This is a copy of a letter I have just sent to Justine Greening, the minister of education with a copy to the Prime Minister. I intend to send edited copies to my MP and MSPs and would encourage you to do the same. You are welcome to use this, adapt or write your own. An MP once told me that a letter was considered worth a thousand votes!
Dear Minister, Ms Greening,
I am writing to you to express my concern, and the concern of millions of others over your governments recent proposals announced concerning people being able to legally (if not in reality) change gender. You announced this weekend that “what we want to do is streamline the process, make it easier, demedicalise it and make it less intrusive”.
As you are aware the current Gender Recognition Act 2004 recognises that there is such a condition as gender dysphoria but insists that before legally changing gender they must have lived in their new gender for two years and have obtained a certificate from a gender recognition panel. You are proposing to change this so that gender change can be done by simple self-declaration. In addition to this you want to add to the number of genders – adding to male and female gender X.
There is considerable pressure for this from a very small but vocal group of people within society. And it appears that you, the Prime Minister, the leader of the Opposition and indeed most of the political class have given into this pressure. I wonder if you are happy to be on the same radical agenda as Jeremy Corbyn? I am writing you because I regard it as a fundamental error which will cause considerable harm to our society and to many people within it – especially those for whom you have a particular responsibility as Minister of State for Education, children. I would urge you to consider the following problems:
1) The attempt to uncouple gender totally from biology is something that is completely unscientific and unevidenced. It is a sociological political theory known as ‘Queer Theory’, originally taught by the American philosopher Judith Butler, which regards gender as merely a social construct and nothing to do with the fundamental nature of who we are as human beings. Your adoption of this radical agenda without evidence and without thinking through the issues is profoundly disturbing.
2) If your proposals are accepted it means the end of feminism, because after all there is ultimately no such thing as the feminine. It will mean the end of women’s sports (did you know that eight of Iran’s womens football team are men?) and also the end of gender quotas in parliament and elsewhere. If I can legally change my gender at any point then if I find that I can earn more money, or get a better job by simply announcing I am a different gender, what in your proposals will stop me from doing so? You state that this will be a great step forward for women, when in reality it is a great step backwards – which is why feminists such as Germaine Greer, Dame Jenni Murray and Elinor Burkett are so opposed.
3) Furthermore there is a danger in terms of prisons, hospital wards, women’s crisis centres that men will be able to gain access to them. There was a case in Scotland of a man who was charged with double rape announcing he was a woman and being asked to be placed in an open women’s prison and insisting on his right to be searched by female prison guards. If people are allowed to self-identify what can you actually do about this?
4) It will not help those who suffer from GID (Gender Identity Dysphoria). They are prone to suffer to a far greater degree from depression, substance abuse, self-harm, suicide, personality disorders and other mental issues. Your encouraging confused people in this direction is the equivalent of your agreeing with the six stone person who suffers from anorexia that they are fat!
5) There are enormous implications for civil liberties. After your ‘consultation’ (which will of course not be a consultation – even though it self-identifies as one) you will pass laws which eventually will end up criminalising those of us who do not buy into the Queer Theory view of humanity. Already in New York you can be fined up to $250,000 if you use the wrong pronouns for a person. We are all going to have to learn a whole new language. In Canada a bill is just about to be passed which will allow the State to take children away from their parents if the parents have the wrong views about gender identity. This is the inevitable route you are leading us.
6) And there are incredible implications for education and children. NHS Scotland recently released ‘guidelines’ to schools saying that they should ditch the terms ‘boys and girls’. We don’t want our boys and girls to be taught that they are not boys and girls but rather that they were ‘assigned’ genders at birth which they can change. Can you imagine the upset that a seven-year old girl felt when she returned home from school in tears, and told her parents that her teacher had told her she could choose whether she wanted to be a boy or a girl?! This is the kind of insanity you are unleashing on our children. This is nothing less than State sponsored child abuse. Children are incredibly suggestible – which is why the number of children in Scotland seeking to change has gone up from 34 in 2013 to over 200 last year. Given the high-profile of transgender personalities, the propaganda on TV and the indoctrination that you are proposing in schools we can expect this number to rise.
