The Labour government has just announced plans to push forward with a ban on conversion therapy, apparently to protect LGBT+ people from harm. Its proposed bill is unnecessary, unwanted and unhelpful.
Author: Debbie Hayton
Physics teacher and trade unionist.
According to some of this morning’s* headlines, from next September children will be allowed to change their gender at school and use different pronouns. No doubt some adults will be horrified by this, while others will be outraged by the restrictions placed on these so-called trans kids.
Conversion practices are in the news again, at least if you listen to the BBC. We woke up to the Today programme on Friday* recounting appalling stories of Electric Shock Aversion Therapy (ESAT) from years past. Further instalments were delivered on the corporation’s Six O’Clock News.
Campaigners have urged Bridget Phillipson to give teachers in England and Wales a day out of school every week with no loss of pay. The 4 Day Week Foundation believes that shorter working weeks can reduce burnout, improve productivity and support better work-life balance. What’s not to like about that?
Puberty blockers are powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks. Those were not my words, they came from a statement by Dr Hilary Cass when this off-label use of injectable gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists was banned indefinitely in December 2024.
Transgender people could be banned from single-sex spaces based on how they are perceived by other people according to the Times. The newspaper reports seeing a copy of the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s transgender guidance that was handed to ministers in early September.
Martine Croxall’s eyes spoke louder than her words when she corrected the clumsy and unnatural use of ‘pregnant people’ on her autocue earlier this year.
Science, which has been kicked about since GCSEs replaced O-Levels in 1986, is in for another shake-up. The latest review of the curriculum – commissioned by Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson – is set* to recommend that all schools must teach separate sciences to children in Years 10 and 11. That should be a good thing. ‘Triple science’ won’t be mandatory, but it will become a statutory entitlement alongside the usual diet of ‘double science’. If a child wants to learn an extra dollop of science then that will be their right. What’s not to like about that?
Exasperated by the excesses of the LGBTQIA+ movement and the dominance of trans issues, gays, lesbians and bisexuals have decided to organise and defend their rights.
Debbie Hayton 