The Church of England and all other Anglican and ecumenical ‘inclusive’ organisations have yet to utter a word. Or dare they not because they have been so egregiously wrong?
We at LGB Christians believe that the report by Dr Hilary Cass into the care of children and young people who are experiencing gender distress should have finally awakened Britain’s churches to serious deficiencies in the way they have safeguarded young people in their schools and other institutions.
The bluff of the advocates of gender theory has finally been called, yet Christian reactions to her report have been all but nil. The Church of England’s Board of Education has yet to react after an initial and mendacious denial that Stonewall played any part in the drafting of their guidance on the welfare of LGBT pupils. As far as we can tell, not a single Anglican bishop has said anything about the matter at all.
This is a deep failure of safeguarding because Dr Cass has uncovered incontrovertible evidence that an overwhelming majority of children and young people experiencing gender distress are suffering from other types of ailments, poor mental health being a common factor. Autism is a familiar feature, as are anxiety and depression. Internalised homophobia is yet another, alarmingly frequent feature. Most young men and women presenting at gender clinics loathe their attraction to the same sex and suspect from their feelings of shame that they may have an opposite sex ‘gender identity,’ and that their bodies therefore ought to be corrected to reflect this.
Dr Cass has uncovered incontrovertible evidence that an overwhelming majority of children and young people experiencing gender distress are suffering from other types of ailments, poor mental health being a common factor.
The Catholic Bishops of England and Wales firmly oppose this and have shown the way forward in a compassionate, delicate yet doctrinally clear pastoral reflection called ‘Intricately Woven by the Lord.’ They are reminding all Christians that: ‘Those who experience discomfort around issues relating to sex and gender, [must be] reassured that such confusion, although deeply painful, is an expression of our shared humanity. We all experience dissonance and dilemmas. As St Paul said, we groan with the rest of creation and long to be free, ‘as we await eagerly our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies’ (Rom 8.23)’. They remind us all that our bodies have ‘meaning and importance both in this present moment and into eternity.’
The Catholic Bishops have shown the way forward in a compassionate, delicate yet doctrinally clear pastoral reflection ‘Intricately Woven by the Lord.’
It should neither be difficult nor contentious to overcome fears of being tarred with bigotry to protect children and youths who are otherwise deeply vulnerable and in pain, especially when the churches’ own teaching may very well contribute to such pain and cause LGB kids to dislike their sexual orientation so intensely that they begin to believe that they have a gender identity at odds with their own bodies. It is therefore refreshing to read that the Catholic bishops ‘also recognise that roles attributed to the sexes may vary according to time and space. Therefore, rigid cultural stereotypes of masculinity and femininity are…unfortunate and undesirable because they can create unreasonable pressure on children to present or behave in particular ways.’ They further wrote that ‘it is clear that the sexual identity of the person as man or woman is not purely a cultural or social construction and that it belongs to the specific manner in which the image of God exists… For all these reasons, we cannot encourage or give support to reconstructive or drug based medical intervention that harms the body… ‘We are to honour our body resisting medical interventions, intended to “reassign” gender where these destroy the body’s fertility or sexual function.’
The Church of England and all other ecumenical ‘inclusive’ organisations have yet to utter a word. Or dare they not because they have been so egregiously wrong? Or do they simply not care?