If you read the recent Spectator headline, ‘Let’s kick ‘gender identity’ out of school’, you would be forgiven for assuming that it was a guest post written by a staunchly conservative religious leader.
In fact, it was written by Debbie Hayton, a transgender teacher and journalist. Hayton came to national prominence last year as a result of incurring disciplinary action from the LGBT committee of the Trades Union Congress. To Hayton, a trans person, it must have felt like a cruel irony to be denounced as transphobic by so-called ‘cis-gendered’ (ie non-trans) members of that committee for doing little more than to don a T-shirt that bore the slogan: ‘Trans women are men. Get over it!’
Hayton’s Spectator article highlighted and commended the government’s U-turn on integrating transgender ideology into Sex and Relationship Education (S&RE). The latest guidance states: ‘Resources used in teaching about this topic must always be age-appropriate and evidence based. Materials which suggest that non-conformity to gender stereotypes should be seen as synonymous with having a different gender identity should not be used and you should not work with external agencies or organisations that produce such material.’
Additionally, on 22 September, Liz Truss, the Minister for Women and Equalities, confirmed that the government had scrapped its plans to reform the Gender Recognition Act. Concerning the current wording of the Act, the government is convinced that ‘the balance struck in this legislation is correct’.
In the wake of this decision, we need to ponder the immense cost borne by those who have publicly dissented from trans ideology: from the conscientious teachers and researchers who have been disciplined and to school governors, like the Revd John Parker, who have resigned to maintain their integrity.
There are also several public figures, like J. K. Rowling, who were denounced for, among other things, not accepting the controversial re-definition of womanhood, nor coming to terms with the bewildering array of gender pronouns that defy the basic rules of grammar just as much as they contradict the native sex of the person being addressed.
Even die-hard feminists have fallen foul of trans ideology, being decried as TERFs (‘trans exclusionary radical feminists’) by their detractors. Yet, their alleged offence amounted to no more than not casting themselves headlong under the oncoming juggernaut which brooks no dissent on the gender-neutralisation agenda.
That said, I wouldn’t want to diminish the reality of gender dysphoria, nor to be an unwitting apologist for the evil of transphobic insensitivity. Authentic Christianity should be motivated to call out and challenge any and every connivance at the hostile ostracism, name-calling, cyberbullying and physical assaults that trans people are forced to endure.
To my mind, what we’re witnessing today is a crisis of objective truth; which is why this policy retreat represents a welcome and reasonable accommodation that is neither completely insensitive to the challenges faced by trans people, nor inordinately penalises those who have serious reservations about progressive dogma on this issue.
As Christians, we should always side with truth. However, in so doing, what should we make of Mermaids, the prominent charity which has spearheaded transgender advocacy, which asserts about puberty blockers (i.e. the hormones administered to suppress the sexual development of young people diagnosed with gender dysphoria): ‘The few negative effects of puberty blockers do not change children’s minds’?
This flatly contradicts the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) statement on its website: ‘However, we don’t know the full psychological effects of the blocker or whether it alters the course of adolescent brain development.’
In fact, Mermaids is just one of several major charities which will now be rightly scrutinised on the validity of their statements and the methods that they adopt in relation to trans advocacy.
Yet it would be unjust to focus on secular groups alone. So, where church leaders have so readily jumped on the progressive sexual diversity bandwagon, then the apostle Paul’s solemn pronouncement is entirely applicable: ‘It isn’t my responsibility to judge outsiders, but it certainly is your responsibility to judge those inside the church who are sinning’ (1 Cor. 5:12).
On behalf of thousands of very confused young people in the UK, evangelicals have a duty to ‘speak truth to power’ and even the church’s own power should not be exempt from hearing that truth.
Are we missing the point about ‘equity’?
Over the past few weeks, the word “equity” has almost become a pejorative.One writer on the en website expressed …