As the debate rages in the United States over parental notification and authority in cases involving transgender children, the United Kingdom is embroiled in a controversy over a law that would not only limit parental authority in such cases but affirmatively require parents to pay for such transitioning. Under the interpretation put forward by police, parents who refuse to use the alternative pronouns for their children or refuse to pay for their transitioning could be criminally prosecuted.
According to the UK’s Code for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), abusive conduct now includes “withholding money for transitioning [and] refusing to use their preferred name or pronoun.” So a parent with familial or religious objections to the transitioning of a child would be required under the law to fund operations or treatments.
According to the guidance material, this is not even “an exhausted list,” but some of the first “examples” of potentially criminal conduct that comes to mind.
The guideline would suggest that parents with deep-seated religious convictions against transgender status would either have to fund an operation that they consider immoral or face arrest for failing to do so.
To potentially prosecute a parent for refusing to use an adopted pronoun of their child is chilling and wrong. Nevertheless, a CPS spokesperson doubled down with a comment to Fox News that “domestic abuse is a severe crime and leaves victims with a lasting impact . . . This assists prosecutors to ensure that any victim, regardless of who they are, can get justice for the abuse they have faced.”
This follows the erosion of free speech and religious rights in Britain, including English courts upholding the criminalization “toxic ideologies.”
It was Sir Edward Coke in The Institutes of the Laws of England, 1628 who declared “For a man’s house is his castle, et domus sua cuique est tutissimum refugium [and each man’s home is his safest refuge].” William Pitt, the first Earl of Chatham later added:
“The poorest man may in his cottage bid defiance to all the forces of the crown. It may be frail – its roof may shake – the wind may blow through it – the storm may enter – the rain may enter – but the King of England cannot enter.”
That no longer appears the case when misusing pronouns or failing to write a check for a child’s transitioning, which will now be treated as the same as physical child abuse. As the definition of abuse is broadened, the state derives greater control and direction over family affairs and relations. Moreover, leaving enforcement to the discretion of police in this “nonexhaustive” list only further undermines this long-standing protection over internal family matters. The question is what the limiting principle will be as the state defines a wider array of conduct to be child abuse. The default assumption of Pitt appears to have flipped in the United Kingdom.
What’s next ! Parade parents with dunces hats.
One presumes the blade cuts both ways:
Should the child that transitioned against the parent’s wishes decide that such a decision was ill considered, one presumes that the government and any identified instigators will now pay for the reversal and any life long care/dependency income that is required.
Perhaps it is a tactic to revulse the less sophisticated immigrants to get them to leave.
By your own admission, this is not “a law” but the CPS guidance to its prosecutors. Such guidance often attracts highly critical scrutiny in Parliament when it is noticed. It may mean that a prosecution would be sought, but a conviction would rely on a jury agreeing, and it is not uncommon for the CPS to be handed its arse on a plate in such matters.
Furthermore, utter rubbish to say that the UK is “embroiled in controversy”. It is not. As a Brit, I can assure you this is not making the headlines. If it does, or the CPS attempted to bring a case, I would expect an explosion in Parliament and rightly so. At the moment, all attention is on the BBC mishandling allegations of impropriety against one of its prominent presenters.
“It may mean that a prosecution would be sought . . .”
You want to be the parent targeted by such prosecutors?! Even if ultimately exonerated, your life would be hell.
You are wilfully misunderstanding a very clear statement. It may mean that a prosecution would be sought by the CPS. The courts would decide if there was a case to answer. However, there would be intense public scrutiny of such a case if ever the CPS were to do so, and there is probably far less support for such an interpretation of the law and its limits amongst UK society than in some parts of your fair land.
Are you suggesting that questionable prosecution decisions are not taken on a daily basis in the USA?
“[T]here would be intense public scrutiny of such a case . . .”
And that’s just part of the parents’ hell.
They could not be identified publicly because of the need to protect the child’s identity. Basic principle over here.
“Are you suggesting that . . .”
You’re very good at deflection and ad hominem.
I suppose it’s good to be adept at something.
Oliver, so it is only a recommendation? Would you be so sanguine if there were to be a “recommendation” that a “Female” trans person entering the locker room of biological women be arrested? Would it then “only be a recommendation”?
It would depend on what law the arresting police officer thought the individual was suspected of breaching my committing such an act, a decision said officer would then have to justify to senior officers and prosecutors before any charges were brought. Police officers do not work to recommendations, and if they try to argue “it is policy” vs “it is law”, they do not fare well in court.
Oliver, when you are in court you have already lost.
BTW, the charge, in the normal world, would be indecent exposure.
