Being taught in school gay and trans people have mental illness

Yes, exactly. The protected characteristic is "gender reassignment".
Not "being trans" as another poster stated.

I am not going to comment on my view of the statement.

However, I do not think the teacher should have given his personal views - the same applies to those who are promoting these issues. It does work both ways - facts should be presented but in an objective way only.

Whilst gender dysphoria is by definition a mental illness I would not trust a homophobe to explain that in a nuanced and respectful manner. Obviously it's not ok to teach them that being gay is a mental illness.

Honestly I believe talking badly about trans will be like people who used to talk about gay people is viewed, and people won't say anything even if they think it

Hmm. I’d still argue he was attempting to denigrate trans people for being mentally ill, which is also not OK.

Oh dear Lord! They seem to jump from one side to the other of the spectrum, not reasonable middle ground to be seen.
To be honest, when they first said schools were going to do sex education and relationship education I thought they were putting too much of their beak on the parents responsibilities. This sort of thing should be left to the parents/ family to teach.
DD had no weird teachers, so it was ok. But lately I am hearing far too much rubbish being told to children.

I agree.

However, back in the day gay and lesbian people were presented as having mental health difficulties, so I appreciate the reluctance to say the same about trans people. However, I don't think most trans people would feel they were in the wrong bodies if we didn't gender stereotype. Maybe the teacher should be teaching that, instead.

That’s untrue. “A person has the protected characteristic of gender reassignment if the person is proposing to undergo, is undergoing or has undergone a process (or part of a process) for the purpose of reassigning the person's sex by changing physiological or other attributes of sex.” Equality Act 2010 s.7

This is a man who was a Tory election candidate until he was thrown out for homophobia. So yes, please come and teach your twisted beliefs to our impressionable children! 😡

You should speak to the head of the school, I take it they're aware of his past?

It's unacceptable for teachers to try and teach there strange ideas to children, my son had a teacher years ago that tried to pass on in his lesson his 9/11 conspiracy theories. Completely insane.

In the third decade of the third millennium it is appalling to think that a teacher might suggest a link between LGB people and mental illness. He sounds homophobic.

I is related to a disorder of physical development, and is probably quite distressing for the person involved.

T (and much of the rest of the alphabet soup) is a whole different kettle of fish with people believing a fantasy and acting it out to the point where the T person(totally unnecessary body mutilation, chemical changes causing things like immediate menopause, increased risk of heart attack, loss of bone density, bowel incontinence, risk of adhesions and sepsis) and others are put at risk (child safeguarding and women's dignity, privacy and safety). It appears to be a social contagion like anorexia (big problem in the last century) and dancing mania (St. Vitus Dance) in the Middle Ages. People more susceptible to mental illness are vulnerable. So a T person should be offered help to deal with body dysphoria. Especially since the risk of suicide remains, and is even higher despited the steps taken to change. Probably a realisation that one cannot, in fact, change sex, one can only hope to appear more masculine or feminine in line with gender stereotypes. The international multi-billion dollar industry that has grown up around this have never managed to complete a sex change operation or produce a pill that can change someone's sex.

No child should be encouraged to believe that he or she has been born in the wrong body.

Things were so much simpler back in my day when we had our sex education in secondary school - from a well qualified biology teacher who left us in no doubt about humans being mammals, sex is binary and a sperm may fertilise an egg, even the first time of mating.

Why not

Being gay is not a mental illness.

The situation with trans identified people is much more nuanced and discussion about it can probably not be done justice within the scope of a sexual health lessons for 11/12 year olds.

I think accuracy is important so the teacher was wrong to discuss sexual orientation and gender identity this way.

I can understand your annoyance at a teacher sharing inaccurate information because of their own prejudice but I think being incandescent about something incorrectly being attributed to mental illness doesn't do anything to destigmatize mental health problems.

Yes this we can go round and round about it but this teacher is spouting all sorts and this is .what the op has to deal with.

There was a recent Finnish study that showed that young people who identify as trans are no more likely to be suicidal than any other people once their co morbidities have been taken into account. But a high proportion of these young people do have co morbidities. People who identify as trans are far more likely to have grown up in the care system or to have abusive or homophobic parents than other kids. So there's definitely a link between identifying as trans and poor mental health.

We also know from the Cass review that girls who identify as trans currently outnumber boys six to one, and that the vast majority will desist as they get older. For most young people identifying as trans is just temporary and is not the same as being gay.

I think it was very poor form for the teacher to lump trans identifying people in with gay people. I hope he is investigated.

lol I haven’t misrepresented anything. There is emerging evidence that there is a statistically higher likelihood of mental health diagnosis for Trans people.

To ignore this is doing a disservice to the trans community.

Whatever your views about transgenderism, I agree the teacher shouldn't have said the things he said.

"Being trans" is not a protected characteristic

Sexual orientation is

It often does, though. See post above.

I don't want to derail OP's thread but anyone who wants to cut their bits off to match some sort of feeling inside, is suffering from a delusion. It's a protected characteristic because at the moment society is indulging that delusion. In the decades to come when we wake up from this collective madness, it will be considered a massive scandal that doctors have willingly mutilated healthy young people.

Correlation dors not equal causation though. And you have totally twisted the meaning of this.

And it doesn't mean it does.

And that's your opinion but nobody should teach it to a bunch of young kids that you are supposed to have a professional relationship with.