Last week, a British tribunal ruled on the case of doctor who told his boss, in the midst of a conversation about how to interact with transsexual patients, that he would refuse to address “any six-foot-tall bearded man” as “madam.” The doctor was then told that, if so, he would have to leave his position, which he did. But, writes, Dan Hitchens, the most disturbing part of the story is the text of the legal decision against the doctor:
Much of the tribunal’s judgment is barely readable, . . . but it puts its central point clearly enough: a “lack of belief in transgenderism” is “incompatible with human dignity and”—yes—”conflicts with the fundamental rights of others.”
Dr. Mackereth’s bosses might easily have sought a compromise: for instance, people who identify as trans could be passed on to a different doctor. Unfortunately—the tribunal judgment tells us—such a policy might have caused “offense or the potential for offense.” Just imagine! . . . The doctor . . . argued at the employment tribunal that he had suffered discrimination, prompting [the tribunal] to rule that, if you don’t think a man can become a woman—as rather a lot of us don’t—then your view is “incompatible with human dignity.”
First, if this judgment is correct, then presumably anyone can be forced out of a public-sector job on the off chance that he might, at some unspecified point, “offend” some unspecified trans person. Second, the judgment’s expansive wording tells everyone who doesn’t buy [into current orthodoxies] that their views—not even their actions—are against “human dignity.”
Read more on Spectator: https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/10/is-not-believing-in-transgenderism-incompatible-with-human-dignity/