Christian doctor who refused to call trans people by their preferred pronoun to take government to court
Dr David Mackereth was sacked after claiming his religion does not believe in trans people
By Steve Brown
Words: Steve Brown
A Christian doctor who was sacked after refusing to call transgender patients by their chosen sex is taking the government to an employment tribunal.
Dr David Mackereth worked in A&E departments across the country and has been a doctor for around 27 years in the NHS but was told he couldn’t be employed as a Department for Work and Pensions disability assessor.
However, when he was asked whether he would refer to patients according to the gender a person identify with and he refused saying his beliefs would not allow him to.
He told BBC Radio WM: “I think that we have to treat transgender people very, very sensitively.
“But we also have to act according to the truth. I don’t believe that a person can change sex. I don’t believe that a person can be trapped in the wrong body.
“I do believe that, as a Christian, we have a duty to act according to what is true. So yes, we have to treat transgender people with compassion, but we also have to act according to the truth.”
He then went on to say using the ‘he’ and ‘she’ pronouns hold society together.
“The use of pronouns and how we use those little words he and she affects all of our society,” he continued.
“Those are very important words which hold our society together. If we change how they are used, we are opening a very enormous bag of words.
“So I would also say as well, as a Christian, I have to act according to the truth so what we find here is that we have a problem that we now have two different world views which can’t be compatible even in a liberal society and that’s one of the things we are going to court to test.
“Whether or not as a Christian I am free to act according to my beliefs or whether I’m going to be forced either to accept someone else’s beliefs and act according to those which I cannot hold to or whether as a Christian I’m not fit for employment.
“Certainly, if you were to disemploy everybody for example in the NHS who holds my views I think there would not an awful lot of people to hold the service together.”
His case is due to be heard before a tribunal in Birmingham today.