Hospital prayer room for gravely ill children plastered with LGBT flags

[IwantToRetire]

A hospital prayer room for gravely ill children and their families has been plastered with LGBT flags amid claims that the NHS is being hijacked by transgender ideology.

As part of a new inclusivity drive, a “sanctuary” at Edinburgh’s “Sick Kids” hospital, designed as a quiet space for those suffering trauma and grief, was taken over by symbols representing dozens of sexualities and genders.

The “spiritual care” facility previously described as offering room for “quiet reflection, prayer or meditation” was also rebranded a “chill-out zone” for Pride month, with rainbow-coloured signage directing patients and relatives to it.

The move has outraged some staff and family members of poorly children, with one clinician claiming a leading children’s hospital had been turned into a “social issues battlefield”.

Meanwhile, the family of a terminally ill toddler said they were no longer able to use the room to find comfort in their faith as it had become a “display of activism” which contradicted the teachings of mainstream religions.

The chaplaincy service at the hospital, one of the UK’s leading centres for paediatric care, is run by Maxwell Reay, a transgender man and activist who belongs to a fringe Christian congregation in Edinburgh.

Mr Reay, who has described being trans as a “gift from God”, is facing claims that he has breached rules which state hospital chaplains should not seek to impose their own beliefs when offering spiritual care.

Extracts from a Telegraph article reprinted in full by yahoo news https://uk.style.yahoo.com/hospital-prayer-room-gravely-ill-165852417.html

Scotland sure looks like it is trying to out pride everyone else!

For the record I am an atheist

Just dreadful and devistating for poor families wanting to 🙏 in peace. This ideology is damaging and has no place in a church or hospital chapel.

Personally, I would find it hard to find the space I needed in a room with obvious religious symbols in it. As I said-people are free to bring their own.

Exactly.

Sorry- didn't finish. It's not that they symbols relate to the LGBTIA+ community. It's that they relate to ANY community.

I agree that the quiet space should ideally be neutral without any symbols. But the meaning of these particular symbols in this specific context makes it especially bad. A space for grieving or petrified parents to retreat, decorated with symbols which are very specifically meant to bring attention to other people's sex lives. How can this be seen as appropriate in anyone's mind?

I used to attend a private hospital which was built around a Catholic chapel. At a time of stress over some medical problems I liked to go into the chapel for some quiet time. I am not Catholic nor even Christian, so the symbols of Christianity in there didn't mean anything to me personally, but they were not distressing to me, and were not screaming at me to concentrate my thoughts instead on someone else's sexual practices and variety of genitalia.

Do what you want in your sex life as long as it's consenting adults. Wear what you want even if it makes you look a right tit. I really do not care a jot., and in fact I would very vigorously defend your right to do so if necessary. Please LEAVE ALONE the real most vulnerable people in society like children, vulnerable women, parents of sick children...

I am getting angrier at this crap by the day.

Acceptance of what? Trans ideology being thrust in people's faces at the worst time in their lives? I agree with @AlisonDonut. Is there a line they won't cross? Is there one single shred of decency to be found in that chaplains mindset?

@SammyScrounge I for one will not "accept" this behaviour. Why the hell should I? There are many antisocial and dangerous behaviours that I don't "accept" and don't have to.

What does the LGBTQI+ movement have to do with someone's sexual orientation?

The term gay has no meaning if you're going to use it in the context of LGBT.

A heterosexual couple, married for 40 years with five children can be called gay under that load of nonsense.

It's the opposite of gay acceptance.

This says a lot about the ethics and values of the individual concerned who's prepared to use even a private place for the families of dying children for their own ends. Grim.

Three things about this that don't surprise me in the slightest :

1. Trans ideology yet again being prioritised over the needs of others, particularly the vulnerable.
2. It's Scotland
3. It's the NHS.

