 votes
0 skipped
by @Mog666⏱ Ended 1 Sept 2026
Do consumer digital rights need to be improved to ensure access isn't removed on purpose?
The verdict
“Any digital supplier that removes access” should refund the original payment, the floor’s sharpest demand; Yes won overwhelmingly, turning digital access into a question of remedy rather than mere convenience.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 47%
503 votes
0 skipped
by @Mog666⏱ Ended 1 Sept 2026
In a free society should the BBFC still have so much power to censor and ban content?
The verdict
“You say censorship, I say boundaries”: the room narrowly backed keeping the BBFC’s powers, but the debate sounded less like a defence of bans than a plea for guardrails.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 12%
505 votes
0 skipped
by @Mog666⏱ Ended 31 Aug 2026
Has the UK become too easily offended?
The verdict
“No-one has the right to not be offended” was the room’s cleanest line: Yes swept the vote, while the losing side supplied the sharper warning about what speech can do.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 36%
500 votes
0 skipped
by @JudahLevi⏱ Ended 31 Aug 2026
Should legal protections for Islamic practice and belief be removed in the UK?
The verdict
“One law for all” was the winning side’s cleanest refrain, but the room’s sharper paradox was that a vote to remove Islamic protections was argued by some as a demand for equal protection — and carried decisively.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 44%
490 votes
0 skipped
by @BenL⏱ Ended 30 Aug 2026
Should the UK fully decriminalise sex work while introducing regulation of brothels and public solicitation?
The verdict
“It gives pimps a lease, a ledger and a respectable front” was the losing side’s sharpest line; safety nevertheless carried the room, which backed full decriminalisation by a modest margin.
Last week
7 settled · 2,566 votes
0% YES
Majority for
NO 41%
389 votes
0 skipped
by @transparent⏱ Ended 27 Aug 2026
Should the UK legalise and regulate the sale of marijuana?
The verdict
“People will buy it either way. And they do” captured the winning case’s blunt realism: the chamber chose a regulated cannabis market, even as its most respected argument warned of harm.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 19%
375 votes
0 skipped
by @DavidSandilands⏱ Ended 26 Aug 2026
Should social media platforms face fines for algorithmically promoting videos of illegal acts?
The verdict
“Illegality” is too broad of a net,” warned the floor’s best-rated No voice; voters nevertheless backed fines for platforms that algorithmically promote illegal videos.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 46%
375 votes
0 skipped
by @Mog666⏱ Ended 26 Aug 2026
Should we repeal the online safety act?
The verdict
“It is being misused” was the repeal camp’s sharpest summary: the chamber backed Yes, but only narrowly, while No voters argued for reform rather than surrender.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 23%
379 votes
0 skipped
by @MikeyN⏱ Ended 26 Aug 2026
Should circumcision of babies be limited to medical need, not religious ritual?
The verdict
Parents, not infants, became the decisive moral unit in this vote: Yes won decisively, with the floor treating religious custom as insufficient grounds for an irreversible procedure on someone unable to consent. The sharpest supporting line called for “the informed choice of the individual concerned”.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 11%
384 votes
0 skipped
by @refnation⏱ Ended 26 Aug 2026
Should first-cousin marriages be banned in the UK?
The verdict
“If there was a chemical...” gave the vote its sharpest line: the floor chose prohibition, even as the quieter No case warned that criminalisation could drive ceremonies underground.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 30%
329 votes
0 skipped
by @Motherdragon⏱ Ended 25 Aug 2026
Do transgender people pose a threat to women's rights and single-sex spaces?
The verdict
“Women said NO. That’s all you need to know” captured the room’s mood as Yes prevailed: emphatic, defensive and far less interested in compromise than in drawing a hard boundary.
0% YES
Majority for
NO 40%
335 votes
0 skipped
by @moley⏱ Ended 25 Aug 2026
Should UK news outlets be barred from mixing opinion with news reporting?
