English tribunal rules the belief that “male and female created he them” is "incompatible with human dignity"

Lord Chief Justice Sir Matthew Hale's axiom in Rex v. Taylor (1676) that "Christianity is parcel of the laws of England" was taken as a binding precedent by later judges, but was declared by the House of Lords in 1917 to be 'mere rhetoric'. 

Lord Hale's dictum was the very opposite of the view of an employment tribunal sitting in Birmingham, which late last year ruled against a Christian doctor called David Mackereth, who had lost his job after "he refused to call a transgender woman 'she'".

This was reported at the time but the News Letter, the leading newspaper in Northern Ireland, accidentally came across and published on Tuesday a striking sentence from the judgment.

Paragraph 197 of the ruling handed down by judge David Alan Perry states that

“... belief in Genesis 1:27, lack of belief in transgenderism and conscientious objection to transgenderism in our judgment are incompatible with human dignity and conflict with the fundamental rights of others, specifically here, transgender individuals.”

Genesis 1.27 says (KJV): 

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”

Of course the rulings of an employment tribunal are not an important precedent, but it is very revealing. 

The News Letter found Protestant clergymen to criticise the paragraph, but the Catholic authorities made no comment. This does not surprise me.

Mrs. Amanda Spielman, the head of the English school inspectorate OFSTED and my contemporary at university, recently said religion could not be used to justify "bigotry" when it came to allowing parents to remove their children (some as young as 6) from classes teaching about homosexuality.  

The British conservative press largely approved her stand, and disapproved of the many Muslim parents who took the other view. No doubt Mrs. Spielman, who I think was brought up a Catholic, will end up in the House of Lords.

I am obliged to Charles Moore, Margaret Thatcher's biographer and former editor of the Spectator and the Daily Telegraph for this story.

Just before Christmas, another employment tribunal – this time in London – found against Maya Forstater, a consultant for the Centre for Global Development think-tank. She had tweeted against government plans to allow people to self-identify as being of a different gender from their sex at birth. For this, she was dismissed.

She complained that her dismissal infringed her rights to philosophical beliefs. No, said the judge, James Tayler: her view of sex and gender was of an “absolutist nature” and “incompatible with human dignity and the fundamental rights of others”.

Judge Tayler is apparently a “Diversity and Community Relations Judge” (who knew they existed?) 

Charles Moore also reported a story that I cannot find on the net in which a judge issued a rebuke to a party on the subject of gender and added sneeringly "or, as you would say, 'sex' ".

The world is being ruled by the progressives I remember from university. Many of them are conservatives.