A moronic response. I explained why there would be very high thresholds to be surmounted before any such scenario could come to court. Furthermore, my suspicion is that any attempt to frame charges would be around actions likely to cause a breach of the peace, rather than indecent exposure. Of course, it is clear that you have no comprehension or experience of either English or Scots law.
You know, surely, that even being accused of child abuse can ruin your life. Is it the case in the UK that CPS could request a prosecution, even an ultimately unsuccessful request, without the accused’s being informed? Are you so confident in the confidentiality of the communication with the accused?
When government is the ultimate arbiter of your personal life this really is a bad sign.
When government sanctions and forces great physical and mental harm on your child, there’s no good end.
“. . . a [UK] law that would not only limit parental authority in such cases but affirmatively require parents to pay for such transitioning.” (JT)
Because, after all, your children are property of the government — a vicious idea that the UK inherited from Plato:
“[C]hildren should be held in common, and no parent should know his child, or child its parent.” (The Republic)
There quite simply is no such law in the UK. To suggest otherwise is pure fantasy.. Furthermore, the Government shut down the controversial Gender Identity Development Service at the Tavistock Clinic last year after a critical report by a leading paediatric consultant, one little sign that excessive woke-ism is not in control here. Where you get the idea that the UK subscribes to Platonic ideology I have no idea.
I think they should first try this with the very large number of UK citizens who are Muslim. Let’s see how that works out for them.
@E.M.
It won’t apply to “visible” minorities because they were oppressed by British colonialism and aren’t subject to the same standards.
antonio
Any Republican elected official who is not working day and night to outlaw abortion and to outlaw gender affirming care needs to be thrown out of office.
Indeed, government is the problem.
Like all things British regret will soon follow.
It’s comforting to know we are not the only country that has gone insane. Of course, we may be influencing them.
@Edwardmahl
Oh, Britain, along with Canada, went insane long before us; for this to even be proposed is the inevitable outcome of an entropy that has been percolating there for years – by our metric, they’ve been careening toward totalitarianism for some time. Their citizenry are so compliant and complacent many refuse to acknowledge it’s even happening (can’t be upset about rights they never had in the first place) and yet the BBC has even TV chefs promoting the government’s propaganda on their shows. It is no coincidence Biden’s ‘minister of truth’ found cozy employment there, why Hillary has run to them to enforce censorship by proxy, why The Guardian is a rag with a BS ‘disinformation’ disclaimer at the bottom of their website, and why we threw all that tea into the sea. Britain and the EU are daily confirmation that our Constitution and Bill of Rights are unique on this earth and must be protected at any cost.
Have you ever lived here in the UK? Such utter, utter tripe. “Their citizenry are so compliant and complacent…” Bilge. If you did not notice, the compliant and complacent citizenry voted against the establishment’s wishes to force departure from the European Union precisely because sovereign rights were seen to be at ever greater risk.
@Oliver
No, but I’ve had family there my entire life, and my family did, indeed, live in a British province for a time in my early life due to my father’s employment and I attended British schools for a time. I have a better than average understanding. I actually used to favor the BBC news decades ago for it’s objectivity, very relatively speaking, but modern Britain is a dumpster fire, and unfettered liberal, globalist excess and abuse of power made it that way. To be fair, Canada is worse.
I honestly think people who have never lived, not visited, but lived in a truly free country will ever fully realize all that it means and encapsulates. Those folks sure are full of opinions about it, though. Enjoy the no-armed character that makes an appearance for 20 seconds to tick a box on the next episode of your favorite show or Jamie Oliver reminding you if you eat meat, you’re essentially mortally wounding the planet (we are literally incapable of ‘killing’ the planet. The human race on the other hand. . . The earth will trudge along just fine without us, likely for millennia. And the list goes on). 🙄🙄 God Save The Queen (King😂), to be sure.
No provinces in this country, mate, which undermines somewhat your claims of a better than average understanding…. Unless you mean Ulster?
Do not get me wrong, I would never claim that this country is perfect, but it is at least as free as your own, and if it were a “dumpster fire” I would not have served overseas with some excellent US personnel to defend it. I would also observe it was always entertaining to listen to my US colleagues arguing ferociously about everything that they thought was wrong about their own country that they were seeking to defend 🙂
No one takes Jamie Oliver seriously, using him as an argument is like arguing that Whoopi Goldberg is a heavyweight political commentator.
@Oliver
Ok, British ‘territory’. Me and my American English. 🙄 The thing that seemingly eludes here is that it doesn’t matter if you take him seriously, they are spoon feeding it anyway (no pun intended) and happy to let the repercussions fly for non-compliance. Also, your personal level of awareness is not a representation of every other person in a country, young people are particularly impressionable and susceptible, and a person that thinks none of that will trickle down to them is really not thinking things through.
