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An experienced Christian doctor in the United Kingdom who was fired after he refused to use transgender pronouns has lost his lawsuit against the government after a British court declared that his belief in the Bible was “incompatible with human dignity.”
Dr. David Mackereth, who served as an emergency doctor for the National Health Service for 26 years, the Daily Wire reports, was fired from his job as a disability claim assessor with the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) in June 2018 for refusing to use transgender terminology. Dr. Mackereth states he was terminated from his position after being interrogated regarding his personal religious beliefs by his supervisor, James Owen.
Dr. Mackereth told the Telegraph that Owens approached him with a hypothetical line of questioning: “If you have a man six foot tall with a beard who says he wants to be addressed as ‘she’ and ‘Mrs’ would you do that?” When Mackereth answered in the negative, he was fired.
“I believe gender is defined by biology and genetics. And that, as a Christian, the Bible teaches us that God made humans male or female,” Dr. Mackereth told the Telegraph.
After being forced out of his role, Dr. Mackereth sued the government, claiming he was discriminated against and harassed for his religious convictions. He added no effort had been made to accommodate his beliefs, despite suggesting transgender clients be referred to another doctor, the U.K. Metro reports.
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CBN News reports Mackereth’s attorney, Michael Phillips, argued that the DWP discriminated against Dr. Mackereth because of his Christian beliefs.
“His belief in the truth of the Bible, and in particular, the truth of Genesis 1:27: ‘So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them.’ It follows that every person is created by God as either male or female. A person cannot change their sex/gender at will. Any attempt at, or pretense of, doing so, is pointless, self-destructive, and sinful,” Phillips told the tribunal.
During the trial, Dr. Mackereth maintained the scientifically supported understanding that transgenderism is a mental disorder and pointed out to the court that it was treated as such until recently, before social justice warriors turned it into a political agenda.
“I am, of course, aware that there are men or women who believe they have been trapped in a wrong body, and I do not question the sincerity of their convictions,” the doctor said. “A small number of such people have always existed. Up until recently, such a belief was considered by medics to be delusional and a symptom of a medical disorder.”
“It is only recently that transgenderism has been recognized as normal and such delusional beliefs accepted at face value. What is responsible for that change is political pressure, not scientific evidence,” Mackereth noted.
Unfortunately for Dr. Mackereth, the tribunal panel overseeing the case placed the rights of a very small minority of people, the transgender community, above the rights of all religious professionals who would like to be able to perform their roles without having to violate their own deeply held convictions.
The tribunal ruled 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.”
The panel also wrote that “in so far as those beliefs form part of his wider faith, his wider faith also does not satisfy the requirement of being worthy of respect in a democratic society, not incompatible with human dignity and not in conflict with the fundamental rights of others.”
Disappointed by the ruling, Dr. Mackereth contends his case is about more than his wrongful termination. He is fighting for “intellectual and moral integrity” within the medical community.
“No doctor, or researcher, or philosopher, can demonstrate or prove that a person can change sex,” the doctor continued. “Without intellectual and moral integrity, medicine cannot function and my 30 years as a doctor are now considered irrelevant compared to the risk that someone else might be offended.”
Dr. Mackereth has pledged to continue the fight.
“I believe that I have to appeal in order to fight for the freedom of Christians — and any other NHS member of staff — to speak the truth. If they cannot, then freedom of speech has died in this country, with serious ramifications for the practice of medicine in the UK,” he added, noting that he is aware of other staff at NHS who are not Christian but share his concerns over “freedom of thought and speech being undermined by the judge’s ruling.”
Meanwhile, Christians across the U.K. have expressed concerns that the ruling signifies a complete decay of religious freedom.
U.K. Christian organization Christian Concern issued a press release following the ruling, calling attention to the dangerous precedent it has set.
“The ruling will have profound ramifications, excluding foundational Christian beliefs from the protection of human rights and anti-discrimination law. The ruling puts a belief in the Bible on a par with the racist and neo-Nazi ideologies which have been held to be ‘not worthy of respect in democratic society’ in earlier judicial decisions,” the organization said in a press release.
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