Some of us live at the sharp end of this. I could tell you several stories but one will suffice – I think of the mother of impeccably liberal credentials who phoned me really angry that her young son had come home from school and announced that he was really a woman. It turned out that he had gone for counselling because he was suffering from depression and his teacher had suggested that he might be unhappy because he was in the wrong body. Why would the teacher do such a thing? For the same reason that the headteacher in another school, much to the disgust of the teachers who actually had to deal with the situation, announced that a messed up and confused girl who was struggling with many issues declared herself transgender, whereupon the headteacher made it as public as possible. Why? Because both the teacher in the first case and the headteacher in the latter wanted to show just how liberal, cool, hip and happening they were – and of course they were seeking a Stonewall award (awarded to schools who indoctrinate their children sufficiently in the Stonewall philosophy.
When I listened to the very sparsely attended parliamentary debate on this issue earlier in the year I was astounded to hear one MP say that we just had to forget about the older generations and aim to teach (indoctrinate) the children. Is this what you are proposing as education secretary? Do you think that we as parents will stand for this?
None of the above takes away from the fact that there are a small percentage of people 0.1% who suffer from GID and need help. But the help they need is not for you to attempt to change the whole basis and structure on which our society is built. To be honest at the end of the day it is not going to be you and the political class who have to face the real consequences of what can only be described as this insanity. You are safe enough in your gated environments, protected from the consequences of your own ill-thought out decisions based on a failed and flawed philosophy. It will be the poor in our housing estates who will be taught this insane doctrine and be accused of being irrational bigots if they dare to oppose it and speak up for what they know to be true.
Minster – you are supposed to be a conservative minister. Someone who conserves what is good in society, seeks to minimise the role of the State and who seeks to restrain evil. You are acting in precisely the opposite way. You are destroying the foundation of our society, you are making the State, God and you are encouraging the most grotesque evil. I am sorry for putting this in such strong terms but it appears that you and your colleagues are not listening, and that even those who agree that its daft will not speak out because of the bullying, abuse and targeting they will then experience in the media, social media and elsewhere. Having myself been on the receiving end of this I can understand something of that reluctance. But someone has to speak out. Who will have the courage? Personally my hope is that this madness has gone too far and that the ordinary people of Britain will stand up against this insanity and let those of you in your ivory towers know that you don’t have the right or the power to try and remake humanity in your own image.
Can I plead with you for the sake of our children please turn away from this madness? Think about what you are doing. Do what you can to help those who suffer from GID, but don’t make the rest of us suffer by dismantling a key part of our identity and society. Do you really want to be known as the Tory minister for Education who set up the first state sponsored child abuse system in history?
I look forward to hearing from you,
Yours etc.
David Robertson
St Peters Free Church
4 St Peter St
Dundee
DD1 4JJ
Twitter – @theweeflea
This is also now on The Christian Today Website
See also –This from Peter Saunders
Watch this horrendous interview where Greening says that we get to choose our gender.
‘for new years’ – typo?
Thank you for expressing our feelings so aptly.
well written David this subject really matters – for the sake of our children!
First class.
Excellent inspired letter David, Thank you.
Quick, before you post the letters… I think you have typed “new years” when you meant “two years” (paragraph 2)!
Brilliant David.
I too have just written to Justine Greening and Nick Gibb on the same subject. Are they all devoid of simple common sense of the consequences. Have they not read and seen the adverse repercussions already occurring for the majority in other western countries that have taken this route long ago?
I have also written to the Bishop of Liverpool, with copies to the Archbishops and other Bishops (including Hull), for openly and publicly at the General Synod welcoming the LGBT community into their midst (basically a loving move that’s been done in a softly softly way for years) and thereby openly encouraging homosexuality and same-sex marriage. I’ve asked him if he will now openly and publicly at the next General Synod declare his discouragement of homosexuality, just like society ‘discourages’ any action that is contrary to the well- being of the person and/ or those who are affected by their action and which Christians call ‘sins’!
Excellent, inspired letter David. Thank you.
As a minister of the Crown her job is to serve the people, not to dictate morality to them. This is not government for the benefit of the people of this nation, this is dictatorship by those with no aim or purpose other than doing what those who shout loudest want us to do. All she is interested in is power, and sadly her foolish constituents will continue to re-elect her. People in the UK are bonkers, the majority continue to vote for the Tories, Labour, LibDems, SNP, UKIP and Greens even when they are given other choices, and despite the fact that they know that these people are destroying our society.
