Will the Church of England repeat old mistakes?

The Church of England is responsible for some 4,600 schools (including one in four primary schools) educating around 1.1 million pupils. In 2017 it began work with Stonewall as part of a £3 million government programme focused on “homophobic, biphobic and transphobic” bullying. It published guidance that promoted gender ideology, saying that sex is “assigned at birth”; everyone is transgender, cisgender or non-binary; someone “assigned female at birth” may be a man and someone “assigned male at birth” may be a woman; and sexual orientation and pronouns relate to a person’s gender, not to their sex.

The old guidance was reckless and wrong about the law

The Valuing All God’s Children guidance told primary schools to equip pupils to “accept their own gender identity and that of others”. It also wrongly advised schools that they did not need to consider the rights of other pupils when accommodating those who identify as transgender. It said:

“The protected characteristic of gender reassignment only works one way – not being transgender is not a protected characteristic. Consequently schools can make adjustments to meet the needs of a trans pupil without being accused of discriminating against non-trans pupils.”

This misunderstanding, drawn from a resource produced by Intercom Trust, led schools to adopt policies (such as allowing trans-identifying pupils to use opposite-sex facilities) that discriminate against other pupils on the basis of sex and religion or belief, and which undermine safeguarding and schools’ duty of care for all children. 

The guidance was recklessly casual about children taking the life-changing step of identifying as the opposite sex. It took Stonewall’s advice and told schools that this was not a safeguarding risk and that such children should be promised complete confidentiality.

The Church of England accepts the Cass Review and the DfE Guidance

The guidance was challenged in court and criticised in the media and by campaigning groups. Parents Sally and Nigel Rowe complained to their sons’ primary school after it warned them that not believing that a transgender person are their “true gender” would be viewed as transphobic behaviour. The Rowes brought a judicial review against the Department for Education, calling for it to step in. The DfE settled the case and promised new guidance. This was published in draft last year and the new government is due to finalise it.

The Cass review makes clear that clinicians, along with everyone else, have no idea which trans-identifying children will continue to identify as trans when they grow up. This destroys any rationale for offering “transition” for gender-distressed youth or seeking to deny the truth that human beings cannot change sex. 

The Church of England has welcomed the Cass review and the draft guidance from the DfE. It is withdrawing Valuing all God’s Children and has produced a new document, Flourishing for All, as a draft for consultation.  But is it making the same mistakes again?

The new guidance does not solve the problem

Flourishing for All endorses the DfE guidance and omits the most egregious material from the previous guidance. But nowhere does it acknowledge that the previous guidance was wrong. Instead, it says:

“the debate about human sexuality and especially gender has frequently been toxic and polarised, which does nothing to help the young people caught in the middle and whose wellbeing should be our first priority.” 

The DfE guidance says: “Not all requests made to schools or colleges [in relation to “social transition] will comply with legal duties to safeguard children.” The Church of England guidance omits this crucial point.

The Church’s new guidance offers vague advice that sidesteps the problems caused by the previous approach, and which continues to encourage children to transition, promotes gender ideology and stigmatises those who oppose that ideology as causing harm, saying they should be silenced to protect the “psychological safety” of gender-questioning and trans-identified children and adults:

It is vital that these members of our school communities are treated with the utmost dignity and respect, and are protected decisively from harm. This protection includes ensuring that they are kept safe from polarised debates about the care or place of gender questioning children and transgender people in society. This is absolutely essential in order to uphold and preserve the psychological safety of this highly at risk group.

Sex Matters has submitted a response to the consultation. In summary, this says:

• The guidance is long and impractical. Overall it is trying to do too much. It combines an anti-bullying policy with advice on equality law and an attempt to solve a contentious theological issue. It is 58 pages long, and four further sections are promised on race, disability, religion/belief and sexual harassment. It does not consider how the different protected characteristics interact. 
• Its approach to protected characteristics is unhelpful. It puts too much emphasis on the Equality Act and suggests there is a hierarchy of characteristics. It tells schools to give special attention to those pupils “most likely to be disempowered via intersectionality” based on a layering of characteristics. This approach is likely to produce unfairness, resentment and tensions between groups, and may produce unlawful results. The correct approach is based on understanding that no child should be bullied and all children should be able to learn without fear. 
• It overemphasises hate and harm. It falsely states that hate crime has risen “exponentially” over the last 10 years and says that pupils are “growing up in a society where harm towards people who are transgender is increasing”. Telling children and young people that it is possible to change sex, and then proceeding to tell them that people who know this is impossible are “hateful” and “harmful” does not prepare children to live happy, resilient and flourishing lives. 
• It encourages unlawful belief discrimination. It says that pupils and adults who are trans-identified or gender questioning are a “highly at risk group” and that in order to preserve their “psychological safety” they need to be kept safe from polarised debates. It stigmatises people who express the ordinary, factual view that there are two sexes as “toxic”, “polarising”, “discriminatory”, “harmful” and “transphobic”. Following this advice is a short route to losing a belief-discrimination claim.
• It appeases extremism. It explicitly endorses the DfE guidance, which its former partner Stonewall has called “actively dangerous”. Although it is no longer linked to third-party organisations, it has nothing to say about the way those organisations are advising schools to flout the DfE’s guidance. In fact, it says pupils should be shielded from hearing viewpoints that dissent from gender ideology.
• The guidance still promotes gender ideology and undermines safeguarding. By listing gender-ideology terms and warning against what it calls outdated, discriminatory, dehumanising and offensive language, this guidance is likely to convey to schools that ordinary, factual statements such as “he is a man”, “she is a girl”, “he is male”, “boys should not use the girls’ changing rooms” and “gender dysphoria is a mental-health issue” are harmful. Telling children and adults that it is “extremely harmful” to tell the truth undermines teaching and learning, respect for self and others, and safeguarding.

What should happen next?

The Church of England has already made the mistake of promoting contested views about gender identity and recommending dangerous practices in the name of “anti-bullying”. Now that it has withdrawn its flawed guidance and endorsed the Cass Review and DfE guidance, it should avoid repeating this mistake. This guidance should be scrapped and started again.

The Church of England’s attempt to say that it is following the DfE guidance while continuing to promote gender ideology demonstrates the need for the government to provide clearer guidance. The DfE should issue a model policy on sex-based rules that is suitable for use by both faith and secular schools. 

The Church of England rightly highlights concern for children and young people who have already identified themselves as “transgender”. It calls for specific guidance from the DfE on how those children should be treated from this point on. The DfE should produce such guidance for consultation.