Mark Bratton writes: In Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass, Humpty Dumpty scornfully says to his conversation partner Alice, “When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean – neither more or less” “The question is”, said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.” “The question is”, said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to master, that’s all.”
At last, the Supreme Court (SC), the UK’s highest tribunal, has delivered its hotly anticipated judgment in For Women Scotland Ltd v Scottish Ministers (2025, UKSC 15). The case arose from a legal challenge to statutory guidance issued by the Scottish Government under the Gender Representation on Public Boards Act 2018. The guidance redefined the word “woman” to include trans-identified biological males with Gender Recognition Certificates (GRC) issued under the Gender Recognition Act 2004 (GRA), allowing them to count toward female quotas on public boards. The Scottish courts upheld this extended legal definition, but the SC unanimously ruled that the Scottish Government had exceeded its devolved powers by purporting to make changes to the equality legislation – an area reserved to the UK Parliament under the Scotland Act 1998.
The Ruling
The SC has made it clear that “sex” must be interpreted as biological sex, not ‘acquired’ or ‘certificated’ gender (legal sex). Certificated gender refers to a person’s legal gender as recognised under the GRA after they have been issued a GRC. The process of acquiring a GRC is rigorous and requires medical evidence, a demonstrated history of living in the acquired gender, and a commitment to permanence. It is not based solely on self-identification. Once a GRC is granted, a person’s gender becomes their ‘acquired’ gender “for all purposes” under section 9(1) of the GRA, subject to certain exceptions stipulated in section 9(3).
The fundamental legal issue the SC addressed was whether a transwoman (a biological male self-identifying as a woman) with a GRC was a “woman” for all purposes within the GRA’s provisions or whether the terms “man”, “woman”, and “sex” in the EA required a biological interpretation to ensure coherence and workability bringing it within the exceptions stipulated in section 9(3). In a landmark judgment, the SC ruled that these terms refer to biological sex, not certificated sex.
However, the judges were not creating new law but declaring what the law has meant all along; it is a ‘declaratory’ judgment (para 266). For the purposes of equality legislation, the legal definition of “woman” refers to biological sex. As such, trans women with or without a gender recognition certificate are not included within this category and do not have a legal right to access single-sex spaces designated for women, in the contexts covered by the legislation. Moreover, the SC concluded that to include legal sex acquired under the GRA would undermine the purpose of the sex-based protections enshrined in the EA and introduce confusion and inequality, rather than clarity and fairness (eg para 172).
Although many transactivist groups and supporters of gender ideology have dismissed the ruling as “deeply distressing”, the SC impressively fulfilled its constitutional function in ensuring the consistent and fair application of the law. The lengthy judgment (88 pages, 268 paragraphs) is a model of clarity, common sense, and wisdom in keeping with the distinguished traditions of the common law.
Several things can be said about the judgment itself and its wider implications.
The Meaning of Words in Law
Regarding the judgment, the central legal issues involved questions of the meaning of words in statutes. In English law, words do not mean whatever meaning litigants, lawyers or the public-at-large choose to give them by fiat, as Humpty Dumpty contended. Rather, as the SC makes clear, statutory interpretation involves an objective assessment of the meaning Parliament intended to convey based on the words used, their context, and the purpose of the legislation. Contrary to some critics, the equality legislation is fully compatible with the UK’s obligations under European human rights law, and the SC did not need to invoke human rights jurisprudence for interpretative guidance.
Accordingly, the SC refused to adopt a variable definition of “sex” as the Scottish Courts had. The Scottish Court of Appeal suggested that the meaning of sex could be changed depending on the specific context within the Act – sometimes referring to biological sex (pregnancy and maternity provision) and at other times referring to certificated sex. Only allowing a biological definition of sex would be inconsistent with the GRA, which, the Scottish Court held, was designed to give trans women with a GRC the same protections as biological women under the EA. The SC overruled this variable approach as it lacked the predictability, consistency and clarity the law requires.
Moreover, the SC pointed out that the EA itself offers a binary, biologically-based, definition of sex, where “man” is defined as a “male of any age” and “woman” a “female of any age” (sections 11, 212). It concluded that the legislative history of the Equality Act, notwithstanding the provisions of the GRA, demonstrated a consistent and stable use of the terms ‘man’, ‘woman’, and ‘sex’, and that these must be interpreted biologically. This interpretation was required by the language of the statute, viewed in its context and in light of the underlying purpose of the legislation (paras 166–171, 264). In its discussion of the legal precedents, the SC cites common law cases demonstrating that English common law has never recognised the possibility of a person changing their gender from their biological sex at birth (paras 54, 55).
Furthermore, the SC concluded that a variable definition of sex would be impractical and result in absurd outcomes (paras 189–192, 197, 265 (xi)). It would create heterogeneous groups that include biological women and trans women with a GRC, while excluding biological women with a GRC (transmen). It would defeat one of the central purposes of sex as a protected characteristic by hindering the identification of and addressing the shared needs and disadvantages of women as a distinct group (paras 243, 244). It would make it exceedingly difficult to justify providing single-sex spaces for biological women and legally recognised women (biological males) while excluding trans women without a GRC. A certificated interpretation would allow transwomen with a GRC into single sex spaces while excluding transmen (i.e. biological women) with a GRC (paras 213–218). Throughout the judgment, the SC demonstrates the impracticability of a “legal sex” definition in the various contexts covered by the legislation, such as single-sex accommodation, higher education institutions, associations (e.g., lesbian—only), charities, sports, public action measures, and the Public Sector Equality Duty (paras 210–228). The SC dismissed the idea that transpeople with a GRC should have greater equality protection than those without one. A variable definition of sex would undermine the coherence and stability of the Act and render it impractical to operate.
Sex and Rights
Contrary to claims that the judgment is an assault on trans rights, the SC clearly distinguishes sex and gender reassignment as protected characteristics under equality legislation (paras 198-203). Gender reassignment is defined in section 7 of the EA as applying to individuals who are “proposing to undergo, are undergoing, or have undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.” The judgment does not affect the basis of protection under this provision at all, which applies independently of an individual’s legal sex or possession of a GRC. Trans people continue to be protected from direct and indirect discrimination and harassment under the characteristic of gender reassignment. They can also claim protection under the sex discrimination provisions if they are treated less favourably because of their perceived sex or association with a particular sex.
The SC was invited to address and resolve a fairly narrow legal question within its jurisdictional and jurisprudential competence. It did not seek, of its own motion, to foray into or compose a treatise on contested social and political matters of sex and gender. Indeed, the SC was at pains to highlight its limited legal role and eschew a policy-making role. In this regard, it fulfilled its purpose. It determined the meaning of words for the purposes of the law, exercising an appropriate mastery in Humpty Dumpty’s terms.
Notwithstanding the SC’s humble assessment of its role, its judgment has significantly broader implications.