Also, I did think that it was in fact 0.04% who suffer from ‘GID’, not 0.1.
A government serves by governing, so in order to do that it must uphold basic and essential moral standards.
Dominic – it probably was 0.04, but it doesn’t do to underestimate the power of advertising or the lure of the bandwagon.
Look how anorexia went from unknown to pandemic in a generation or so.
“Speciesism” and the slippery slope in progress.
Last week, preaching on Galatians 4, at Keswick, Don Carson, contrasting gospel freedom with biblical understanding of slavery, that is, for the avoidance of misunderstanding and doubt, equates to those who don’t know God , he gave an example of the exercise of freedom of choice today, being,in effect, slavery to self : in the USA a woman is taking a case to court to enforce her right to chose to be a cat. He called this “speciesism”.
Seeking a starring role in “Cats”, purrhaps.
As an aside – within the last week I read of a photographer, on the brink of bankruptcy, as he was being sued by an ape through an animal rights organisation. He’d taken its photo and had made money from it.
(Seeking a starring role in Planet of the Apes, perhaps)
As it happens, there is an article today on the same topic, by Tim Stanley, in The Daily Telegraph. It’s not as comprehensive, of course.
Two points
1 There is no specific mandate for this proposed legislation.
2 What is the so called “consultation process” going to be? How?
There is a little more on the monkey case, in today’s Daily Telegraph, by Rob Wilson in his article “The Politics of rage is starting to take over”. In the article I read the photographer insists, it’s mistaken identity, the wrong plaintiff, the wrong monkey.
Wilson is late to the table, compared to David, as he also mentions the bullying of Boots.
Thank you, David. Nietzsche predicted that after the ‘death of God’ universal madness would break out. And, finally, here we are. This whole ‘choosing your sex’ thing is like something out of Monty Python.
The consultation process will be as pointless as the one before the same-sex marriage legislation. It will not ask “should we?” but “how and when should we and what sanctions will we impose against those who protest?” Shall we follow New York and impose a £250,000 fine? 100 times the maximum speeding penalty seems a bit harsh doesn’t it?
You have missed the most important point of all. This is like history repeating itself. The Christian Institute missed the glaringly obvious, most important point of all too, in 2004.
The point is that transgenderism = #GenderFraud
When a man pretends to be a woman (or vice versa), he (or she), he sets out to deceive, and does deceive, others. Those victijms of his deception can even include another man whom he tricks to the altar, mistakenly believing that he is marrying a real woman, not another man who is committing gender fraud.
Please read my recent blog post about THIS argument against allowing the toxin of transgenderism, and my court case against the Gender Recognition Act in 2005. God is giving us another chance to stop this. We will fail again, if we ignore the #GenderFraud argument again, as we did in 2004 and 2005.
Please, David, listen to what I’ve been saying for twelve years now, and being ignored. Please read
Should a bloke be allowed to know if his “girlfriend” (or “bride”) is also a bloke?
https://johnallmanuk.wordpress.com/2017/07/08/gra/
and learn a new idea, instead of recycling old ideas that failed 12 years ago.
“These MPs are turning gender confusion from a health issue into a political statement to be enforced. So of course they also want to turn denying or questioning gender fluidity into a hate crime. Certainly, anyone who attacks or threatens people on account of their gender should be prosecuted. But the committee wants ‘stirring up hatred’ against trans people to become a crime — which would include insulting them by saying they belong to the sex they deny.”
From Melanie Phillips’ Blog:
Article title: Legalised Lying and Gender
Full article here: http://www.melaniephillips.com/legalised-lying-gender-engineering-conservative/
Matthew, had it crossed your mind that what was wrong with transgenderism was that it was fraud? Gender fraud.
Who is the victim? Anybody who looks at a man who is imitating a woman, mistakenly believing that he is looking a real woman, not another man impersonating a woman.
Who is the greatest victim of such gender fraud? Somebody who marries somebody of the same sex, mistakenly believing that he is marrying somebody of the opposite sex.