The point is prescience: unfettered, it is only going to get so much worse. The writing has been on the wall for a good, long while. I thought being a steward of one’s destiny was a quintessentially British hallmark, guess not, in the 21st century. 🤷🏽♂️
Same problem here in Japan — we have a prime minister who is totally on board with the World Economic Forum agenda and the ESG “values”. He pushed through an LGBTQXYZ (or whatever it is this year) bill that was absolutely not supported, even opposed by the sleepy Diet members and more-so by the public (however, I have heard that some so-called educators are trying to brainwash young children with these ideas—despicable). Such things can easily happen in a political system that does not allow direct election of the head of government.
The WEF and their oligarchic ilk are all in for imposing degradation of reproductivity among the populace, and weakening men by brainwashing young boys into thinking they can easily become girls and similarly disempowering girls by allowing fake women to compete with them in sports, similarly encouraging them to “transition into quasi-boys, resulting in future suicides or at least infertility — all the activity to cull methane-farting cows, nitrogen-polluting farms etc. for the sake of “climate change” is ultimately intended to impoverish and even starve the general population of the world. Do Not Comply!
The only safeguard we had to prevent this was fidelity to the Constitution and the principles of individual liberty it represented. When our unalienable rights were made conditional on social acceptance, the whole context of the Founding of the United States was altered and the Constitution was weakened.
@david b cannady
“The only safeguard we had to prevent this was fidelity to the Constitution and the principles of individual liberty it represented”
Nice sentiment but it means little when we do not agree on what it might mean.
“Conservatives” are going to have to move on from treating the “constitution” as some kind of holy relic.
https://duckduckgo.com/?t=lightning&q=At+least+I+still+have+my+constitution&iax=images&ia=images&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fpics.me.me%2Fatleast-istill-have-the-constitution-lolololol-8841548.png
antonio
antonio, don’t you worry about that “constitution” the Dear Leader has said he wants to terminate it, in your words wrote….”holy relic”
antonio……..just how big is that chip on your shoulder?
@cindybragg
Not at all but I live in realville; awake but not woke.
And you had better be careful with your criticisms, I’m Hispanic and member of a recognized victim group. I probably have more intersectionality points than a white female.
antonio
antonio……It takes a really really small man to threaten an old white woman. You have no idea what I’ve endured in my life. You act like a racist against whites………… and not much of a critical thinker. Hope you get well soon.
The whole point is that there shouldn’t be intersectionality points.
I retract – it seems you’re being ironic! Let me back up:
The Constitution IS secular “holy writ,” subject to interpretation according to evolving sensibilities but such interpretation to be undertaken with defusing-a-bomb care. That’s why I’m conservative: because I believe in Chesterton’s Fence and in the principle that what works ought to be conserved and changed only very slowly, unless it falls afoul of our individual freedoms (as slavery did).
Don’t worry—you have the Supreme Court, where Justice is so blind that the latest appointee cannot even tell what a woman is.
We are living in era where hiring a doctor to kill your unborn child or to permanently damage the body of your mentally ill minor child is considered by many to be healthcare. Mainline Christian denominations—such as the Episcopal, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian USA, and United Methodist churches—support or turn a blind eye to this evil. God have mercy on us all.
winnsboro….it’s sad, but true. We left the Episcopal church a couple of years ago because the worship services were turning into Saul Alinsky rallies. We’ve been attending a Methodist church with a conservative pastor. We feel safe there, even though that denomination is splitting. (we were raised in formal Baptist churches, but there are none in our area that offer formal services, classical music, etc)
Our Methodist pastor attended a Presbyterian Seminary. He is an exceptional Bible scholar and his sermons reflect that fact. When he was a student at the Presby. seminary, he had to write a term paper for his final grade. He thought it was the best he had ever written. But the professor gave him a mediocre grade, writing across the top of the paper “Too much Bible!”…….LOL…a perfect mantra for the woke.
More progress on the way to creating heaven on earth…how do we implement this here along with English “hate speech” laws?
I’m waiting for one of our enlightened and woke friends to explain why this is wonderful and questioning the practice makes one a “nazi”.
And calling me a slur is not a reply.
Any takers?
antonio
So British parents should be streaming to the Southern border of the U.S. and requesting asylum based on religious persecution. Britain can then replace their departed citizens with those fun-loving North Africans like the ones making merry in France.
@TIN
Nice thought but they would never be granted parole under the Biden regime.
antonio
These are not laws passed by Parliament, but rules?
Its things like this that reinforces the wisdom of federalism. The people closest to the issue, decide. Are States always right? NoB but when they are wrong, corrections happen much quicker.