Words, Law, and Society
Firstly, the judgment can be seen as a form of argumentum ad lapidum. This alludes to the famous story of Dr. Johnson, who purported to negate Bishop Berkeley’s philosophical idealism by kicking a rock and declaring, “I refute it thus.” The SC, at greater length, demonstrates the impractical consequences of replacing the concept of biological sex with a legal conceit, making it more difficult to fulfil the purposes for which the equality legislation was enacted in the first place. In short, using sex as a term of art does not work in the ‘real’ world.
Another wider implication of the judgment is that we cannot simply redefine words like ‘man’, ‘woman’, and ‘sex’ to suit our preferences. These words and phrases constitute basic, highly evolved perceptual categories essential for negotiating a complex world, especially in areas where clarity matters most, such as safeguarding, privacy, and dignity. For women in particular, these categories are not abstract: they are bound up with everyday realities of safety, bodily autonomy, and protection from intrusion. Women often bear the greatest risk when such categories are blurred or redefined without a broad consensus. The ludicrous notion that sex is something ‘assigned’ at birth, and later either confirmed or overridden by one’s perceived inner sense of gender identity, rather than a reality established at conception and observable at birth with 99.9% accuracy, is a vivid example of the flight from perceptual reality. This confusion is matched by the notion that ‘lived experience’ has an absolute value rather than something contained in perceptions that is potentially distorted or plain wrong. We do not affirm a girl suffering from anorexia nervosa in her delusion that she is obese, because it is false, and for her to think so and respond accordingly is very detrimental to her well-being. The idea of ‘gender affirming’ care is so pernicious because, by definition, it involves no medical judgment and often places vulnerable young men and women (many gay) on an irretrievably damaging medical and surgical pathway.
Thirdly, important legal judgments such as those of the SC and many legislative changes hold significant expressive value; they convey and reinforce societal values. When homosexuality was decriminalised in the 1960s, the legal change not only permitted what had previously been prohibited but also reshaped the moral ecology within which homosexual practice became more acceptable and flourished. Despite the SC’s modest view of its role, it has actually expressed and reinforced the views of the silent majority who hold fast to the plain, ordinary meanings of sex and oppose the linguistic and conceptual obfuscations of gender theory. The UK Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, who formerly opined that “transwomen were women” has declared the SC has now provided clarity and that public authorities must ensure their guidance “is in the right place according to that judgment.” The Scottish Government has stated that it has no plans to return its controversial Bill on gender recognition following the judgment. The Equality and Human Rights Commission, one of the interveners in the case, plans to incorporate the ruling into a forthcoming legally binding code of practice for women-only spaces. The British Transport Police has already amended its policies to conduct searches based on biological sex, marking one of the first institutional shifts following the ruling. It is difficult now to imagine the British and Scottish Governments enacting legislation to redefine sex beyond biological categories.
Terms and Activism
A fourth broader implication of the judgment is the way it implies the deeper metaphysical confusion affecting the use and understanding of words. This mystification is evident in the circular definitions of sex and gender offered by transactivists and organisations such as Mermaids and Stonewall. Once thought to be fixed, immutable and important, sex is now said to exist on a ‘spectrum’, while gender, which formerly pertained to the cultural and societal expectations associated with sexed bodies, now represents the putatively stable inner sense of self that transcends an individual’s bodily configuration. Stonewall’s definition of gender as “a person’s innate sense of their own gender, whether male, female or something else, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth” is a striking example of this circularity. The notion of gender varying independently of sex and as something existentially primary turns gender into a category without content and facilitates its use as a cypher for regressive sexual stereotypes and a cloak for extreme misogyny and homophobia. That so many public authorities, including, astonishingly, the Church of England, should have adopted these usages so uncritically cries out for explanation.
Fifthly, this metaphysical confusion is integrally related to distorted language’s ‘dehumanising’ effects. Women have been referred to as “people who menstruate”, or “chest feeders”, or “people with a cervix”, depriving them of the distinctive properties that define a unique category deserving of special legal protections and positive provisions.
Sixthly, and finally, the SC judgment illustrates that sometimes rights conflict or are incommensurable, requiring adjudication. The gay rights movement of the last century was more self-contained, whereas the fight for trans rights today engages the rights and boundaries of other groups. Across several contexts addressed by equality legislation, the SC has in effect prioritised women’s rights at the expense of the social and political aspirations of trans people, and rightly so. Rights cannot be asserted as if they were a species of autobiography. Rights are public interests that can only be properly established through rigorous and, at times, fraught social negotiation. Sometimes the law is invoked to resolve the conflict, as it was in this case.
Conclusion
The Supreme Court judgment brings a fresh air of sanity and practicality to the contested territory of sex and gender. These words cannot have multiple meanings, nor can their meanings be ideologically determined. In Humpty Dumpty’s terms, the Supreme Court held the mastery. It remains to be seen how organisations such as Inclusive Church and the Open Table Network will respond to the judgment and whether they will broaden their notions of ‘inclusiveness’ to include individuals and organisations with so-called gender-critical or sex-realist views.
Revd Dr Mark Bratton is the Rector of St John Baptist Berkswell and an Honorary Canon of Coventry Cathedral. Formerly a practising barrister, Mark holds a PhD in Medical Ethics and Law from the University of Warwick and is an Honorary Fellow of the Warwick Medical School, where he teaches on a sessional basis. He is a Core Member of LGB Christians, an organisation dedicated to challenging ideas which replace the biological reality of the two sexes with self-defined gender identities.
So secularism leads to spending vast sums on whether one of the main realities in the universe (perhaps one of the top 10) is allowed a word in the dictionary to itself or not?
The same way as secularism put pornography one click away from children, and secularism allows children to choke each other (today’s news) and secularism’s greatest enemy is the greatest thing of all – families. And secularism is delighted for children to ruin their lives by sexual encounters and soul ties before they even know what is happening.
But by seeing a legal ruling as significant – more significant than the nature of reality – people are still playing the same deadly secularist game: putting a pretend parallel reality above reality itself.
Sensible people were always awake. It looks like most people just follow the majority, whatever incoherence the majority says. Unscrupulous secularism plays upon that. This travesty shows how far that secularism is capable of going – even to deceive many adults on things known by all children.
Which is why everyone everywhere should be grateful that Christianity is on its way back in the public perception. But it is in a context of spiritual war that it is coming back. How many more children are going to get damaged? Fight the good fight.
Exactly so. Celebrating court cases that are nothing more than affirmations of universal truths is something that occurs only in decadent, undemocratic cultures. Indeed, in America voters are often given, as a chief reason of whom to elect President, the type of judge the nominee is likely to appoint to a court, because the legislators subject to democratic elections have corruptly acquiesced in the transfer of their power (and hence accountability) to their unelected brethren.
Plus I will have to read the opinion, primarily because I have seldom read any recent court case on either side of the Atlantic that is “a model of clarity, common sense, and wisdom” much less one 88 pages in length. How many paragraphs does it take to declare “a delusion does not a biological fact make”? In fact, this “model of clarity, common sense, and wisdom” nowhere mentions the term “delusion” or any cognate.
