Sunderland Minster refusing to comply with Supreme Court ruling

If I lived anywhere near Sunderland, I'd find out how many volunteers attend every day on average, then round up that many women, plus about 5, to be on the safe side. Then visit, and one at a time, at five minute intervals, ask for a volunteer to accompany us to the toilets. Perfectly reasonable policy, after all, nothing can go wrong with it...

And consistently, Jesus saw and treated women as people in a way that society and the men around him did not.

What?
Facebook algorithms are hiding posts commenting on the unlawfulness of the original post?!

Please get screenshots because the press will love this!

My point wasn’t that the GC posts were being deleted but that some FB algorithm is hiding them for wrongthink. You can view hidden posts if you click on them.

engage in an act of co-creation

Hmmm, think God might have something to say about that (John 1:3)

Transitioning is doing God's will, and trans people are sacred.

(well, that's a bit of a leap, and Genesis 1:28, how are we supposed to multiply if no one knows who is male and who is female? It's such a conundrum!)

And, it's beside the point: women exist, too, and we have rights under the law, Christian or not.

Not having a link to your safeguarding policy on the website is a serious matter. Clergy have been subject to disciplinary measures for this.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DK0MsonM8KM/

Would making all the toilets unisex get round the law? I haven't seen the toilets so don't know if they'd comply.

The Sunderland Minster Rev will believe that she is a martyr for Jesus. The more negative comments she receives the more she will believe that what she is doing is the Lord's work.
'Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you, and shall say all manner of evil against you falsely, for my sake.' Matt 5:11

This can only be stopped by her superiors.

One of the posts on Sunderland Minster fb from a "trans Christian" (interesting linguistically):

God does not make mistakes, and He does not make mistakes when he makes some people trans. To be trans is to be blessed with a sacred calling, to engage in an act of co-creation such that the accident of one's body rhymes with the essence of one's soul. God made neither bread nor wine; He made wheat and grapes and yeast, and gave humans the wit to work out how to make them more than what they were. Likewise, from the beginning of the world He has caused to be created those who feel strongly that our gender doesn't match the accidents of our body, and given us the wit and willpower to do what we can to bring those things into greater alignment. Transitioning is doing God's will, and trans people are sacred. Get over it!

God does not make mistakes (no one is born in the wrong body is a GC view)
but also
the accident of one's body.

Make it make sense.

The "trans people are sacred" line, though, is kind of what we are being sold in the secular world.

(Did someone say something about women in Abrahamic religions?)

Jesus would be rolling in his grave if he had one.

I wonder if Sunderland Minster is about to find itself in the Daily Mail.

I just looked at the page and saw a lot of comments on the illegality of their position, so the deleted are obviously getting replaced at a good pace!

Yes, I've seen the website, and must say, I wouldn't touch this church with a ten-foot pole.

And when I clicked on their link to Safeguarding Policies, I get this:

6279 results found for 'sites default files 2019 10 ParishSafeGuardingHandBookAugust2019Web pdf'

6,279 results!

And when I clicked on the "Documents " filter to try to find their safeguarding documents, I got this:

No result found. Please enter another search term and try again

They really need someone to sort out their website.

Or perhaps they don't want anyone to see their Safeguarding Policies.

Or perhaps there aren't any Safeguarding Policies?

It seems, these days, that lots of social justice activists have migrated to the anglican church.

Surely this is where some male allies are needed? To adopt an identity similar to the moob-flashing Sarah Jane Baker or Isla Bryson’s revealing pink leggings in and around the toilets? They can’t be challenged according to the Church policy but they’d most certainly challenge the resolve of all the volunteers who’d have to spend time in their company when assisting rightfully nervous women?! Maybe best in this case is to lean in to the nonsense and give these people double helpings of what they say they want? Like allegorical tale about whether the sun or wind can get the man to take his coat off?

I am Sunderland born and bred and I highly doubt most of these comments are from locals (I clicked on a few which seemed to confirm my suspicion). In addition the church FB page normally has very little engagement but this post has over a thousand likes. I suspect an APB went out.

This isn't a derail, it's interesting to see the Sunderland Minster position being criticised from within their own value system.

The idea that God somehow made a mistake by putting a female gender essence into a male physical body, for instance, is difficult to explain.

The Catholic Church, for all its faults, has been consistently against transgenderism: being male or female is an intrinsic part of how we are created, and it is an affront to the dignity of the human form as created by God to attempt to change the sex of the body.

Which does not mean excluding transgender people, or hating them, or saying they are damned - the idea that you can disagree with, and refuse to condone someone's actions, but not hate them as a human being seems to be too subtle for a lot of people, including, strangely, some Christian churches.

Sunderland Minster could be as open and welcoming towards transpeople as they wish, but that doesn't have to mean agreeing with gender ideology, or ignoring women's rights.

If she is a "true believer" in gender ideology, I very much doubt even NC could get much more out of the good Reverend other than the canonically-approved Upton-ese that must be upheld, else her entire worldview be upended.

She will have worked herself so inextricably into this mindset that there will be no extracting herself without the usual onslaught of threats of "apostasy" and intimidation from TRAs in her "welcoming" community.

Well, reap what you sow, ironically..,

I know one of the clergy at Sunderland Minster and they are completely and utterly captured, and completely unpersuadable. In my view (and I speak as a CofE vicar) showing a good deal of what is worst about the Church of England. Just look at the image on the front page of the website. But if you switch the comments on the page from recommended to newest you see a lot of people saying this is illegal.

How is the chaperone meant to stop any man who may already be comfortably settled and recording in the next stall?

As the sign doesn’t specify a female volunteer, the chaperone you’re offered may well be one of those charming TIMs himself. Or any man who enjoys upsetting women, which has to be one popular reason for invading women’s spaces.

I took a look at the FB page & found that many comments were hidden by FB "Comments were hidden because they may be offensive, off-topic or spam." All the hidden comments I read were perfectly polite & reasonable posts stating things like "You might be happy with a TW in the Ladies but I am not & consent is not transferable."

Surely it’s not just EA10 as I thought volunteers came under the same health and safety legislation as employees in the provision of toilet facilities dependent on sex. Obviously if someone volunteered in a shop it would be unreasonable to say we cover the manager but no one else.

Paul is admonishing the Galatians that no one is exempt from the teachings of Christ, if they claim to be the children of God.

Not that there is no such thing as male or female (which is ridiculous).

It's a metaphor, and Paul uses this tool a lot, which you would know if you knew anything about the Bible. So not the gotcha you think it is.

But, I'm not going to derail any further. Just thought I should point out that the Rev Canon is being a hypocrite here, in many ways, especially to women.

And the fact that in Christ all are equal. Equal is not the same,

And she's breaking the law of course. I don't know why she thinks that's admirable, or why people who want her to follow the law are somehow disgusting or despicable. She deserves to have the arse sued off her.

this.

And I would like her to be personally questioned by someone like Naomi Cunningham, to watch some scales fall, however incrementally, and however few of them there may be.