A British doctor has been sacked from his government job following his refusal to refer to a hypothetical person described as a “six-foot-tall bearded man” with feminine pronouns.
Dr. David Mackareth, a 56-year-old assessor at the U.K.’s Department of Work and Pensions, told an employment tribunal that he believes he was fired for his religious beliefs. He alleges that the topic of transgenderism and gender fluidity came up in a conversation with a line manager who asked him: “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?”
Mackareth claims that he was let go that following June following an email exchange with his manager, James Owen, for refusing to “call any six-foot-tall bearded man ‘madam’ on his whim.”
The medic, who has 30 years of medical experience, secured a job as a Health and Disability Assessor in Birmingham last May. The Telegraph reports that Mackareth, who now works as an emergency doctor, is now suing both the DWP and APM, the recruitment company that hired him, for discrimination on religious grounds. The lawsuit is supported by the Christian Legal Centre.
The company claims that his views “are not compatible with human dignity.”
Mackareth claims that he was let go that following June following an email exchange with his manager, James Owen, for refusing to “call any six-foot-tall bearded man ‘madam’ on his whim.” Describing it as an “interrogation,” the doctor claims his boss told him that it was “overwhelmingly likely” he would lose his job unless he complied.
[caption id="attachment_179502" align="aligncenter" width="1980"]
Wikimedia Commons[/caption]
The email presented to the court read: “If however you do not want to do this, we will respect your decision and your right to leave your contract.” Mackereth replied: “I am a Christian and in good conscience cannot do what the DWP is requiring of me.”
“The very fact a doctor can be pulled off the shop floor for an urgent interrogation about his beliefs on gender fluidity is both absurd and very sinister, even more so if it results in a dismissal.”
The doctor says he did not resign his position and is instead the victim of discrimination and harassment by his boss. Mackareth told the court: “The very fact a doctor can be pulled off the shop floor for an urgent interrogation about his beliefs on gender fluidity is both absurd and very sinister, even more so if it results in a dismissal.”
“If something like that happened in a church setting - people being pulled out of a pew, questioned, and then excommunicated - that would be seen as an outrageous example of religious intolerance and bigotry.”
Mackareth, a self-described “unashamed Christian” and trained theologian, told the Birmingham tribunal that his contract was terminated “not because of any realistic concerns over the rights and sensitivities of transgender individuals, but because of my refusal to make an abstract ideological pledge.”
The doctor’s lawsuit blurs the lines between transsexuality and the concept of gender fluidity, a new form of gender identity that now falls under the LGBTQ+ umbrella.
“If you believe in gender fluidity, gender is no more than one’s own fantasy about oneself,” said the doctor, who described the concept as “a delusional belief.”
“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,” said Mackareth.
Ian Miles Cheong is the managing editor of Human Events