The verdict
A wall between reporting and opinion was the room’s instinct, but the winning side mostly wanted a door between them, not a ban on analysis.
Every rights verdict
- YES 60%Should 'transgender identity' be removed from the proposed 'conversion therapy' ban?The winning case was not a defence of the bill but an attack on what voters saw as its reach: “Do not criminalise the question.” Yes won by a clear margin, with the room more animated by fears of overreach than by the case for equal protection.
- YES 91%Do consumer digital rights need to be improved to ensure access isn't removed on purpose?“Any digital supplier that removes access” should refund the original payment, the floor’s sharpest demand; Yes won overwhelmingly, turning digital access into a question of remedy rather than mere convenience.
- YES 53%In a free society should the BBFC still have so much power to censor and ban content?“You say censorship, I say boundaries”: the room narrowly backed keeping the BBFC’s powers, but the debate sounded less like a defence of bans than a plea for guardrails.
- YES 88%Has the UK become too easily offended?“No-one has the right to not be offended” was the room’s cleanest line: Yes swept the vote, while the losing side supplied the sharper warning about what speech can do.
- YES 64%Should legal protections for Islamic practice and belief be removed in the UK?“One law for all” was the winning side’s cleanest refrain, but the room’s sharper paradox was that a vote to remove Islamic protections was argued by some as a demand for equal protection — and carried decisively.
- YES 56%Should the UK fully decriminalise sex work while introducing regulation of brothels and public solicitation?“It gives pimps a lease, a ledger and a respectable front” was the losing side’s sharpest line; safety nevertheless carried the room, which backed full decriminalisation by a modest margin.
- YES 59%Should the UK legalise and regulate the sale of marijuana?“People will buy it either way. And they do” captured the winning case’s blunt realism: the chamber chose a regulated cannabis market, even as its most respected argument warned of harm.
- YES 81%Should social media platforms face fines for algorithmically promoting videos of illegal acts?“Illegality” is too broad of a net,” warned the floor’s best-rated No voice; voters nevertheless backed fines for platforms that algorithmically promote illegal videos.
- YES 54%Should we repeal the online safety act?“It is being misused” was the repeal camp’s sharpest summary: the chamber backed Yes, but only narrowly, while No voters argued for reform rather than surrender.
- YES 77%Should circumcision of babies be limited to medical need, not religious ritual?Parents, not infants, became the decisive moral unit in this vote: Yes won decisively, with the floor treating religious custom as insufficient grounds for an irreversible procedure on someone unable to consent. The sharpest supporting line called for “the informed choice of the individual concerned”.
- YES 89%Should first-cousin marriages be banned in the UK?“If there was a chemical...” gave the vote its sharpest line: the floor chose prohibition, even as the quieter No case warned that criminalisation could drive ceremonies underground.
- YES 70%Do transgender people pose a threat to women's rights and single-sex spaces?“Women said NO. That’s all you need to know” captured the room’s mood as Yes prevailed: emphatic, defensive and far less interested in compromise than in drawing a hard boundary.
- YES 60%Should UK news outlets be barred from mixing opinion with news reporting?A wall between reporting and opinion was the room’s instinct, but the winning side mostly wanted a door between them, not a ban on analysis.
- YES 78%Should a person be lawfully free to refer to someone by their sex at birth rather than their stated gender identity?“Freedom of belief and speech is not harassment” was the room’s governing instinct: a large Yes coalition backed legal freedom even as the debate exposed a sharper, less civil edge.
- YES 74%Should all religious slaughter be banned in the UK?“Animal welfare should be based on the prevention of unnecessary pain and suffering” gave the ban its governing principle; it won by nearly three to one, despite a No case built around transparency.
- NO 66%Should the UK introduce statutory regulation of the press following the deaths of Jason Arday and Caroline Flack?Press hounding was the moral force behind the Yes case, but the chamber turned away statutory regulation with a wary No: its strongest voices feared state censorship even as some conceded that abuse by the press causes severe distress.