Is that possible? Yes. That is what the existing Gender Recognition Act enables. Any amendment will simply make it easier to commit gender fraud, aided and abetted by the government.
“In the 20th century, conservatives knew what they were defending and against whom. They were defending liberty and democracy against Soviet communism. When the Soviet Union collapsed, they assumed their fox had been shot since everyone seemed to have accepted capitalism.
What they never understood – at least, most of them – was that the left-wing war to destroy the west had not in fact ended but merely shifted its strategy. Instead of the workers seizing control of the levers of the economy, the left would now seize control of the levers of the culture – the universities, media, civil service, churches, the legal profession – and subvert them from within.
Its aim was to undermine and weaken the normative values of the west and then flip them, so that what was transgressive became normative while what was normative became ostracised as transgressive. That way the west would be destroyed and would be transformed into… quite what was never very clear, but some kind of new world order.
The institutions at which this cultural revolution took particular aim were the family and the education system – the principal means though which a culture replicates itself.
And since the purpose was to destroy the west’s core values, and since these core values were enshrined in the Hebrew Bible and the Christianity that embodied those Biblical moral codes in western civilisation, traditional Christianity was directly in its cross-hairs. It had to allow itself to become diluted by secularism to became a pale and meaningless shadow of its former self, went the threat, or else it would be attacked and destroyed.”
From Melanie Phillips’ Blog:
Title: The Tory Jacobins
web: http://www.melaniephillips.com/the-tory-jacobins/
“Under the government’s plans anybody will be able to ‘self-identify’ as belonging to a sex other than the one stated in the birth certificate. No medical tests and observations are necessary. And, to avoid any confusion, the birth certificate will be changed accordingly. Never mind the chromosomes, feel the whim.”
For full article tap web link below:
Source web: liberty GB
Author: Alexander Boot
Web: https://libertygb.org.uk/news/no-more-need-peeping-tom
It may seem far fetched or perhaps unbelievable, but we now have a ‘Conservative’ government in power who are effectively subverting our culture and way of life and leading us towards a completely totalitarian society, albeit disguised as one which brings ‘freedom’ for ‘all.’
The quote below show the incrinmnating link between ‘cultural subversion’ and the present ‘culture war’ being waged against our people by our own ‘Conservative’ government.
The full article gives a credible insight into the function which ‘cultural subversion’ serves in the creation of a totlaitarian society. One of the best explanations I have read regarding the reason behind the present lunacy we see being given credence by government. The enshrinement in law of the right to ‘switch gender’ is one small step towards a totalitarian dictatorship.
“The soviet regime aimed at theforcible transcendence of “bourgeois culture” by using its totalitarian power to the maximum. By destroying nearly all churches, killing nearly all priests, punishing even the hint of dissent, as well as by making rejection of bourgeois culture a condition for ascending to the ruling class, it succeeded in pushing the old culture to near-destruction.
But, rather than establishing a new and better culture, much less the final and best, this step turned out instead to destroy the very basis of Soviet power. Progressive regimes demand that persons who express themselves in public (even in private) affirm any and all things that pertain to the regime’s identity lest they lose access to jobs or privileges, and be exposed to the shunning or ire of regime supporters—if not treated as criminals.
But even totalitarian regimes can reward or punish only a few people at a time. Tacit collaboration by millions who bite their lip is even more essential than lip service by thousands of favor seekers. Hence, to stimulate at least passive cooperation, the party strives to give the impression that “everybody” is already on its side.”
http://www.claremont.org/do…
“The Soros network funds what they call evangelical and Christian mascots. They serve as surprising validators for their anti-Christian projects and candidates. Imagine the evil of using a Christian front to de-Christianise the culture of a nation.”
George Soros is also directly linked to the Tavistock Institute for Human Relations, who are currently being inundated with children seeking to assign genders to themselves which are opposite to their biological sex.
https://youtu.be/OUSNDvD_R18?list=PLJenRmvySPgU2r5VlDvs0yMJ_-csQWDhP
i’ve just forwarded the complete script , with my own endorsement to my MP.
I too read the transcript of the House of Commons debate – except that it wasn’t a debate, merely a bunch of politicians virtue signalling about inclusion and diversity. There was no serious challenge or questioning, and the impression given was that none of them had even considered the wider sociological issues.
