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.’
Why reputation is prioritised over protecting victims
In the four years of writing for Evangelicals Now, the published responses to my articles have been few and far …