- YES 73%If a community cannot practise core aspects of their faith because they conflict with UK law, should they leave the UK?“They should either change their practices or voluntarily leave” became the floor’s sharpest line, as voters chose Yes decisively; the real argument was whether departure should be a demand or a choice.
- NO 73%Should UK residents be allowed to carry firearms for self-defence?Voters reached for America as a warning, not a model: No won nearly three to one, while even one Yes case conceded that more guns could make things worse.
- YES 77%Should Western societies limit tolerance of intolerant ideologies to protect their culture?“We should not tolerate the intolerant” was the winning instinct, though the floor’s sharpest warning came from a No voter about far-right violence endangering communities.
- YES 83%Should the UK create a new legal right to protect people's image, voice and likeness from AI replicas?“It’s that simple” was the chamber’s bluntest case for protecting people from AI replicas; Yes won by more than four to one, while every written contribution backed a new right.
Show all 62 verdicts ↓
- YES 53%Has the fabric of society in the UK been irreversibly destroyed?“Yes, and progressively getting worse,” said one voter — but the narrow Yes victory was shadowed by the floor’s strongest argument, which insisted that decline is not yet beyond repair.
- YES 61%Should a journalistic code be enshrined in law?“Fewer, not more laws” was the room’s sharpest line — and it came from the side that lost, as the chamber backed a statutory journalistic code.
- NO 82%Are all cultures equal in moral value and societal outcomes?“cultural sensitivity should never trump human rights” captured an overwhelming rejection, while the chamber split over whether cultures should be judged by principle or circumstance.
- NO 63%Is diversity our strength?“No. Never was,” one voter wrote; the chamber gave that blunt instinct a decisive victory, while the Yes side offered the more qualified and evidence-led case.
- YES 60%Should tribunals be required to order equal pay audits and job evaluation schemes in all cases of proven pay discrimination?The only voices arguing on the page were No voices, yet Yes carried the vote by three to two. The sharpest objection warned that the law was “already bankrupted Birmingham Council”.
- NO 76%Is the holder of a British passport always ethnically British?A passport was treated as a civic document, not a bloodline: No’s case won decisively, while the floor’s sharpest voice warned that “Blood and soil ethno nationalism is a slippery slope.”
- NO 82%Are the rich inherently evil?The chamber’s overwhelming No was less a defence of the rich than a rejection of the question’s moral shortcut: the sharpest Yes case argued that wealth turns on conduct, not essence.
- NO 80%Should your vote be void if you dont have a job?This was less a vote than a rout, with six in seven voters rejecting the idea of stripping the jobless of a ballot, and the chamber's sharpest lines came not from the case for the change but from the pile-on against it.
- YES 53%Should the UK abolish the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC)?A chamber that voted narrowly to abolish the EHRC mostly argued about something else entirely — sovereignty, deportation and the European Convention — leaving the body itself almost incidental to its own referendum.
- YES 55%Is Elon Musk right about the suicide of Western culture?A narrow majority endorsed Elon Musk's thesis of civilisational self-sabotage, with the chamber's Yes voters outnumbering critics roughly nine to seven, even as only one dissenting voice bothered to make the counter-case on the page.
- YES 54%Should the government instigate a media campaign to reacquaint the public with traditional British courtesies & values?A narrow win for nostalgia: the chamber backed a state-run charm offensive on manners and Britishness by a mere eight points, even as its most respected dissenting voice questioned whether "social engineering" was ever Whitehall's job to begin with.
- NO 76%Would removing Union flags from public buildings reduce community tensions?A four-to-one rout, with barely a quarter of the chamber willing to entertain the premise, suggests voters here read flag removal not as conflict resolution but as retreat — the debate's sharpest lines came from the No side insisting the Union flag is the solution, not the problem.