If you want common sense, go to the pub. Avoid public organisations and above all avoid Westminster. Thanks be to the independence of the judiciary.
The Supreme Court avoided defining biological sex, perhaps because it is aware that trans activists have used the tiny number of intersex persons as a wedge to open the floodgates.
There is an epistemological issue and an ontological issue. The epistemological issue is what defines a man and a woman. If you allow self-identification, you do not solve this problem. Persons with a beard saying they are (or they feel like) women should be asked what it is that they are (or feel like). Persons who say they are transitioning should be asked what it is they are transitioning to and from. Sports categories should be renamed “the long jump for people who say they are men” and “the long jump for people who say they are women”, etc. The Supreme Court has put an end to that.
The ontological issue is more important, and I’ll phrase it using uncontested terminology. Should people with XY chromosomes, beards and penises (let the reader understand) be allowed to use changing rooms for people with XX chromosomes and cervixes? The Supreme Court ruling means that the answer in the UK is No. Even Caitlyn Jenner, who as Bruce Jenner won the Olympic decathlon, said (on 1st May 2021) “It’s an issue of fairness and we need to protect girls’ sports in our schools.”
It is shocking that it is legal to perform sex-change operations that re-align body with mind and amount to genital mutilation even as the government has created a grey area in law over counselling that seeks to re-align mind with body. (Such operations were inconceivable until the 20th century.) Which of mind and body can lie?
Your final para sums it up well.
On the independence of the judiciary, total independence is rarely found, but people edge towards that goal and we do not know what is the maximum possible success in this. It may be incredibly high, and different people’s success rate is going to be very different. There are endless examples of judges, even the highest judges, going with the Zeitgeist. It would be interesting if some publication were to tabulate this.
Thank you Christopher. But I think my first sentence sums it up better.
Yes it does. Hey let’s go for a beer and I’ll teach you all about common sense. 🙂
But how do you react when a judge voices the Zeitgeist?
There are all kinds of things more infallible than judges. Internal logic. Science. Statistics. Evidence.
This made smile, but somewhat wearily.
It is recalled that at a university interview for an LLB course ‘The law is an ass. Discuss.’ was scrawled on a whiteboard.
After studying Constitutional and Administrative law which included the ‘canons of statutory construction’ and studied Jurisprudence, it seems that the foundations have been fractured by cultural philosophy and social engineering.
(It is recalled in one family law case in which I was instructed, a children’s dispute, the Judge saying that neither he nor the courts were engaged in social engineering .)
And as for our politicians…some of whom may have been prominent lawyers….
What is also clear, is that legal ‘hermeneutics’ differs substantially from reader, subjective liberal hermeneutics in Christian circles.
After a notorious case in the 1970s when I was a student in Durham, a fellow-student who was reading Law told me that if he ever became President of the (debating) Union he would hold a debate with the motion “This House believes that it is Parliament and not the law that is the ass.”
“Contrary to claims that the judgment is an assault on trans rights, the SC clearly distinguishes sex and gender reassignment as protected characteristics under equality legislation (paras 198-203).”
This is important. One of the serious problems in the public debate in recent years has been the willingness of some to overstate what the law actually was. The problem that can be seen in the responses to this judgement is that we are in danger of overstating things the other way. The Supreme Court has ruled that the protected characteristic of sex is a reference to biological sex, not self-identified gender. That doesn’t sweep away trans people or their protections under the law.
What it does make clear, is that to state the fact of biological sex difference, is not, of itself, transphobic, nor hateful.
Indeed, here, the law followed fact. A statement of the evidential obvious. Otherwise the Court would be pronouncing a ‘legal fiction’.
The question of rights is a separate one.
What is ‘biological sex’?
This is exactly what I said above about one of the main realities in the universe not being allowed a noun for itself in the 20 volume Greater Oxford Dictionary, but having to be hijacked. It is obvious what is going on, but how that is in the cause of goodness beats me.
Adam, but you would never guess that from the reaction of trans activists.
Fervent prayer is answered; the weapons are mighty through God to the “pulling down of Strongholds” There is a much Higher Court.
“The heavens do rule” as one king realized after a period of madness.
DAN.4:37 Now I Nebuchadnezzar praise and extol and honour the King of heaven, all whose works are truth, and his ways judgment: and those that walk in pride he is able to abase.
As prophesied;-
DAN.4:25 That they shall drive thee from men, and thy dwelling shall be with the beasts of the field, and they shall make thee to eat grass as oxen, and they shall wet thee with the dew of heaven, and seven times shall pass over thee, till thou know that the most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever he will.
An idea I’m currently exploring in this area is that it looks as if a significant number of people with gender issues in real terms have a straightforwardly male or female body but some glitch in the endocrine system resulting in excess hormones of the opposite gender. This skews their self-perception and makes them feel their body as ‘wrong’; this can be a very strong feeling – but surely it is also in real terms a hallucination, and I can’t see that it is good medical ethics to go with an endocrine system which is clearly faulty and insist on chemically and surgically destructively ‘fixing’ a body which is basically exactly as it should be. Trouble is, the ‘hallucination’ is very strong, and countering it isn’t as easy as one might expect. The ‘gender reassignment’ can be quite crudely done by simply overwhelming the system with even more of the opposite hormones and following up with surgery. Rebalancing the system in favour of the genetic body is not so simple – just stuffing a boy with testosterone doesn’t work; as far as I can tell one needs to properly identify which particular enzymes/hormones/etc have ‘gone wrong’ and apply a fairly specific correction, and the patient will need quite a bit of counselling and other help to be able to go through what will seem a very counter-intuitive process. Nevertheless, I currently strongly suspect that it is possible and while hard in the short term will in the long term be less costly in both financial and the body-altering ways.
Starmer’s response to the effect that we should all be grateful the Supreme Court has given us ‘clarity’ is truly shocking: it reveals the mind of a state apparatchik who cannot think for himself but must bow unquestioningly to what the state’s laws and the judiciary that administers them tell him what to believe is the truth. For such a mind neither reality nor the individual’s moral judgement has any relevance.
So welcome to the UK in 2025. The freedom to speak one’s own mind (including to pray) as the universal birthright of every human individual no longer applies. The fact that we’re at the stage where this kind of judgement appears to be necessary tells us both how far we have come and the disastrous direction in which we are clearly heading. No wonder there is global comment on what is happening here.
I suspect Starmer, like many, didnt see any problem with biological males calling themselves female and dressing as such, or having ‘treatment’ to affect their bodies, as in his and many eyes they were doing no harm to others. In other words, people should be able to live as they choose, as long as it does not negatively affect others. I have sympathy with such a view, even if I think there is male and female, and people who have body dysmorphia probably have complicated sources, both physiological and psychological.
