If the worst aspect of the transgender mass delirium is the physical and psychological abuse and wilful mistreatment of vulnerable children, then the very worst aspect of all is the part played in that abuse and mistreatment by adult professionals who are tasked with caring for their welfare.
People who are genuinely transgender should be treated with compassion and respect. But what we are now seeing is a kind of cult in which children with a range of psychological or other developmental disorders are being encouraged to believe that, by identifying as the opposite sex, they will somehow escape their problems through assuming a cool new sexual identity — which may involve unalterable changes to their body. This is unforgiveable.
In addition to those within the medical and psychiatric world who have facilitated this horror, schools have been actively pushing the trans agenda to their pupils, usually with the assistance of LGBT+ activist organisations.
This involves validating as true a child’s declaration that they are “non-binary”, which is in fact a disorder of the mind or personality. Such validation is therefore a form of grooming — to subvert identity rooted in the reality of biological sex — in which the school actively colludes. Older pupils may in turn groom younger ones who, in their own confusion and distress, may be vulnerable to the ultra-cool trans role model that’s so temptingly on offer.
The extent of this cult in British schools is horrific. A Policy Exchange report by Lottie Moore says that four in ten secondary schools operate policies of gender self-identification; 69 per cent of secondary schools are requiring other children to affirm a “gender-distressed” child’s new identity; and only 28 per cent of secondary schools are reliably informing parents as soon as a child discloses feelings of gender distress. The report says:
Schools are teaching beliefs about gender identity as though they are facts, often presenting the immutable and biological reality of sex as less important than a person’s ineffable feelings about themselves…
We have uncovered numerous cases of schools acting in complete disregard of standard safeguarding procedures including by not informing parents — without good reason — in major life decisions by their child, promising confidentiality to a child about certain matters, or allowing children to make significant, potentially irreversible medical decisions without involving either parents or relevant professionals.
Out of this maelstrom, there emerged a few days ago guidance to schools by Britain’s Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis. Written five years ago with the Jewish LGBT+ charity Keshet UK, The Wellbeing of LGBT+ Pupils: A Guide for Orthodox Jewish Schools states, in a section entitled Safeguarding and Confidentiality:
All staff should be clear that a pupil coming out is not a safeguarding issue. They have simply shared an aspect of their identity. Like any other personal information, any information about staff or pupil sexuality or gender identity should be treated as confidential. Unless there is a risk of harm, this should not be disclosed to anyone, including their parents. Making a pupil’s parents aware of their child’s sexuality and gender identity can itself be a safeguarding risk, particularly as the school cannot know how parents or carers might react.
Given the nature and scale of the transgender cult and the immeasurable damage this is doing, such advice from such a source is astonishing. For an orthodox rabbi in these circumstances to be advising that critical information about a child’s well-being should be kept secret from the parents — information, moreover, that must cause concern for that child’s welfare because such a position taken by the child is in itself inescapably a potential source of harm to that child — is beyond belief.
It also goes directly against the wishes of the prime minister, Rishi Sunak, who has said pupils mustn’t be allowed to declare a change of gender in school without telling their parents.
New government guidance, which is imminent, will reportedly ban schools from letting pupils “socially transition” by changing their names, pronouns or uniform if their parents don’t consent, and will force schools to tell parents if pupils are questioning their gender.
In the world of Jewish schools, the Chief Rabbi’s guidance has had some chilling effects. There are teachers who have accordingly kept secret from parents their child’s purported gender switch and subsequent “social transition”. Even though this has led on occasion to bullying and other damaging social repercussions for the child, the teachers have kept all this secret from the parents because they said they were following the Chief Rabbi’s guidance.
Accordingly, I asked the Chief Rabbi’s office the following questions:
1) Given that coming out as gay, lesbian or transgender has important implications for a child’s wellbeing, how can the Chief Rabbi justify his advice to schools to keep any of this information from their parents?
2) Does the Chief Rabbi not realise that any of these self-identifications may well lead to bullying and other forms of harm to the child in question? How then can he justify keeping this information secret from the child’s parents?
3) Why does the Chief Rabbi assume as his default position that providing such information to parents present a potential “safeguarding risk” to their children? Surely such dangerous parents should be assumed to be the exception rather than the rule?
4) Is the Chief Rabbi not alarmed about the extent of transgender grooming taking place in schools, causing an epidemic of gender dysphoria? Does he not realise that this guidance, which validates a psychological disturbance as objective reality, falls into that category?
5) Does he not realise that presenting as transgender usually masks a wide range of other problems including autism, depression and eating disorders which require treatment? How therefore can he justify advising that a child’s transgender identification should be withheld from parents?
6) Will the Chief Rabbi now be revising this guidance, in light of the concerns about it that have been expressed?
I received this reply from Mark Frazer, the Chief Rabbi’s Director of Communications:
Please be assured that despite what you’ll have read, this story is complete nonsense.
The Chief Rabbi did not and does not advise schools to keep information secret from pupils’ parents except in very [sic] circumstances such as where there is a safeguarding concern which as you say, would likely be very rare. In fact, whenever we discuss this issue with schools, one of the first things we emphasise is the importance of placing parents at the heart of all discussions alongside their child.
