The Supreme Court ruling on women was a step forward but more must be done

This week’s Supreme Court ruling was not a case of girls’s rights defeating trans rights; it was a victory for truth over falsehood.

I refer, in fact, to For Women Scotland’s win against the Scottish Ministers in regards to the definition of ‘woman’ in law. I used to be on the court that day supporting a separate Supreme Court case where, backed by my legal team, parents won the liberty to properly share the stories of how their children were treated by doctors in end-of-life cases.

However, the For Women Scotland case finally confirmed that the Equality Act means ‘woman’ when it says ‘woman’. The judges were right to say that the Scottish Ministers’ pro-transgender interpretation of the law is incoherent. Their judgment moves us closer to recognising, as a society, the fact that we’re made unchangeably male or female.

Christians have consistently been on the forefront of speaking this truth clearly, and have often paid a price for it. 

The Christian Legal Centre has supported several high-profile cases where Christians have been punished for acknowledging biological sex.

Dr David Mackereth lost his job in 2018 for saying that he wouldn’t use transgender pronouns.

Street preacher Dave McConnell was convicted (overturned on appeal) over accusations he ‘misgendered’ a member of the general public.

Joshua Sutcliffe lost his job as a teacher and have become a marked man, eventually being banned from teaching, for refusing to make use of the popular pronouns of a woman identifying as a boy.

Parents Nigel and Sally Rowe challenged government-backed pro-trans school policies, leading on to recent draft government guidance that higher protected gender-questioning children.

And perhaps most notably, Kristie Higgs was fired from her job at a college due to two Facebook posts, visible only to her friends, raising awareness about pro-trans literature getting used with young children at schools. In February she won her own landmark free speech legal victory on the Court of Appeal.

It is true that this week’s Supreme Court case doesn’t speak on to all of those cases. But if we will recognise what a lady is – and what a person isn’t – within the Equality Act, why can’t we achieve this elsewhere?

Even now, the Darlington Nurses are difficult the hostile treatment they received from the hospital where they worked because they weren’t comfortable with a biological male using their changing space. Health Secretary Wes Streeting promised further motion following this ruling and the EHRC now says that it is going to pursue NHS trusts that don’t follow recent single-sex policies.

Another nurse, Jennifer Melle, faces discipline for referring to a 6-foot biologically male prisoner she was treating as a ‘Mr’, consistent with the gender on his medical records.

School chaplain Rev Dr Bernard Randall stood as much as the now-defunct Educate and Celebrate at a staff training day where founder Elly Barnes misrepresented the Equality Act. After a college assembly where he upheld the correct for people to disagree with parts of LGBTQ ideology, he lost his job and even his licence to minister in his Church of England diocese.

‘Hannah’ lost her job as a teacher because she sought to safeguard pupils from the hazards of trans ideology.

Artist Victoria Culf was banned from her own exhibition and reported to the police for saying in an informal conversation, while making a cup of tea, that it’s harmful for youngsters to attempt to change their sex.

There are indeed some ways that transgender ideology has hurt women; issues like single-sex spaces and fair competition in sports. But it must be clear that it’s each female and male truth-speakers – like these Christians and plenty of others – who’ve been harmed by transgender ideology.

And they’re still not the one victims of transgenderism and all of the policies our institutions have recklessly pursued.

Trans-identifying people themselves are caused harm. Most of all, children who’ve been told they could be born within the unsuitable body, who’ve been allowed to socially transition and given puberty blockers. Many are already struggling to come back to terms with the everlasting damage done to their bodies because trusted adults said they may turn out to be what they usually are not. Who can imagine what number of more will come to this realisation within the years ahead?

Those still combating real gender distress are being harmed. They are being told that transition could fix them – the closest thing to a ‘harmful conversion practice’ that routinely takes place in modern-day Britain. But trans women usually are not women, and trans men usually are not men. Following this path dooms people to living an identity that may never be aligned with reality and that can perpetually gnaw at their souls.

This ideology even hurts men who cynically claim to be women for perceived perks, as appears with many prisoners. These men need, for everybody’s sake, to be met with a firm ‘no’. For them, the strong hand of justice will be redemptive – resulting in repentance and forgiveness. 

That’s why we shouldn’t see this ‘culture war’ as women rights vs trans rights.

Truth protects us all.

And that’s why this judgment isn’t enough. It is one thing for an individual to deliberately present themselves as in the event that they are a member of the alternative sex. It is one other, rather more serious, step for our institutions to endorse and promote that lie through official documents, the court system, hospitals and schools.

We must go further and recognise throughout society and culture that nobody can change their sex – only their appearance.

This means undoing all of the ways during which our laws and institutions have embedded these falsehoods. And we will do that without at any time being mean-spirited or hateful towards anyone.

Truth and love are best friends (1 Corinthians 13:6, Ephesians 4:15,). That’s why we must keep working to finish the grip of this unfaithful, harmful ideology on our nation.

Andrea Williams is CEO of Christian Concern.