I recently watched an Australian drama series, After the Party, and looked up some of the actors. I was genuinely shocked to find one who played a male was in fact a biological female in real life and has 2 kids. I have sympathy with someone wanting to live their life in that way.
“As long as it doesn’t negatively affect others.”
What are the metrics for that?
This whole topic and the prosecution by activists has negatively affected others in whole spheres of society, with children, education, health -care, sport, ‘assignment at birth ‘ nonsense, social contagion, influence and induction, with little more than self-interest, justification, promotion, it seems.
The old idea of common good has been overtaken by the supremacy of individual authority, at the same time consciously or unwittingly subscribing to the Marcusian, Frankfurt, deconstructionist, playbook.
But the idea as Christians is to bring healing not to leave people unhealed – the exact opposite.
there seems to be very little healing going on, so that may very well be false hope, if you mean in this lifetime. That’s the reality.
But are you saying that people should not even try to bring healing? That non-healing is preferable? What could make less sense than that? I was referring to bad family situations, traumas etc.. It is very unloving to leave people to stew in these.
‘Gender reassignment is defined in section 7 of the EA as applying to individuals who are “proposing to undergo, are undergoing, or have undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning their sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.” The judgment does not affect the basis of protection under this provision at all, which applies independently of an individual’s legal sex or possession of a GRC.’
Im confused by this. If the Supreme Court has defined ‘sex’, either male or female/ man or woman, then how can anyone ‘reassign’ their sex? Surely the SC ruling means it is fixed? The above quote is nonsense to me.
The above also equates gender with sex, and surely the SC ruling means an individual born male or female cannot ‘become’ the opposite later in life? How then can such individuals be a protected class?
Confused.
Not quite.
I will say the ruling, although long at 88 pages, is quite readable:
https://supremecourt.uk/uploads/uksc_2024_0042_judgment_aea6c48cee.pdf
The SC did not attempt to define ‘sex’ in general, but limited itself to what ‘sex’ and ‘woman’ meant in the Equality Act, and specifically the question of whether this includes a trans woman with a GRC. Consequently, part of the SC’s argument is concerned with the weaknesses of relying on a GRC specifically: its confidential so you never know who has one, most trans people don’t have one, and there is nothing to distinguish between trans people who have a GRC and those who don’t.
Throughout their judgement the SC consistently refers to trans women using “she”. They argue that the Gender Recognition Act which created GRCs still have an important purpose. In law for trans people gender reassignment is the protected characteristic. And any individual trans person could have other protected characteristics of course (sex, pregnancy, disability, sexual orientation, race, religion, or marriage) for which they will also have anti-discrimination protection under the law.
The specific point on medical transition is answered in paragraph 200. The SC points out that medical transition does nothing in law to change a person’s sex. Only a GRC does that, and this judgement confirmed only up to point, and a GRC does not require the person to have undergone any medical transition let alone any specific treatments. Rather, the test is whether they have a diagnosis of gender dysphoria, have lived in their acquired gender for at least 2 years, intend to carry living in their acquired gender until death, and this is evidenced by medical reports.
So, there is a protected characteristic of gender reassignment, and direct or indirect discrimination against people undergoing or intending to undergo a gender reassignment process is prohibited. Someone is able to apply for a GRC if they can meet the tests (gender dysphoria diagnosis, have lived in their acquired gender for 2 years etc.) and this enables them to change their legal gender (e.g. get a new birth certificate, change their passport, pensions entitlements etc.). But this does not extend to overriding the protections for biological sex in the Equality Act (i.e. special provision for women does not have to include trans women).
Yes, I think you are correct on all that.
But what the ruling does make clear is that the GRC effects the creation of a legal fiction, and does not in fact effect a change of sex. Of course, that is for the purpose of the EA—but the ruling also makes clear that, in law, there is such a thing as biological sex, and that is not changed by a GRC (and of course cannot be changed).
That is a major victory for the women who were contesting this, and that fact that it took so much time, money, and determination shows that this was no trivial matter, and that trans ideology did in fact falsely claim that sex can change. It cannot, either in biology or in law.
legal fiction indeed. you can be biologically male but legally female, except of course if you want to use a particular toilet! In that case the law says you are male. Contradiction?
The reason (or one of them) why a GRC is so important to trans people is that it means they can get married with recognition of their legally recognised sex (correlating to their acquired gender), eg be referred to as husband, wife etc in a way that matches their presentation. It also allows them to be referred to in their acquired gender at their funeral. These are actually really important to the dignity of the individuals concerned.
I am also concerned that what you say is a major victory for women is, in fact, a significant own goal.
One of the reasons activists have not wanted trans women in women-only spaces is because it means that ‘any abusive male could put on a frock and access those spaces.’ This argument is problematic. I am sure we would not dream of blaming a woman for the sexual violence she has experienced at the hands of an abusive male. Why then, we should ask ourselves, is it okay to discriminate against trans women because of the actions of abusive males? Also, where statistics around sexual violence show trans people are twice as likely to experience sexual violence than cis-women, how then is it okay to force trans women to use male toilets?
Another aspect that has been overlooked is the failure to recognise that by forcing trans people to use the toilet according to their sex assigned at birth this not only means trans women will have to use male toilets, trans men (who often have full beards, penises etc) would have to use the female toilets.
Obviously this threatens the dignity of all the trans people involved. But it also more easily enables abusive men to use female toilets because they can simply say they are trans and would not even need to don a frock or change their actual appearance in any way to access those spaces.
I have always understood the sex part of the Equality Act to refer to male/female binaries only. The Gender Reassignment part offers the protections for trans people. There has always been room within the Act for organisations to insist on female-only spaces being just for cis-gendered-women. I am concerned about how this is being played out in real time and the impact this will have on a very small and very vulnerable section of our society.
Thanks Karen. But of course use of toilets is not the only issue here, even if it is the one people most like to talk about. There has been a serious impact on women’s sports at every level, and those arguing for women-only sport have been threatened until now.
But one thing to note, and one question to ask. You say ‘trans men have penises’ but of course they don’t; they have reconstructions made to look like this. And what do you mean when you say ‘trans person’? How do you understand the term?
Karen, it really is high time to stop using deceptive expressions which negate reality, such as “sex assigned at birth”. People are not assigned their sex by anyone at birth (or at any other time). People are born with their sex, male or female, which is duly observed and recorded. It is already determined months before birth, and it cannot be changed.
‘If the Supreme Court has defined ‘sex’, either male or female/ man or woman, then how can anyone ‘reassign’ their sex? Surely the SC ruling means it is fixed?’
The answer to that question is ‘no’, because the preceding premise is mistaken.
The SC defined ‘sex’ and ‘woman’ as biological terms only in the context of the 2010 Equalities Act, and largely because to do otherwise would render the law incoherent in various sections. The ruling applies to the rights of same-sex spaces and services as defined in the relevant sections of the 2010 Act. Sections of the same Act which define the rights of trans people remain in force, as do the provisions of the legislation relating to gender reassignment, including the principle that in general, those who hold a GRC are, to all intents and purposes, of their acquired gender.