This story has come from a paragraph in a five year-old piece of written guidance, which is arguably ambiguous in the way that it is drafted, but we know that our schools understand the importance of the role of parents very well because we are in regular contact with them.
To which I wrote back:
You say:
The Chief Rabbi did not and does not advise schools to keep information secret from pupils’ parents except in very [sic] circumstances such as where there is a safeguarding concern which as you say, would likely be very rare.
In fact, his guidance says precisely the opposite. Under Safeguarding and Confidentiality, it states:
“All staff should be clear that a pupil coming out is not a safeguarding issue. They have simply shared an aspect of their identity. Like any other personal information, any information about staff or pupil sexuality or gender identity should be treated as confidential. Unless there is a risk of harm, this should not be disclosed to anyone, including their parents. Making a pupil’s parents aware of their child’s sexuality and gender identity can itself be a safeguarding risk, particularly as the school cannot know how parents or carers might react”. [My emphasis]
There is no ambiguity here. The guidance explicitly tells schools to keep a child’s transgender identification, along with coming out as lesbian or gay, secret from the child’s parents.
Far from limiting such secrecy to the rare circumstances where the parent presents a risk to the child, the guidance states that such secrecy should apply unless there is a risk of harm. It even underlines this by going on to suggest that parents (or carers) present an inherent safeguarding risk.
You also say:
We know that our schools understand the importance of the role of parents very well because we are in regular contact with them.
I am aware from several sources that teachers have kept a child’s transgender self-identification secret from the parents, even though the child came to harm as a result, and that the teachers kept this secret because they said they were following the Chief Rabbi’s guidance.
I would ask you again to address the specific questions I asked you, which are based not on “complete nonsense” but the text of this guidance itself.
I received the following further reply from Mark Frazer:
Melanie, we are as certain as it is possible to be that our schools have not understood our guidance to mean that secrets should be kept from parents but have nevertheless written to them today to make certain that that is indeed the case.
On the wording of the document, I accept that, read in isolation, it could be read as a more general instruction. This was certainly not how it was intended and we will have the opportunity to deal with this when we look again at the written guidance in the coming weeks. It’s important to understand though that our schools do not read this document in isolation — we are in regular contact with them about this issue and from what I understand, they have never even questioned the importance of including parents.
You say that you are aware “from several sources of teachers keeping a child’s transgender self-identification secret from the parents, even though the child came to harm as a result, and where the teachers kept this secret because they said they were following the Chief Rabbi’s guidance.”
That is alarming to read. We are not aware of any school where any teacher has operated according this understanding. Were they to do so, we would consider it a very serious abrogation of a school’s responsibility to its students and would want to address it without delay. If there is more information that you can share about this, please do.
I am aware of an isolated case in which a parent has reported to us that a single member of staff said something to them along these lines but having looked into it, we have concluded that this was a misunderstanding and that, if it is the school we think it is, they are very well aware of the importance of including parents.
This was a further astonishing reply. In writing to schools to “make certain” they realise they are apparently not being told to keep this information secret from parents, what exactly is the Chief Rabbi now telling them? To ignore what this guidance actually says? To pretend that his words meant the opposite of what they so plainly say?
Frazer now says he accepts that, “read in isolation”, the paragraph in question “could be read as a more general instruction”. What on earth does “a more general instruction” mean in this context? It’s meaningless waffle. Whether read in isolation or in conjunction with the text before and afterwards, the meaning is crystal clear — it tells schools, as their default position, to keep this information from parents.
As for his last two paragraphs, these claims run directly counter to my own, utterly authoritative information. While I am not at liberty to share or add to it, I believe that the Jewish teachers who faithfully concealed this information from parents on the basis of the Chief Rabbi’s guidance will be appalled to read that the Chief Rabbi is thus washing his hands of it and effectively throwing them under the bus.
The Chief Rabbi is rightly anxious to promote tolerance and security for children with sexual identity issues in Jewish schools. There is also an urgent need — felt by many rabbis and others within the orthodox Jewish world — to find a way of welcoming such Jewish sexual minorities into synagogue and community life without transgressing Jewish law. I very much hope they succeed.
But with this guidance, the Chief Rabbi has stumbled into a trap. Going along with a disordered self-definition as if it is true, and then setting in train sometimes unalterable consequences of that self-definition, has nothing to do with tolerance or inclusion. It is a form of child abuse. It has also split the LGB community, with lesbians in particular protesting (correctly) that trans destroys their rights as women — but with Stonewall, the immensely powerful LGBT+ activist group, aggressively pushing the trans agenda.
It’s unclear what ties Stonewall has with Keshet, the charity that helped write the Chief Rabbi’s guidance. However, the two groups worked with each other in 2013 to develop an anti-bullying initiative for schools; and the guidance refers to a Stonewall report about schoolchildren’s experiences.
And the guidance follows the Stonewall agenda.
It’s bad enough that so many teachers and therapists are promoting the transgender cult. It’s no less dismaying that the Church of England — long in the forefront of civilisational collapse, alas — has joined them. But for Britain’s orthodox Chief Rabbi to have been Stonewalled is a blow that no-one saw coming.
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