- YES 81%Are social media 'influencers' given too much credibility by the mainstream media?Four in five voters here decided that the mainstream media has let influence substitute for expertise, with not a single dissenting argument troubling the page to explain the other 28 votes.
- NO 50%Should Islam be banned?A single vote separated ban from no-ban, on a question about outlawing an entire faith practised by some 4 million people in the UK, leaving a chamber of 147 as evenly cleaved as the country's own arguments about religion, law and belonging.
- YES 62%Does the Berlin Pride attacker's background prove inconsistency in progressive values?The chamber backed the premise by a clear two-to-one margin, yet the sharpest, most-respected words on the page came from the side that lost — a mismatch that says more about this vote than the scoreline does.
- YES 65%Is hate speech just a term to deter free speech?The clearest signal here isn't the topline but the age curve: the middle-aged middle of the chamber, those 35 to 64, decided this comfortably, while the youngest and oldest voters split down the middle — suspicion of "hate speech" as a chilling label won out, with yes carrying 55 of 85 votes.
- NO 54%Should the UK ban social media for children under 16?Enforcement, not principle, sank this one: the closest thing to a consensus among the 128 voters here was that a ban would be unenforceable, tipping the chamber to No by a narrow eight points on a question where age itself barely moved the needle.
- YES 54%Should disabled parking be limited to people with a physical disability?A vote to narrow Blue Badge eligibility to physical disability alone passed narrowly, 71 to 61, but split sharply by gender — men favoured tightening the rules, women resisted it, echoing the "hidden disability" debate over autism, chronic pain and cardiac conditions that already shapes badge criteria.
- YES 80%Should the UK celebrate its history more?On a question tailor-made for culture-war trench warfare, the chamber instead reached something close to consensus, with four in five voters here wanting more national celebration of British history — a rout, not a squeak, cutting across the age divide that usually defines these debates.
- YES 55%Is wokeness killing the UK?A narrow verdict, but a generational one: the chamber split cleanly by age, with the young rejecting the premise and their elders embracing it, as voters agreed by a slim ten-point margin that "wokeness" is doing Britain harm.
- YES 59%Should social media companies be legally responsible for misinformation?A clear majority here wants platforms in the legal firing line for misinformation, with the chamber backing liability by roughly three to two — though the shape of that support, strongest among the very young and the over-65s, suggests less consensus than the topline implies.
- YES 56%Should assisted dying be legal in the UK?A narrow national majority for legalising assisted dying masks a chamber that never settled into a clean generational or ideological line, with the 45-54s the most resistant age group even as those a decade older swung firmly the other way.
- NO 53%Should Parliament pass Lauren Edwards' assisted suicide bill?The closest of margins on the most consequential of questions: Lauren Edwards' assisted suicide bill fell narrowly here, with No edging it by six points, but the real story is that neither age nor conviction lined up as expected. The 55-64s were the bill's fiercest opponents, while the youngest working-age voters and the over-65s both tilted towards Yes — a U-shaped pattern that cuts against the usual assumption that it is the old who fear this legislation most and the young who back it.
- YES 56%Are white British people treated like second class citizens by the authorities that are meant to serve and protect them?A narrow national majority answered yes to a question that treats grievance politics as measurable fact, but the vote's real fracture wasn't about race at all — it was generational, with the under-35s recoiling from the premise that the over-55s embraced almost two to one.
- YES 53%Do acts of violence by left-leaning groups reflect an inherent trait?A question built to resist a clean answer got one anyway, with the chamber narrowly agreeing that left-wing activism carries an inherent violent streak, even as the age pattern beneath the six-point margin told a story of generational memory rather than settled fact.
- NO 54%Does the Right have a problem with violence?A narrow but telling No, in a vote timed to the shock of a sitting former minister's murder: this chamber, asked whether violence belongs to one side of politics, mostly answered that it belongs to neither — the margin was eight points, but the fracture beneath it ran through generation and gender far more than through party lines.