The SC ruling is highly significant, but it is far more nuanced than the loud voices on either side are ready to admit, and it will be possible to build on it only when the clamour dies down and sensible people begin to gauge the ‘reasonable aims’ and ‘proportionate measures’ that the 2010 Act allows for.
‘Sections of the same Act which define the rights of trans people remain in force, as do the provisions of the legislation relating to gender reassignment, including the principle that in general, those who hold a GRC are, to all intents and purposes, of their acquired gender.’
But how can that be the case if biological males who are legally females per the law are now not allowed to use female toilets, also per the law? ‘To all intents and purposes’ doesnt seem to apply. Do you see why I think there are glaring inconsistencies here?
But how can there not be inconsistencies when teh very concept ‘trans’ brings self contradictions at every turn?
Thanks, Mark, that’s the clearest explanation of the ruling I have read.
“The Supreme Court ruling on ‘sex’: no more Humpty Dumpty”
But perhaps more Rumpy Pumpy?
Though I wholeheartedly agree with and applaud Dr Bratton’s article, I am left confused and wondering as to what a GRC now means? What does it now actually allow? What actions and behaviours does it now protect? What now is its residual purpose and value?
I am a layman with no understanding of these matters. Can someone, in simple language, explain please?
I think that is a good question. In effect, it says that the GRC made claims that were not true, either in language or in law, and I think it will need to be rewritten or, in effect, discounted in law.
Thank you, Ian. It seemed to me that must be so, but no one says it! In which case the TG community might have good reason to be anxious. When will we (and they) get the honesty needed? It is long overdue.
I am wondering why this would make the TG ‘community’ (is there such a thing…??) anxious. There is no hint of a challenge to transitioning being a protected characteristic. The problem with the GRC is the language of ‘for ALL purposes.’
Yes, and it is exactly that loss that TG activists are now expressing concern over. Their previous claim to all areas/activities access is now being significantly curtailed. I think the SC judgment is right, but it is bound to prove hurtful for those long-used to a different regime.
Well, if you make insecure people feel secure by telling them lies, then when the truth comes out they will feel vulnerable. What’s the best remedy for that…?
Per my comment above, this doesnt make sense. The Supreme Court has now confirmed that there is male and female gender/sex, and that these are fixed at birth and cannot be changed, regardless of how anyone views themselves. The language of ‘transitioning’ no longer makes any sense, legally or otherwise – an individual is ‘transitioning’ from male to, eh, male?
Am I missing something?
I think you’re going beyond the judgement there. The EHRC already advises that a GRC is not an automatic pass into single-sex spaces.
The judgement will help Church of England traditionalists to prevent same-sex church weddings in which one of the couple produces a certificate claiming to be the other sex.
It’s irrelevant. The law already provides a right of conscience clause for clergy to not accept a GRC (specifically “a clergyman is not obliged to solemnise the marriage of a person if the clergyman reasonably believes that the person’s gender has become the acquired gender under the Gender Recognition Act 2004.”)
That is certainly not how it has been treated.
In UK law that is, Ian. I think it might be unwise to present one in Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan.
The Legislature is an ass. Discuss. Evidence on this topic doesn’t imbue confidence.
When did ‘gender’ and gender studies become a prominent thing as opposed to roles? ’60’s -70’s, sexual revolution, permissiveness?
Growing up and into student and professional adulthood it was not part of everyday lexion.
Geoff, as someone from a legal background, can you explain how even the term ‘transitioning’ makes any sense as per the SC this now means transitioning from male to male, or female to female?
Thanks
Well, Keith, I can tell you one function that a GRC fulfils. Since no actual woman is going to apply for a GRC stating that she is a woman, possession of such a certificate serves in effect to prove that the holder is a man. By the same token, possession of a GRC stating that the holder is a man serves to prove that she is in fact a woman.
The GRC enables a trans person to have their birth certificate updated to show the sex they are now living in. This means that if the person gets married they can be referred to as husband/wife etc at the ceremony. It also means at their death/funeral they will be referred to under their acquired gender. It is a matter of dignity towards the person concerned.
Yes, dignity is important, and that is why some who disagree with trans ideology still advocate for this recognition of preference as a mark of respect.
But the question is: is it loving, to the person concerned and others around, to collude with something that is untrue? Sex cannot be changed, and the use of pronouns to refer to social role masks this truth.
If one believes that medical transition is actually harming the individual concerned ultimately, is this the loving thing to do?
The GRC enables a “trans” person to have the information on their birth certificate (and on various other identity documents) falsified, giving their sex as the one of which they pretend to be, or have the delusion of being, a member, instead of their real one. It means that a man can be referred to as a “wife” and that a “woman” can be referred to as a “husband”, which is nonsense. It also means that at their death/funeral the pretence that their sex is the other one can be perpetuated.
Such people should not be persecuted or harassed on account of their delusional claims or pretences, but those should not be given any recognition in law, nor should they be treated as a dispensation to do things which other people are rightly not allowed to do, e.g. to intrude into places, facilities, sports activities, associations etc. reserved to people of the other sex.
I’m aware that the comments on this blog have now ceased but, if it’s not too late, I would make one observation about many comments: I can only find two (by Karen) that consider the human and personal impact of this SC ruling from the point of view of a trans person. She writes with compassion and a sense of understanding that, sadly, seems to be lacking in many comments which either see this judgement as a triumph/vindication (‘we were right all along’) or speak of trans persons (including our brothers and sisters in Christ) in negative terms as if they are deluded or lying. Sometimes it’s both. It is very worrying that on a Christian blog a greater degree of compassion and respect cannot be shown towards that very small number of trans people who this judgement could affect negatively. The judgement brings clarity and is to be welcomed for that, but of course, Parliament is free to revise the legislation at some point in the future.
This is a landmark judgment that brings much-needed legal clarity, coherence, and fairness back to equality law. The Supreme Court has rightly reaffirmed that biological sex matters – and that the law must be grounded in objective reality rather than subjective ideology. In doing so, it has protected the integrity of women’s rights and the purpose of sex-based protections under the Equality Act.
What saddens me deeply, however, is how out of step the Church of England has become on this issue. Rather than offering moral clarity, it has too often echoed the linguistic confusion and gender ideology that this ruling so clearly discredits. When even secular courts uphold truth and biological reality with more conviction than the established Church, it should give us all pause.
The Church should be a voice for truth spoken in love – not a mirror for every passing cultural current. I hope this decision sparks not just institutional change in public policy, but also deeper reflection within the Church about what it means to stand for both compassion and truth.
I agree.