We can thank the Rainbow Mafia for this. B-stards. Hope you all LGBTQ’ers rot in h-ll for this insanity.
We saw it coming in 1776 and wanted no part of it.
Hmmm, what some of your Founding Fathers saw in 1776 was a King and other members of the British establishment who were implacably opposed to slavery and starting to think actively about how to abolish it… Sorry if that does not fit your received narrative about beastly King George!
“[W]hat some of your Founding Fathers saw in 1776 was a King[.!]”
Full stop.
So why did the Founding Fathers want George Washington to be crowned?
OR: Get over it. You lost. Freedom won. Thankfully.
Listen matey, as I always told my very good American friends late at night in Baghdad nearly two decades ago, it is funny how you lot don’t think we were pleased to be rid of you! Oh, and “Freedom” was only won because the far more repressive French monarchy gave the rebels a huge amount of military support, especially at sea. The rebels did not have a problem with monarchy in principle, just their place in one particular monarchy at one particular time.
TTFN
“The rebels did not have a problem with monarchy in principle . . .”
Right. That’s why they penned a constitution that explicitly prohibits monarchs.
It’s true that we only won because Britain had bigger problems. We’ll take it. And we ran with it, aided by our geographic isolation, our tremendous natural resources, and of course the fact that our original European stock was, in great part, the people with adventurous spirits, oftentimes nothing to lose, and a stubbornness that made them almost ungovernable. A lot of the last.
This story you provide isn’t in tune with reality though talk of a monarchy existed from the start, but instead, a Republic was founded.
Did Jefferson, Adams, or Madison want George Washington crowned? No. Can you tell us who? Of course not, because what you refer to was a correspondence between Washington and an army officer, not one of the founding fathers.
THEY didn’t. Some citizens did. Same as today.
I hear from liberal friends that we blow this out of proportion; we are only talking about a unique situation here or there. I would like to see an honest study comparing this issue for children in the 1990’s and since. I feel like peer pressure is putting too many youth in this situation. We are literally destroying our kids.
Your liberal friends have their head in the sand. The pronoun use changes have now begun in middle schools and probably predominate in the more blue areas of the country. Parents think the pronoun change is “just a phase” the kids are going through. That they are “throwing off the concept of gender because gender is a social construct”….they don’t understand the difference between gender roles and gender as biology. Unfortunately the so called professionals, from teachers to therapists, to doctors are buying into the ideology that essentially began in the 60s with the more radical elements of women’s lib. The requested transitioning of teens has exploded exponentially over the last several years and no one understands the long term effects of the medical aspects on children and I don’t think they care. It’s a great money maker.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/transgender-ideology-and-the-corruption-of-medicine
https://pitt.substack.com/p/headline-when-a-quarter-of-the-class?utm_medium=email
My gay friends who are in their mid forties to mid fifties alternate between being appalled and confused by the push for children to be transitioned…these friends grew up when it was just LGB and they feel that early their push for societal acceptance has been hijacked by the rest of the ever expanding letters. They believe in biology over ideology.
Your friends should do a bit of research on the reports of the pull back in the Scandinavian countries and parts of Europe; instead of medical intervention putting more into deep psycho therapy for gender dysphoria.
Karen……..we also have many gay friends who are disgusted by what’s going on…especially the lesbians….They do NOT like, nor want, the “T” after LGB!
Alas for Great Britain. The country that gave us Shakespeare, Locke, Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Burke, the Magna Carta, and Churchill has come to this.
Ask not for whom the bell tolls —
@whig98
Unfortunately the heroes of Dunkirk fought so their country could be overrun with massive and unassimilable 3rd world immigration and grandchildren would undergo what is stated in this article.
antonio
No it has not, because the Professor is spouting rubbish about something he does not understand. I respect him greatly when he talks about US law and constitutional matters, but he is clueless about modern English and Scots law, or British politics.
By the way, the Magna Carta is vastly overrated as it was simply the barons stamping their authority on an unpopular, weak and not wholly competent king. It was not about people’s rights, but barons’ right! It is a bit like all the fantasies eulogising the Athenian democracy.
Like the punchline of the “what do you call a ship full of lawyers that sinks to the bottom of the ocean?” joke, the Magna Carta was…
…a good start.
Baronial rights are proto-property rights. Property rights are the foundation of everything that has engendered the modern world. Probably both for good and for ill, but without them we individuals have nothing. That’s why the American Constitution sought to recognize and enshrine them as natural rights, inalienable and not granted by governments.
Btw, OR, thank you for being part of this discussion! It’s useful to hear from someone on the ground, and heartening (?maybe?) to hear that this issue hasn’t taken over the British public mind so far – I’m hoping that means it’s niche, and not that they’re either not paying attention or actively in favor of it.