November 18, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — In September of last year, I covered the story of a transgender person — a biological female identifying as male and referring to herself as Freddy McConnell — fighting to force the government to allow her to register as the father of her child rather than the mother. McConnell used a sperm donor to get pregnant, and the BBC covered this “pregnant man” in a documentary titled Seahorse: The Dad Who Gave Birth. McConnell had been “transitioning,” but paused her hormone treatment in order to carry her child and give birth.
McConnell, a 34-year-old freelance journalist, did the media rounds to promote her campaign. Unsurprisingly, she found unfailing support in the press corps. She now looks male, sporting a thin red goatee, a mustache, and a finely featured face. If you didn’t know she was a woman, you wouldn’t guess — which is why her TV interviews are so effective. She looks like a normal male, and so the next step is to persuade audiences that she is a male — and the father of the child she gave birth to.
For now, at least, McConnell has lost her case. According to The Guardian (where, not incidentally, she works), the U.K. supreme court has declined to hear her final appeal on the case. McConnell had “hoped to challenge an appeal court ruling this spring that motherhood is defined as being pregnant and giving birth regardless of whether the person who does so was considered a man in law,” and the court’s decision not to consider the case “is a blow for LGBTQ+ campaigners. The case was seen as key by the campaign group Stonewall, which hoped that the law would recognise all parents ‘for who they are.’”
What they mean by that, of course, is that they want folks like McConnell to be able to not only identify as male (and who’s stopping her?) but for every facet of society to formally recognize her as a male, including her fictitious “fatherhood” (that dubious distinction, at least biologically, belongs to the sperm donor that sired her child). McConnell has already changed both her passport and National Health Service records to indicate that she is now a he, but as The Guardian put it:
[H]e retained his female reproductive system. He gave birth after suspending his hormone treatment and allowing his menstrual cycle to restart. Both the high court, in September 2019, and the appeal court, in April 2020, ruled that even though he was considered a man by law and had a gender recognition certificate to prove it, he could not appear on his child’s birth certificate as “father” or parent. McConnell had argued this breached the Human Rights Act.
Pause, for a moment, to consider the fact that a once-prestigious newspaper has lapsed into such ridiculousness that it uses phrases like “his female reproductive system” and “his menstrual cycle” and not only considers those phrases to be accurate, but believes that not using them would be bigotry. Reading the papers these days can begin to feel like being the only sober guy at a party where everyone else is very, very drunk.
Fortunately, sanity prevailed in this case, as the appeal court ruling — by Lord Ian Burnett — asserted that children have the right to know “the biological reality of [their] birth,” a right which overrules the “parent’s right to be recognised on the birth certificate in their legal gender.” Further, Burnett noted that trans-friendly laws had not gone so far as to “decouple the concept of mother from gender,” and stated, as The Guardian summed it up, that “any interference with McConnell’s rights to family life, caused by birth registration documents describing him as mother when he lives as his child’s father could be justified.”
Remarks attributed to Pope Francis (and, not denied by the Vatican) in support of homosexual civil unions have caused grave scandal to the faithful.
Please SIGN this urgent petition which asks Pope Francis to clarify and rectify these heterodox and scandalous remarks on homosexual civil unions, and which will be delivered both to the Vatican and to the Papal Nuncio of the United States (the Pope's official representative in the U.S.).
As the last guarantor of the Faith, the Pope should clarify and rectify these remarks, which go against the perennial teaching of the Church, even including the teaching of his living predecessor, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI.
"What we have to create is a law of civil coexistence [meaning civil union law, for homosexuals]...," Pope Francis is reported to have remarked, in what is arguably his clearest statement of public support for a practice morally prohibited by official Catholic Church teaching.
In fact, the Church has been crystal clear in Her opposition to homosexual unions.