The question is, who is the Church of England? If it is embodied by people like Justin Welby, who explicitly affirmed the church’s document “Valuing all God’s children” stating that children as young as five “should be supported to accept their own gender identity” and that “children should be at liberty to explore the possibilities of who they might be without judgement”, then it deserves to die, and its faithful find (or found) other congregations. If, however, the Church of England is its congregations, which include many committed and sincere believers in Jesus Christ, then it should continue. What to do with it, given this dichotomy between pew and hierarchy, is a conundrum for Jesus Christ Himself. He will solve it in the best way, we can be sure.
Welby’s words were about the case of Christian parents Nigel and Sally Rowe, who had won a legal victory against the Department of Education concerning transgender policies. The Church of England document “Valuing all God’s children” contained guidance for the Church’s 4700 primary schools.
You’ve touched on something I’ve been wrestling with myself: the growing chasm between many in the pews and the leadership at the top. The Church of England’s endorsement of guidance like Valuing All God’s Children—particularly its affirmation of concepts like “gender identity” in very young children—does raise profound concerns about the Church’s moral and theological compass.
I agree that the Church, in its truest sense, is not simply its bishops or institutional documents, but the body of believers committed to Christ. And yet, when the hierarchy speaks publicly in ways that blur truth and confuse young minds under the guise of compassion, it affects not only policy but witness. It’s deeply disheartening.
Still, I believe the answer isn’t necessarily abandonment, but reform and faithful presence. God is more than capable of bringing renewal, even to institutions that seem adrift. Like you said, the conundrum is real—but so is Christ’s power to restore
I suspect that the church is going to be persecuted back to its non-hierarchical and original structure, which is the only structure that survives persecution.
For some time now I have felt Ezekiel Ch 34 to be very relevant in this respect.
What encourages me is that Christ has always preserved His Church—not necessarily the structures or titles, but the remnant of believers who remain faithful, even under pressure. If we are indeed headed for a season of refining, may we have the courage to welcome it—not with bitterness, but with expectancy that God will use even this to renew and rebuild His people.
Hello Peter, PC1.
There would be need to determine the intentions of the parliament, with the canons of construction.
While the courts do not take into account, Hansard as evidence, determinative, the arguments employed would be weighed.
‘Living as’ ‘seeking to live as’ would not run counter to the SC judgement nor biology, nor, even without any resources, run conter to the intentions of parliament.
But this is a question for specialist with access to all the necessary resources.
What was the ‘mischief’ the legislation drafted to address?
This is known as the ‘mischief rule ‘ of statutory construction’.
Link here for an initial explanation.
https://lawtutor.co.uk/mischief-rule
Further, I have no idea what factors are to be taken into account when there is a conflict of interest between groups.
The way the law – which could decide anything at all – is treated as a *more important authority than science or logic is laughable. Exemplified e.g. by the PM’s attitude (working from within a legal closed system) but far more generally found.
Christians need to rediscover a genuinely Christian and biblical understanding of law as the expression of divine will and creation. Aquinas essayed this in his ‘Treatise on Law’, building on Aristotle and the Bible.
Starmer is simply a soft Marxist atheist with limited understanding of law and even less of philosophy and biology. All he knows is how to repeat the myopic shibboleths of the left. The destructive affect of Marxist atheism on the academy has reduced law to being simply an arm of political power and power-seeking.
Dred Scott, followed by Roe v Wade, put paid to the idea that Supreme Courts decide supreme truths.
When Keir Starmer was DPP, I had it on good authority from his own office (not that anyone would dispute it) that if red is voted into law as being green, we should regard red as being green.
But very few people seem to be calling out the desperate weakness of law as a concept. Let’s do so.
If you mean natural law, it has never been lost sight of, but whole swathes of society are probably terrified by it and keep it firmly in the background.
So Christopher, science is the determiner of justice and laws, contract, tort, freedoms of speech, of assembly, property, land, employment, is it Christopher? With different burdens and standards of evidential proofs?
Maybe a course in Jurisprudence would be beneficial. Just a suggestion.
Independent Judiciary is a cornerstone of separation of powers the uncodified Constitution in England and Wales and there is a long history of conflict between the Judiciary and Parliament. And the Courts only are engaged when there is a cause of action in an unresolved dispute between parties with locus standi. It is a process of last resort, generally, unless judicial review or injunctions are sought.
But, as a personal opinion what I find appalling is the position of Starmer a former DPP responsible for DPP policy guidance on the Criminal Law, including sexual offences!
Not at all – my query is why people treat law as a superior source of information in those areas where both science/logic and law have something to say. Quite the contrary – it is obvious that in such areas, law (being a matter of convention rather than hard information) will always be inferior.
Science and logic are endemic to the universe, whereas law is done by humans who came later.
Law can contain falsehoods; accurate science and logic never can.
Law changes from country to country and age to age, unlike accurate science and logic.
So there are several separate and large reasons why this is obvious.
Law is a parallel ‘universe’, whose chief (and large) difference from the real universe is that it is an unreal construct.
Law is the hard edge of ethics and good ethics required good facts.
Logic is a human construct as is science.
Scientism is a scientifically unprovable philosophy, a human construct that seeks be law.
Do you live in an unpopulated world ?
Is Christianity law based or science based. Which came first?
Human, relations, interactions, international relations are largely outside the scope of science, unless it includes social sciences.
Should it have been necessary for the Courts to have made this finding? No.
What is more what passes as scientific fact is little more than opinion.
Why did science fail to determine this issue? Why were the Courts needed.
Where were the vociferous voices of scientists including those inside and outside health-care services?
Who determines human rights, responsibilities, morals and ethics? Even those of scientists? Scientific perfectionism is a logical fallacy.
Scientific perfection[ism] is a logical fallacy. Yes. That is why I spoke of ‘accurate science’.
Rights? Responsibilities? Morals? These are already covered by what I already said about our topic being only those areas to which both science/logic and law speak. The topics you raise are ones to which only law speaks. But even then, what it says, it changes, and it cannot show why any popular temporary conclusions are eternal or unchanging.
In truth, as mentioned, natural law will always have more than law to say about these things. And natural law tries to be logical and scientific, not cultural.
Chisoher,
You have avoided most of the points I made at law, in pleadings those points would be deemed t be conceded, thanks!
James mentioned Natural law, which indeed precedes science, and Jurisprudentially, simply, is more than the law of nature emanating from God, but are the laws of God superior, and above human laws. They are supernatural laws, universal and for all time.
Thomas Aquinas distinguishes four kinds of law:
Eternal Law: God’s rational purpose and plan for all things (which includes the laws of science which rule the material universe);
Natural Law: “the rational creature’s participation in the eternal law” (and thus the validation of human reason and observation, e.g. the biological facts of the difference between men and women, how children are conceived, and how children best flourish with a mother and father);
Human Law: laws created by humans to govern society (which is the only kind dialectical materialists like Starmer and co. seem to have heard of); and
Divine Law: laws revealed by God in scripture (e.g. laws of worship, how to speak rightly on God, how the Church must conduct its life).