I have already blogged on this in a couple of medical forums, with, depressingly, virtually no response. I will write to my MP but I also intend to write to the President of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health because there are clear child health issues involved in this. If we could get the College to oppose this ……….
This is such a good expositionof the lunacy of the transgender idealogues that it should be published far and wide. I hope readers will not only use it to contact their MPs but also their churches. It is high time Christians stood up for the truth in large numbers, instead of simply tut-tutting and doing nothing.
I wholehearted & unreservedly support your position on this topic David. To those who are effected by the topics we are discussing, let me firstly say, regardless of how sections of the Media portray us, Christians are not the enemy of anyone who is Homosexual Lesbian or Transgender. Nor do we have a personal opinion as to whether or not Gay sex is a sin.
As followers of the God of Abraham Issac & Jacob, the God who says He is the only God who created everything, we Christians follow Gods teachings which have been faithfully handed down through the centuries. These are the very same teachings upon which our society has been built and has so benefited that we were once a model to the world.
God as our creator has opinions on these matters of human sexuality. In His wisdom, he did not see fit to consult David or I, as to whether or not we liked His opinions. Nor did God consult us before He spoke to Moses & instructed him to record His commands for acceptable human behaviour. Consequently if per chance you dislike it when Christians convey what God thinks on the topic of human sexuality, then your problem is not with the messenger, it is with the author. I encourage everyone who has a problem with what God thinks or says, to take it up with God in person. He is only a prayer away.
Might I air a word of caution before you do. God is almighty and if He is against you, who is going to help you?
‘The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them. 20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
21 “For although they knew God, they neither glorified him as God nor gave thanks to him, but their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. 22 Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools 23 and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like a mortal human being and birds and animals and reptiles.
24 Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts to sexual impurity for the degrading of their bodies with one another. 25 They exchanged the truth about God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator—who is forever praised. Amen.
26 Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. 27 In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, 30 slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil; they disobey their parents; 31 they have no understanding, no fidelity, no love, no mercy. 32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.” Romans 1:18-32 New International Version (NIV).
I would be delighted to speak with anyone who is struggling with any of the topics we have discussed.
Respectfully,
Excellent letter. I am going to send the same to my MP. Well done. Ps – heard you several times on Premier Radio’s “Unbelievable”. Always enjoy your punchy (but still gracious) approach.
If it can be proven that this is child abuse as you have mentioned would there be a case for prosecution of this minister?
I AGGREE WITH EVERY WORD IWISH I KNEW HOW TO SEND THIS LETTER TO MY OWN M P VERNON COAKER M P FOR GEDLING NORTH NOTTINGHAM
E- mail him at vernon.coaker.mp@parliament.uk
Or write – Arnot Hill House, Arnot Hill Park, Nottingham Road, Arnold, Nottingham, NG5 6U
Superb, David. Well done for speaking out so clearly. More of us need to be finding our voice
Our children must be protected. I say christians will have to use the law to defend our children. Act now! Words are not enough.
Pedantically, missing bracket on the end of “Stonewall award (awarded to schools who indoctrinate their children sufficiently in the Stonewall philosophy.”
Congratulations on an excellent letter. The proposals of Greening and others have echoes of George Orwell’s book “Nineteen Eighty Four”, published in 1949. Newspeak, Doublespeak and Thoughtcrime – these were the imagined concepts of a future totalitarian regime. This is government trying to redefine the meaning of the English language. Where is the Conservative Party going? I am a constituent of Justine Greening and will seek a meeting with her.
Thanks Dick…let me know how you get on…
Thank you for this letter will personalise and distribute myself. We have to push back. I’m equally concerned with the relationship sex curriculum currently bring drawn up ( with no pro family group or Christians on the board, though stonewall and the like are contributing… if youd like to see the mind set of those helping to write the curriculum google ‘respect yourselves’ Warwickshire aimed at 13 years and above , be prepared to be repulsed) . My MP told me dec 2027 there is not enough ‘right thinking polictians in government at this time, too many wanting to push through their own ideologies… for our children’s sake and the risk of society imploding on itself we have to push back. May I recommend ‘voices for justice uk’ who actively lobby the government.