What a shit show. 🤦‍♀️

Every further example of what this dangerous movement is doing hopefully gets us closer to the end of this. But fucking hell, a lot of very vulnerable people have had to be thrown under a bus to get there. And someone like me, a lifelong socialist, has had to find myself aligned with far-right nutjobs along the way! Uncomfortable. Wish it would all just stop now.

I honestly think that @Maddy70 is having a bit of a sick laugh with her/his “dying gay child..finding acceptance in their onward journey” comment.

Yes this scotland nowt

imagine you are waiting for news of your wee one having an operation and you just want a quiet place till you hear the news and this total tool has decorated the room for themselves with no thought or compassion for parents

wtaf has pride flags to do with ill kids

It no longer surprises me when we have posters who come on to threads and simply cannot accept that a display of flags and symbols as has been done here, even blocking the window view to stone garden meant to enable meditation and peace, is not appropriate. The same posters jump on threads and deride posters for wrongthink constantly.

The hypocrisy is very clear. It seems that any discussion that shows a situation that has been mismanaged or has shown the unthinkingness or the harm that following ideological thinking can or does result in is to be derided. And those people who are causing harm, they are righteous and never to said to have caused harm.

It is just not possible to some people that those people can cause harm so it must be that everyone posting is bigoted, or hateful or just ignorant.

It can never be anything else based on deeply held preconceived ideals and no critical thinking ability.

I dunno, I think it is very educational that (a) most TRSOHers are magically absent from this thread and (b) the desperate obfuscatory bullshit displayed by the one TRSOHer who has bothered to try and justify this.

My kids schools too. These places would never push religious symbols, but they seem happy to push this.

As PPs have said, hospitals have moved to having multifaith prayer rooms (through some have retained chapels as well) that are essentially neutral spaces design-wise to [try to] ensure everyone feels welcome in them. (I really think the Trust that manages my care ought to rethink the listing of the “Shabbat Cupboard” though. They mean they keep stuff for holding a Shabbat Dinner - including some food - in a cupboard in the multifaith room. Unfortunately, they instead give the impression they go round stuffing Jewish patients into said cupboard for duration Shabbat 🤦‍♀️)

Putting out so many flags the Shankill looks amateurish in vexillological terms stops the space from being neutral & welcoming. The chaplain completely repurposed the room, which should never have been allowed to happen. Anyone Senior hearing “btw, I’ve changed the spiritual space to a ‘chill out zone’” should have stopped it before it could start. I’m surprised there’s apparently only the one chaplain there too: seems a strange set-up for a large hospital.

My point, clumsily made is that the hospital have sanctioned this space. If the hospital want to give over space in their estate to a room that's dedicated to all things 'pride' then that shouldn't come at the expense of a much needed and valued sanctuary space.

Personally, I don't think such a space is needed at a hospital at all. I was just presenting the argument that if the hospital do think it's needed - they should make arrangements for that rather than allowing a staff member with dubious intentions to hijack the hospital chapel.

I think there should be a silent protest by people at the hospital with an interest, with at least two people praying there at any time, not "chilling out", and accidentally removing a flag as they leave, in the manner of the "penguins" in Stalag Luft 3, and then handing them in at reception, neatly folded and bagged, with a printed statement that they thought someone had left junk in the chapel. I wonder how the other chaplains are taking it.

I think I would have hauled the flags down and presented them to the CEO or whoever is in charge there. Only way.

keyboardkat, I would have presented them per rectum!

Nail on the head.

I'm homosexual. These flags don't signal 'acceptance' to me.

They signal 'you have no right to exclude men from your body, and we mean harm and hate towards homosexuals'.

It's not an 'accepting' sign to me at all, it's an actively threatening one and I loathe being near one and mistrust anyone carrying one. Either they have no idea what the movement has become (and I was marching for it in the days when it still actually meant something for homosexuals) or they know and are anti homosexuals because their homosexuality is a threat to people's identity validations. <Insert rape, death threats and assault here>. The last person I would come out to these days is anyone waving a rainbow flag.

THIS get politics out of our schools and hospitals.