Human Law is about ordering a fair and peaceful society and can vary greatly from place to place on secondary matters such as: size of government, levels of taxation, driving regulations, public health, national ceremonies etc. It does not touch on profound questions of human identity and fundamental rights, which is the purview of natural law, assisted by Divine Law.
Geoff, that is entirely my point.
Natural law – yes.
Human law – very changeable and unstable, and in any case secondary to hard sciences and logic.
it isnt that it’s better but that it is or can be enforced on all citizens.
But both science and logic can be dangerous. The old question of ‘Just because we ‘can’ do it, doesnt mean we should’ applies.
Logic – Putin no doubt has used that with Ukraine – I have better military power so logically I can use force and violence to take back this old piece of my country.
Science gave us weapons that can wipe out the human race.
Logical arguments are not always arguments for good.
As Mr Spock said, logic, logic, logic – logic is the beginning of wisdom, not the end.
Modern day Protestants don’t seem to have much familiarity with the natural law tradition, perhaps because Karl Barth had an (unbiblical) hostility to natural theology and many biblicists have an (unbiblical) hostility to the use of reason in ethics as well as theology (maybe a reflex of hyper-Calvinism). You see this great puzzlement, for example, in a liberal evangelical like Peter Carrell, the Anglican Bishop of Christchurch in New Zealand
Yet historically natural law thinking has always paid an important role in Protestant thinking (it is strongly present in Hooker’s ‘Laws’ and Calvin’s ‘Institutes’), and it’s notable that many evangelical colleges in the US require their students to read CSL’s ‘The Abolition of Man’. Unlike Roman Catholic clergy, most Protestants today have little formation in philosophy and many have implicitly imbibed a secularist, even mechanical view of the world, from their broader, science-based education. Certainly a mechanistic atheist humanism lies behind Keir Starmer’s thinking about the world and human beings, as well as his outspoken LGBT advocacy – besides his association with Lord Alli.
Natural law is limited by the fact that ‘nature’ – human or other, and including the conscience – is fallen. When very difficult questions of ethics arise, e.g. the death penalty, one should let God do one’s thinking for one – so vertainly the death penalty for proven murder (Genesis 9:6, Romans 13:4). But natural law is still important, and it plays a central role in apologetics.
That nature is “fallen” is true. Nevertheless, Scripture (in Romans 2, 1 Cor 11 and elsewhere) affirms natural law and conscience as basic guides for living. Amos 1.1-2,3, for example, condemns the gentile nations around Israel for their war atrocities and other injustices, stating that they will face God’s judgment for breaking God’s law. This indicates some universal awareness of right and wrong, which Jewish thinking identified in the Noachian covenant.
Natural law affirms the existence of certain institutions which are *prior to the state. These include: the right to life and the material things that pertain to it; our creation as msle snd female; marriage as a lifelong covenant of fidelity snd mutual support; parenthood and the family; intergenerational solidarity. The duty of the State under God is to protect these institutions through prudential regulation. This includes especially the protection of the vulnerable: the children, elderly, and the physically and mentally impaired.
The grave danger arises when the State refuses to acknowledge God and then usurps His authority to itself.
It is interesting to see that the Hungarian Parliament has just outlawed “Pride” events specifically on the grounds of protecting the welfare of children and their susceptibility to emotional manipulation – a far cry from the struggles we see in British schoold, where Stonewall’s presence is very visible.
And Hungary has not forgotten its 160 years under the Ottoman yoke from the battle of Mohács in 1526, and consequently understands Islam better than we do.
James,
Do you believe that the human conscience is not fallen?
James – your general lines indicating the thinking and philosophy behind the questionable laws may well be correct, but I’m sceptical about the sweeping generalisations that you seem to make. First up: how do you define a ‘Protestant’ (as in ‘modern day Protestants’)? My own experience (when I was a student at Edinburgh back in the ’80’s) was that the ‘conservative evangelical’ divinity students were, every single one of them, solidly anti-Karl Barth. Their exposure to him was only because T.F. Torrance (a student of KB) was the professor of systematic theology. They didn’t consider him to be ‘conservative evangelical’ – there was far too much of a whiff of universalism about his approach. Those that I knew bought books by Karl Barth second hand – because they had to for their courses – and then sold them on as quickly as possible after the course had finished.
So do you restrict yourself to ‘Christian Protestants’? Or do you include all who follow some sort of generalised Protestant tradition (whether they have inwardly accepted the crucifixion as wages that their own sins deserve – or not)?
I’d also suggest that you are intellectualising this far too much. In a previous thread, I described the fellowship (a Fishermen’s meeting hall) where someone, now aged over 90, learned (as a teenager) about the faith and where he was brought to faith (back in the late 40’s, early 50’s). I suspect that these fishermen knew full well what the difference between a man and a woman was – and they didn’t need Thomas Aquinas to tell them (and, in fact, it’s doubtful if any of them had heard of Karl Barth or Thomas Aquinas or John Calvin – let alone had actually read any of the works of either of these two gentlemen). They had come to accept inwardly that the wages of sin is death, that in the crucifixion Christ had taken the wages that were due to them (each individually) for their own sin – and, from this basis, that in His resurrection they were ransomed, healed, restored, forgiven.
The main problem with those ‘liberal evangelicals’ (whatever that means) that you cite is that they try to tell us that things which Holy Scripture describes as ‘exceedingly sinful’ are not sin, thus they exchange the truth for a lie. It is as if they haven’t understood the import of ‘all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God’; it’s almost as if they’re advocating a ‘gospel of works’ – whereby faith in Jesus is simply something that gets you into a position where you can have a decent attempt at obeying all the rules (and thus get into heaven) – and to make things easier, they edit the list of rules.
‘Modern day Protestants’ refers to the people I know in Protestant churches, ‘main stream’, liberal and evangelical. Most evangelical clergy I know have a semi-reverential attitude toward Barth, not because they read his works (they don’t), but because he is supposed to have refuted liberalism. Some evangelical preachers think it is enough to establish a case by quoting Barth without reading him.
My attitude toward Barth is a bit more complex because I have read a few intermediate introductions to him (Brown, Hartwell, Bromiley) and Eberhard Busch’s very long biography. I think this has given me a sense of his strengths and his weaknesses. Jim Packer called him ‘an errant brother in the evangelical tradition’. Right now I am more aware of his weaknesses, where his biblical exegesis was just wrong. Perhaps that is what your fellow students in the 80s were focused on.
I am glad to hear of the fellowship in the Fishermen’s hall and the lives that were encountered and changed by the Risen Lord. But as for the intellectual tradition of Christianity, each to his own. I myself do not understand physics much beyond GCSE level, but if others didn’t, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now via the internet.
James – Ah ha – that makes some kind of sense. Those I knew and was referring to had Karl Barth rammed down their throats ad nauseam.
They should have known better; after all, they signed up for a divinity college where the main professor was an unashamed Barthian (after all, T.F. Torrance did spend a huge amount of time and effort translating Barth into English).