Just in 2003, Pope Saint John Paul II approved a document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, titled 'Considerations Regarding Proposals to Give Legal Recognition to Unions between Homosexual Persons' and written by Cardinal Ratzinger (now, Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI), which concludes with the following:
"The Church teaches that respect for homosexual persons cannot lead in any way to approval of homosexual behaviour or to legal recognition of homosexual unions. The common good requires that laws recognize, promote and protect marriage as the basis of the family, the primary unit of society. Legal recognition of homosexual unions or placing them on the same level as marriage would mean not only the approval of deviant behaviour, with the consequence of making it a model in present-day society, but would also obscure basic values which belong to the common inheritance of humanity. The Church cannot fail to defend these values, for the good of men and women and for the good of society itself."
It could not be more clear: the Church is calling people to repentance, not to be left to indulge in grave sin.
Since becoming public, several senior prelates as well as other notable Catholic figures have voiced their opposition to these remarks attributed to the Pontiff.
Cardinal Raymond Burke stated: "It is a source of deepest sadness and pressing pastoral concern that the private opinions reported with so much emphasis by the press and attributed to Pope Francis do not correspond to the constant teaching of the Church, as it is expressed in Sacred Scripture and Sacred Tradition."
Cardinal Gerhard Müller commented: "Where there is tension between the plain and obvious Word of God and the infallible interpretation on the one hand, and private expressions of opinion even by the highest church authorities on the other, the principle always applies: in dubio pro DEO [When in doubt, be in favor of God]."
And, Catholic theologian and apologist Scott Hahn, without directly quoting Pope Francis, shared on Facebook the 'Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons,' published by the CDF in 1986, with the statement: "Holy Father, respectfully and humbly, I beg to differ... if that is indeed what you said. In any case, please clarify and rectify your statement, especially in view of the official teaching of our Lord through the magisterium of His Church."
But, the silence from the Vatican has been deafening, with no clarification forthcoming.
We must, therefore, ask the Pope for clarification in this serious matter.
Please SIGN and SHARE this petition which asks Pope Francis to clarify and rectify remarks attributed to him in support of homosexual civil unions.
FOR MORE INFORMATION:
'Cdl. Burke: Pope’s homosexual civil union remarks ‘contrary’ to Scripture, Tradition' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/opinion/cardinal-burke-on-popes-homosexual-civil-union-remarks-contrary-to-the-teaching-of-sacred-scripture-and-sacred-tradition
'Cardinal says Catholics ‘can and should’ disagree with Pope’s ‘opinion’ on gay civil unions' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/cdl.mueller-popes-words-on-gay-civil-unions-purely-private-expression-of-opinion-which-every-catholic-can-and-should-freely-contradict
'Archbishop Vigano, Bishops Tobin and Strickland respond to Pope’s approval of homosexual civil unions' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/archbishop-vigano-and-bishops-tobin-strickland-respond-to-popes-approval-of-homosexual-civil-unions
'Pope’s comments on gay civil unions cause shockwaves around the world' - https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/deepest-sadness-cardinal-burke-condemns-pope-franciss-remarks-supporting-civil-unions
As I noted in my Monday column, you can see here how controlling the language of the debate sets the terms of the debate. Once you accept “preferred pronouns” uncoupled from biological reality, Lord Burnett appears to be crazy for ruling sanely on a case that would have been laughed out of court a decade ago. The supreme court, which probably wanted to avoid the LGBT quagmire, stated in declining the case that “the applications do not raise an arguable point of law which ought to be considered at this time bearing in mind that the cases were the subject of judicial decision and reviewed on appeal.”
McConnell, unsurprisingly, isn’t done, and will be heading to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg to try her luck there. She wants the entire system to change to suit her, stating that the rules around registering need “fully overhauling” and claiming that she wasn’t treated equally. “There needs to be a series of cases to address this or a change in the law,” she said. “I feel I am too deep into this to stop now. I am going to keep fighting and I ask anyone who can contribute to this to reach out.”
This is how trans activists win: A relentless willingness to fight for every inch of territory, in any courtroom, over and over again. If she wins in Strasbourg, she’ll be back in the UK in a jiffy, accusing her nation of being out of step with international human rights. With media outlets from the BBC (who promoted McConnell at taxpayers’ expense) to The Guardian covering her perspective as if it is undisputable reality, the weapons wielded by the trans activists in their attempt to transition society are powerful indeed. I’m sure McConnell will get plenty of help. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Church of England is the first organization to get on board.
