A CHRISTIAN nurse faces potentially career-ending disciplinary proceedings for misgendering a burly 6ft convicted paedophile who demanded to be recognised as a woman.
The patient entered Jennifer Melle’s ward at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton, Surrey, in shackles and with a police escort to receive urological treatment in May last year. He was serving a term in a high-security men’s prison for luring underage boys into sex acts while pretending to be a teenage girl on social media.
The man overheard a telephone conversation Ms Melle had with a doctor involving a catheter for a male person in which she referred to the prisoner as ‘Mr’. He flew into a rage and demanded to be called a woman. Ms Melle refused his request, explaining that it would be against her Christian beliefs.
The patient then hurled the n-word three times at Ms Melle, who is black, and lunged at her before being restrained by the attendant guards.
Ms Melle’s employer, the Epsom and St Helier University Hospital NHS Trust, subsequently issued a final written warning for misgendering the patient and reported her to the Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC). Disciplinary procedures could include a permanent ban on her serving as a nurse.
David Mackereth, who like Ms Melle was supported by the Christian Legal Centre, once said that he would refuse to refer to ‘any 6ft-tall bearded man’ as ‘madam.’ Ms Melle is living out a nearly identical scenario.
The hospital where Ms Melle works flies a transgender-affirming Pride Progress Flag, but this does not make gender identity ideology the law of the land. However much the Trust wishes to submit to political correctness, it is a shameless and unquestionably petty act to further victimise a woman who has been racially abused and threatened with physical assault.
The Employment Appeal Tribunal has been clear that a blanket policy requiring transgender affirmation would likely be discriminatory. Freedom to manifest Christian or gender critical beliefs in the workplace by refusing to misgender is a protected act under both the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Equality Act 2010. The belief that God created man and woman distinctly, and opposition to transgender ideology on that basis, has been held by our courts and tribunals as being worthy of respect in a democratic society. Where competing interests collide, such as those of people who identify as trans and Christians who have a conscientious objection to using transgender affirming pronouns, the courts are tasked with balancing the competing rights.
Sometimes when bad ideas, such as compelled transgender affirmation, run their course, it takes an absurd incident for that idea to die. That is not to say that malicious treatment of anyone, including bullying someone for identifying as transgender, is ever right. Loving your neighbour, as Christ calls us to do, requires us to treat others as we ourselves would like to be treated. That is a high bar.
What Ms Melle did, however, was not malicious or ill-intended; she sought to serve and nurse the patient. She treated him with dignity and respect as all good and professional nurses would seek to do. It is time to end compelled speech in our workplaces. No employee should be required to affirm someone else’s belief system by offending their own.