There is something that I find enormously worrying: do these Protestant Barthians (whether they have read Barth or not) understand that the essence of being a Christian is that we inwardly accept that we are sinners and that when Christ was crucified he picked up the wages for our own personal sin (not something collective – not something that we somehow inherit from Adam – our own sinful thoughts and deeds, our own sins of omission).
Back in 1985 (my first year of studies), Jurgen Moltmann gave the Gifford Lectures, which I attended (out of curiosity). Clearly Torrance (an ultra-Barthian) had something to do with the invitation and was sitting in the front row, looking every inch as if he approved of the whole thing.
I found it fascinating – it was intellectual philosophy of a kind that I had never encountered before. Absolutely no call to repentance in these lectures.
Later, though, when I read his ‘The Crucified God’, I saw things that were quite alarming and which flatly contradicted what Christianity was supposed to be all about. Towards the beginning of the book, he points out that the response to ‘Were you there when they crucified my God’ was the reply ‘Yes, we were there participating in his suffering and shame’ – with absolutely no hint of Christ picking up the wages for their personal sin. There was nothing at all in what Moltmann wrote there (nor in the rest of the book) that suggested that he thought that this was wrong.
Perhaps a big leap from Barth to Moltmann, but if the Barthian tradition that you are referring to is what I suspect it is, then it is not at all clear to me that those of that tradition are saved.
Jock: yes, it is a constant temptation in socialist-tinged theologians to divide the world into sinners and sinned against, just as socialism proclaims the righteousness of the proletariat. Catholic liberation tbeology falls into the same error.
James – I’m not so sure it’s a right-left divide. I personally would like to see greater equality of wealth, but don’t trust The State one inch as a mechanism to enforce this, so I’d probably classify myself as a wannabe leftie who ends up voting for the right. On the subject of this article, as Christians, we are living for Christ in a pagan world. A consequence of this is that the law of the land may well turn out to be highly sub-optimal from a Christian point of view and we shouldn’t expect any better.
Much more serious is the attitude of ‘the church’ (i.e. what was indicated in some of the earlier comments) of C. of E. policy which seems to actively support ‘trans-gender’, even in young children. At the root of this, they seem to write an awful lot of guff about ‘self-worth’, ‘dignity’, ‘self-esteem’. As a Christian, I know (following Romans 3 – but I didn’t really need the bible to tell me this) that in and of myself, I am worthless. I don’t have any self-esteem – any esteem that I have is only through Christ, what he did on the cross and in the resurrection and how He applied it to me, through the Holy Spirit.
How the church should treat ‘trans-gender’ is an important question. Trans-gender people are, after all, sinners who stand in need of God’s grace and mercy, just like the rest of us. Right now, the problem with the discussion within ‘church’ circles is that it is on a fundamentally anti-Christian basis, introducing anti-Christian notions such as ‘self-esteem’ and ‘value’ (when Romans 3 describes us as ‘worthless’ in and of ourselves).
Romans 3 points out that no one is righteous. That’s not the same as being worthless. God loves us very greatly (sending his son to die for us – John 3) because we are worth a great deal to him. As Jesus made clear in Matthew 10: not one sparrow dies apart from God, and we more valuable than many sparrows.
AJ Bell – well, I read the following in Romans 3:
There is no one righteous,
not even one.
There is no one who understands,
no one who seeks God.
All have turned away,
they have together become worthless;
there is no one who does good,
not even one.
I see the word ‘worthless’ there – and it does chime in with the whole of Paul’s argument.
You put the cart before the horse if you think that God sent his Son *because* there was something of value; it is diametrically opposite. He loved us *despite* the lack of value. There is something of value in us, through the agency of the Holy Spirit. This is because Jesus died on the cross and rose again and not the motivation.
Otherwise Calvary is no longer purely an act of grace and mercy; in your economy, God is shrewdly eyeing something of within us as motive for going to war against sin and death.
The anything-of-value within us is there as a result of the cross and not His motivation for carrying out His redemptive plan.
But we can’t understand Romans 3 without Matthew 10 and John 3 (and the rest). And it’s interesting to go back to the Psalms that St Paul is quoting from for that section (Psalms 14 and 53) where the translation is that “all have become corrupt”. The meaning of “worthless” here may not be as straightforward as you suppose.
AJ Bell – In John 3 we are told that God loves the world. We aren’t told why He loves the world – you just need to look at the world, how corrupt it is, to see that this is an amazing fact that defies any logical explanation. You just need to look at yourself (this applies to each and every one of us) to see that this applies to the whole world (yourself, myself included).
John 3:16 calls on us to believe in Him; I wonder how you take this. I take this to mean that we are called upon to accept that in His crucifixion, He picked up the wages due to us for our sin – and to believe that in His resurrection, we are ransomed, healed restored forgiven.
In short – Romans 3 is pretty clear to me – and I don’t see anything at all in John 3 or Matthew 10 to contradict this – far from it. These passages give us information about God’s redemptive plan; they do not indicate that there was the slightest thing within any of us to merit His love – or why He set His redemptive plan in motion (rather than chucking the whole lot into the lake of fire and starting again).
When I learnt that Barth had published 13 volumes of church dogmatics I thought it couldn’t possibly be that difficult.
Ah, Theologians, Lots of flavours, but many have no calories
Best to desire the sincere milk of the Word.
Speaking of Milk and Calories
See Christian Today
How one torture victim survived thanks to the closeness of Christ.
https://www.christiantoday.com/news/how-one-torture-victim-survived-thanks-to-the-closeness-of-christ
Awsome!
For anyone who thinks the SC ruling under discussion represents some kind of victory – perhaps even a pivotal moment – you might need to watch this for a reality check (it may not be up for long!):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iioNg47C-40
to compare the uk to a ‘politically corrupt, Soviet-like regime’ is rather extreme. The 2nd World War showed women could do a lot more than the typical man then thought, you know like making weapons, being spies etc. If lower standards in the RMs have been brought in for women then that is an issue. But that doesnt mean a woman cant be a good RM. He seems to be working more on an assumption.
You have avoided Don’s point, PC1, which is the treatment meted out to that man.
He specifically said that women being in the RM is not, of itself, the issue; however the lowering of standards in order to promote absurd DEI ideological requirements will inevitably place the lives of other marines at greater risk.
But, as Anton says: it’s the shocking behaviour of the British authorities – threatening their own law abiding servicemen and treating them as potential terrorists purely on account of their ‘thinking’ – which most certainly is a Soviet style crushing of essential liberties. Under regimes which act in this kind of way few or no shots need to be fired before a population learns to police itself – and then the state has total control.
The marine’s protest is reported in today’s online Daily Telegraph.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/04/29/royal-marines-engulfed-in-dei-row-over-women-on-front-line/
Annabel Denham eloquently makes exactly the same point as Don’s in a Daily Telegraph article of the same date, entitled ‘Trump has handed the woke brigade an almighty victory’.