A vicar and Oxford biology graduate resigned from the Church of England and from his role as a school governor in May. This occurred after transgender ideology, endorsed by his diocese and taught in the CofE school where he was a governor, silenced him as a scientist and a Christian.
During a training session on transgender issues run by Mermaids, John Parker was told by the headteacher: ‘This is training, John, it’s not your time to share your view-point.’ This followed his request to raise some different perspectives. The training session was recorded, and the audio clearly demonstrates that his request was shut down by the headteacher.
At the close of the training, the Mermaid’s representative said: ‘You are now an honor-ary mermaid, whether you like it or not.’ The ideological implications of the training session stretch beyond informing staff and encouraging engagement with the topic.
The CofE primary school’s leadership had taken the unprecedented step of granting per-mission for one child under the age of 12 to announce to the class their transition from a boy to a girl. This came without any agreed pro-cedures or policies and without informing par-ents until after the announcement was made. There had been no guidance issued to cover matters such as whether the child in question would be allowed to use the girls’ toilets or share changing rooms and accommodation with female pupils during trips away.
The headteacher had informed govern-ors in March 2019 that a parent of the child concerned was insistent that no prior information about the situation should be provided to other parents at the school until the day the child announced their transition.
Parker has become deeply troubled by the CofE’s promotion and enforcement of this kind of ‘rainbow ideology’ within his diocese in recent years. The local diocesan education body’s approval of trans ideology within the school was the final straw. In his resignation letter to the Bishop he wrote that he feared that children were being ‘sacrificed on the altar of trans ideology’.
Governors ignored
Several governors repeatedly raised concerns about the implications that the school’s deci-sions would have for the education and the physical and mental welfare of the other pupils at the school. However, they were consistently ignored and rejected, prompting members of the governing body to seek legal advice.
The headteacher stated that the Department for Education and local diocesan education authority had advised that the school was obliged under equality laws to implement the policy.
The Mermaids trainer told staff that using the wrong pronoun for the child would be a ‘hate crime’. She went on: ‘I look around [the school] and I ask myself: “Would I out myself?” And if I don’t see a rainbow, the answer is no.’
The trainer was clear that LGBTQI+ identity must take priority in schools. She said: ‘You cannot use personal, religious, or cultural beliefs to discriminate. You can have them, of course you can, we live in a free country, but you cannot use that to discriminate against another minority.’
When Parker politely attempted to express his Christian and scientific view on the issues involved, and was consequently silenced by the headteacher, the Mermaid’s representa-tive said: ‘I don’t have to listen to this.’
‘After the head told us about the plan to allow the pupil to transition, the school sud-denly turned into a place where you did not even have the freedom to question or express a view. I felt it was no longer a Christian place of truth, but a place of fear and intimi-dation,’ said Parker.
The story highlights a national escalation of cases, noticeably since the introduction of the Equality Act 2010, where statistics released by the NHS have revealed that the number of children referred for hormone treatment to the Tavistock Centre has gone up from 97 cases in 2009 to 2,519 in 2018 – a 2,500% increase in just nine years.