- YES 58%Does lowering inequality improve democracy in the UK?A generational divide did most of the work here: the under-35s backed the idea that flattening inequality strengthens democracy almost two to one, while the 35-54 cohort — squarely in the tax-and-spend middle years — swung the other way, before Yes recovered its lead overall on a 65-47 vote.
- YES 52%Is the UK now a nanny state?A referendum that produced no consensus at all, only a coin-flip verdict that the state has overreached, carried by the narrowest of margins on a question that has haunted Britain since the sugar tax and the smoking ban alike.
- YES 61%Is it time to ban the Burka?A chamber that mirrors a live European trend rather than resists it: with France, Belgium, Denmark and the Netherlands already there, and Portugal now moving, voters here backed a UK burka ban by three to two, treating the Continental drift as a cue rather than a warning.
- NO 83%Should the UK introduce a voluntary overnight social media curfew for 16 and 17-year-olds?Even voters who came of age worrying about screen time balked at this one, with the chamber rejecting a voluntary curfew for teenagers by roughly six to one.
- YES 63%Is transgenderism a danger to British culture and society?The generational lines here run backwards from the usual script: it was the youngest voters, not the oldest, who pushed back hardest against the "danger to British culture" framing, while the 35-64s carried Yes by close to four to one.
- YES 68%Does marriage equality strengthen British society?A decade after the law changed, the chamber has essentially settled the argument in its favour, backing the idea that marriage equality strengthens Britain by two to one, with barely a fracture along the lines that once defined this debate.
- YES 51%Should the UK government spend over £250 million to add over 500 police officers protecting Jewish communities?A dead-heat headline masks a real fracture: women backed the funding by a landslide while men split against it, and the middle-aged 35-44 bloc stood out as the sharpest holdouts.
- YES 69%Should the Police Reform Bill include minimum legal safeguards on police use of facial recognition technology?Voters here backed statutory limits on facial recognition by better than two to one, but the enthusiasm rose steadily with age, as if each decade added a layer of institutional wariness the last generation hadn't yet acquired.
- YES 64%Do most British non-Muslims believe the prophet Muhammad was a rapist pedophile warlord?This vote answers a question about belief with a question about generations: a clear majority here said yes, that most non-Muslims do hold this view, but the confidence collapses almost exactly at retirement age.
- YES 53%Does lowering inequality improve democracy in the UK?A near-deadlocked chamber landed on Yes, but the fault line was age rather than sex: the young and the youngest-old both broke decisively for the idea that levelling incomes strengthens democracy, while the middle-aged pulled the other way.
- YES 61%Are white British people treated like second class citizens by the authorities that are meant to serve and protect them?A majority verdict that cut across almost every generation but one: voters here backed the claim of institutional bias against white British people by three to one among the middle-aged and over-55s, only for the over-65s to break the other way entirely.
- YES 54%Is the rise of right-wing media and its financial dominance a danger to British society?Yes narrowly carries the vote, but the real story is generational: under-35s broke decisively for Yes while the 35-54 middle-aged cohort swung the other way entirely.
- NO 65%Should social media be banned in the UK?A comfortable No, 39-21, on a full ban of social media — but the generation gap did the real talking: 55-64s rejected the idea 9 to 1, while the only age band that voted for it was 16-24.
- YES 59%Was the UK's formal apology for forcing unmarried mothers to give up babies for adoption the right action?Yes carried the chamber 59-41, but the young were unanimous against it and the middle-aged unanimous for it, a generational split unusually clean for an issue framed as historical redress.
- YES 62%Should the UK government formally apologise for its role in forced adoptions?A comfortable but not overwhelming win for an apology to forced-adoption mothers, 62-38, with the clearest support coming from the 25-44 bracket rather than the young or old.
- NO 76%Should half of government ministers be women?Quotas for the cabinet were rejected 16-5, with No dominant across every sizeable age bracket, but the chamber's women split down the middle even as its men rejected the idea by four to one.