Critic's letter on transgender issues was, to use his phrase, disturbing nonsense

Bearing this in mind, together with the right of the press to freedom of expression and the right of everyone to hold personal opinions, I find myself compelled to respond to the Lead Letter selected for publication on Saturday, July 28.

I was shocked by the letter, from Rev John Coates Disturbing nonsense on gender reassignment gets ‘Hear, Hear’ from peers, July 28

While this letter struck me as both confusing and confused, I also note that its author himself alludes to the ‘nonsense of such a line of arguing’ as he appears to put forward.

The current challenges faced by the churches in addressing modern attitudes to and discoveries about issues of human sexuality and gender have frequently struck me as reminiscent of the concerns registered more than a century and a half ago in respect of those posed by the theory of evolution, but I never imagined that issues of gender might become confused with a sort of regression to confusion of species.

This is not, as Rev Mr Coates suggests ‘tweaking the arguments’, it is the sort of misleading nonsense to which he appears to have the decency to admit.

It is also nonsense that is potentially dangerous and likely to foster misunderstanding if not straightforward prejudice.

In the first instance, Rev Mr Coates misquotes Lord Lucas. It is easy to check this, thanks to Hansard (https://hansard.parliament.uk/Lords/2018-07-12/debates/98C2DC94).

Lord Lucas’ actual statement was: “The Government’s proposal to amend the Gender Recognition Act 2004 so that a wholehearted commitment to change gender should be enough and that we should do away with the current hurdles that have to be leapt are proposals that I entirely support—but, if we are moving to a world where it will become commonplace, if uncommon, for men to have babies and women to have penises, that is the end of the fiction of binary gender. I absolutely think that that is good for us all.

“Of course, biological sex is mostly binary. There are distributions around the two modes and there are some people who are in between, but the pattern is pretty binary. Behavioural gender is not. There are not two genders, and nor are there many genders, as some people have contended. Gender cannot be counted or clearly defined.”

Rev Mr Coates also appears to misquote Dr David Mackeret, who according to press reports declined to identify patients according to ‘preferred gender’, and who has been quoted as stating, ‘As a Christian, I believe gender is determined biologically and genetically.’

It may be that Dr Mackeret here means that gender is determined by physical characteristics. In my own personal experience, sadly that is not always the case.

As Lord Lucas points out ‘biological sex [or rather, gender] is mostly binary’.

The majority of us may well fit that pattern, but why does this mean we need to be fearful or scornful of, or repressive towards, the minority to whom this does not apply?

As the mother of a transgender son, I can assure Rev Mr Coates that ‘gender reassignment’ is anything but nonsense.

As an ordained Christian minister, albeit in a tradition different to that of Rev Mr Coates, I have never since applying to be considered as a student for ministry sought to hide or disguise a strong sense of calling to minister to members of our transgender community and their families.

As a ‘right thinking person’, I also assure him that it is his letter that I find ‘very disturbing’, not the concept that government may at last be taking a realistic and more informed approach to questions of human gender.

I note with delight that Kellswater Reformed Presbyterian Church, where Rev Mr Coates is pastor, states on its website, ‘We seek to demonstrate true Christian love, It is always our hope to be “speaking the truth in love” (Eph. 4:15)’.

So while as with Voltaire I would defend to the death the right of Rev Mr Coates to state his opinion, I also appreciate the opportunity publicly to state mine, that human gender can sometimes be less straightforward than our binary sense of the normal may suggest.

We may be uncomfortable with this, but surely that places upon us the simple responsibility to become better and more accurately informed?

The Good News Translation of some words of Our Lord to be found in the Gospel according to St Luke puts them this way: ‘I have not come to call respectable people to repent, but outcasts.’ (5:32. Or, looking back more than four hundred years to the King James Version, we find this challenge expressed as ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance’).

Who am I to question the spiritual needs or the right to a spiritual home of someone whose gender identity is simply more complex than my own? Who I am to question a call to minister to a small section of our community that is severely misunderstood and against which there is profound discrimination and even the regular expression of hatred?

Rev Linda M Ballard, (non subscribing church Dunmurry) Bangor

Letter: ‘Disturbing nonsense on gender reassignment gets ‘Hear, Hear’ from peers,’ July 28