When someone tells you they’re in pain, you listen. When someone tells you they’re the victim of prejudice and abuse and struggle to find help and acceptance, you pay attention. Lots of the people I speak to when I write about gay and trans issues tell me this is what they’ve been through. So I listen. I pay attention.

But I’m going to be honest here: writing about this subject, particularly the T bit of the LGBT, has become increasingly hard in recent years. Indeed, a subject I thought was pretty sorted for me – sexual identity and equality – has started to look much less sorted and much more complicated than my initial, instinctual reaction suggested. I guess one way to put it would be that I thought I knew which side I was on, but now I’m not so sure.

The reason the subject has come up again this week is there’s been a judgement in the legal fight between two of the charities that operate in this sphere. The first of them is Mermaids, whose mission statement is to support trans, non-binary and gender-diverse people and their families; and the second is LGB Alliance, whose founders say they set up the group because same-sex attracted people no longer had an organisation dedicated to meeting their needs or protecting their rights.

In case you’ve missed how the case developed, it centred on a legal challenge by Mermaids to strip LGB Alliance of its charitable status. The Mermaids argument was that LGB Alliance shouldn’t be recognised as a charity because it was focused on hostile anti-trans activism and not on the promotion of lesbian, gay and bisexual rights. It’s the first time that one charity has sought to strip another charity of its charitable status so it’s a pretty extraordinary case on the whole.

The fact the case was brought in the first place is also, I fear, an indication of how the debate over trans rights has developed more broadly. Mermaids says LGB Alliance focuses on “hostile anti-trans activism” and it’s certainly true that some of what’s been said by LGB Alliance or its supporters has been robust, to put it politely. The judges in the case said some of it had gone beyond the boundaries of civilised debate and anyone who’s ever ventured into this arena will not be surprised by that: some activists – on both sides – often go beyond the boundaries of civilised debate and it gets nasty, particularly on Twitter.

But the fact that supporters of the stance taken by LGB Alliance may sometimes go too far is not an argument against the organisation’s status as a charity – if it were, the same case could be made against Mermaids whose supporters also go too far sometimes. It’s also hard to avoid the conclusion that Mermaids’ actions were an attempt to, in the words of LGBA co-founder Kate Harris, “knock us out of the park” and remove the organisation from the debate by discrediting them as a charity.

I must say I’ve seen that kind of approach again and again from the trans activist side of the argument. Only a few weeks ago, I and many others were supposed to be going to a screening of the documentary Adult Human Female at Edinburgh University but it was closed down by trans activists who blocked the doors. I spoke to one of the activists and he told me that “free speech is fine” but that it “does not extend to the intolerant and hateful”. “Anything that tars a community and demonises them should not be endorsed,” he said, “because trans women are not up for debate.”

I’m afraid it’s that kind of approach to the issues – that the other side is hateful and must therefore be quiet – that has increasingly turned me against the tactics of the trans activists. As I said at the beginning of this piece, I’ve spoken to trans people who’ve suffered and found life extremely difficult. People like student Ellie Gomersall who told me about the kind of nasty stuff trans people face on the internet every day. Or the Scottish actor Annie Wallace who told me about the total lack of support she experienced while growing up trans in Aberdeen. Anti-trans prejudice is real, no question.

But, having encountered quite a few people on the other side of the argument now, I’m simply not prepared to accept they are hateful because they believe we cannot change sex. I’ve spoken to Kate Harris of LGB Alliance for example and, yes she doesn’t mince her words but I also agree with her that characterising people like her as hateful or even Nazis is inappropriate and exposes a trait among trans activists that there must be no debate. Personally, I’m not even sure where I stand on the trans issue anymore but I could never agree with the idea of no-debate. There absolutely must be debate. Always. At all times.

This is why the Mermaids case disturbs me so much. First, it depends on the assertion that LGB Alliance is guilty of “hostile anti-trans activism” and secondly, that the assertion means LGB Alliance should be excluded from public platforms, including status as a charity. But it seems to me that the Charity Commission has got it right on this: we should all be engaging in public debate with respect and tolerance – of course we should – but it is not for the commission to regulate public debate on sensitive issues. Charities, individuals, all of us, can disagree and debate on important issues. Indeed, we should, and must.

It is this basic idea – that freedom of thought and expression underlines a civilised society – that has increasingly made it hard for me to sympathise with the approach of trans activists, and the Mermaids case has only made it worse. The charity says it stands up for trans people in an increasingly hostile climate and will resist attempts to divide the LGBTQ+ community and it’s perfectly entitled to see the situation in those terms. But there are many gay and lesbian people who do not see it the same way and do not view LGBTQ+ as a community and they are also entitled to their opinion and do not deserve to be characterised as hateful.

The hope now is that Mermaids losing its legal challenge will underline the idea that everybody should be able to say what they like on sex and gender. It’s perfectly legitimate for trans activists to believe that a man or woman can be in the wrong body. It’s also legitimate for LGB Alliance to believe that girlish boys and boyish girls who’d probably grow up gay are being increasingly encouraged to transition instead. The point is that both sides can and must be represented in the public debate. I may not know exactly where I am on my journey on gay and trans rights, but I do know that.