The Age of Consent

This week I went for yet another scan at my local hospital. On arrival I was given the usual consent form to sign. 

I decided to read the literature thoroughly in case the NHS has recognised my recent prognosis and were trying to get me to donate a kidney without my knowledge. 

I immediately noticed that the all pervasive gender ideology that has so completely captured the NHS had now filtered down to the bottom floor:

Where the form asked me to tick a box listing my ‘preferred pronouns’ I declined to play their little game, instead writing ‘MALE’ in bold capitals. 

The form then asked me if I was pregnant. To aid my decision about which box to tick, it added helpfully, ‘this includes women and people with a uterus.’

I’m pleased that ‘women’ were included as I’m not sure that they would have many takers otherwise.

I was rather puzzled, though, by the inclusion of ‘people with a uterus.’

In the extremely remote possibility that I was a person who had consented to painful surgeries and hormone therapies to change my bodily shape to resemble someone of the opposite sex, one would have thought me capable of understanding whether I might have the necessary equipment to become unexpectedly pregnant without this obvious requirement being pointed out. 

I can only assume that their purpose in pointing out the bleedin’ obvious on a consent form, when I’m having a scan to assess the spread of my male-only prostate cancer tumours, is to wind me up. 

It vexed my fellow patients too, of both sexes. 

Consent and free will are much in the news lately, especially with regard to Russel Brand and his past sexual behaviour. 

I do find the sudden hypocritical prudery of the media a little rich when there are television programmes in which contestants select a mate by close examination of one another’s genitalia and perverts dressed-up in drag read stories to little children and perform simulated sex acts towards them with little opposition or objection. 

From the perspective of my policing background, the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is ten. The age of consent to sexual activity is sixteen. Alcohol may not be purchased until eighteen but children as young as twelve have been able to begin treatment to transition from one sex to another. 

There are plans to reduce the latter to only seven years of age for treatment on the NHS. 

It is worthy of note that the NHS announced last year that it would be closing the Tavistock transgender clinic after a review by Dr Hilary Cass found it was “not safe”. 

Predictably, many of the children who had transitioned under their care were now suing that organisation because they now realise that they were not capable of making such a life altering decision at that age and have had a change of heart. 

According to psychologists, many children who ‘grow out’ of gender dysphoria, turn out to be gay in their late teens, so the unholy LGBT alphabet alliance seems to be somewhat at war with itself: to transition young children incapable of informed consent -to change the course of their lives through irreversible surgery and retard their normal hormonal development – is effectively to sterilise people who tend to be gay and to inflict a great deal of physical and psychosocial harm besides.

I contend that it would be obvious to the common man (or woman) that that children are never capable of such decisions or giving an informed consent to such drastic measures.

What responsible parent would let a child choose what clothes to wear to school based on their preference that day, let alone encourage them to change their gender? Yet this is what is happening in homes and schools and clinical settings across the land. 

 I would even go so far as to denounce the perpetrators of this monstrous experimentation as child abusers and criminals, rather than the kindly and well-meaning folk they see in the mirror. 

I’m with Jesus when it comes to the protection of children: 

“Whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in Me to sin, it would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were drowned in the depth of the sea.” 

You may disagree with me. You may not like what I say, but say it I must. 

I don’t think this is an issue on which a clear conscience or common decency should remain silent for fear of causing upset or reproach. 

In other contrasting but related news, I have been following the case of ST. 

She was known only as ‘ST’ because a draconian court order, obtained by the NHS prevented ST from being named. 

Subsequent to ST’s death, we now know her real name to be Sudiksha Thirumalesh, a nineteen year old woman from a Christian family whose only wish was to “die trying to live.”

This brave A grade student, whom the NHS labelled ‘delusional’ for wanting to try experimental nucleoside therapy in Canada was suffering from a progressively degenerative mitochondrial disorder. 

“We have been gagged, silenced, and most importantly, prevented from accessing specialist treatment abroad for Sudiksha,” the family said. “Had she been allowed to seek nucleoside treatment six months ago it may well be that she would still be with us and recovering.”

I’m still incandescent with rage that this poor girl and her family were silenced by the British judiciary and the NHS in the hour of their greatest need. 

It sounds more like a story from a third world dictatorship rather than the birthplace of the Magna Carta. 

As reported in the Catholic Herald, 

‘The family has said the ban on naming Thirumalesh and her relatives legally prevented them from publicly commenting and giving media interviews about her situation. They were not allowed to ask for prayers or raise money to pursue extraordinary treatment, estimated to cost about $1.9 million. The family also faces legal fees in her case.’

Crucially, the court accepted the view of her doctors: that she was actively dying and that her refusal to accept their view was a sign of delusion and that the Court of Protection should decide her fate.

This was despite the fact that she had spent some 45 minutes talking to psychiatrists who found that she had mental capacity. She signed all her own paperwork. 

‘She could speak, and when she grew tired she could hold the notebook and paper and write her thoughts very well.’ said her father. 

It seems that consent and the capacity to give it, in this great nation of ours, is a highly subjective matter, despite what we know about brain development. We seem to trim our sails with every passing wind. 

The oncologist looked at my scan results and has referred me to Rowcroft Hospice who will be of great help when the time comes. 

I, like Sudiksha, am determined to meet death on my own terms. I share her Christian faith. 

If I were her age and if I had not enjoyed a full life, I would likely follow her example in dying trying to live. 

Most of all, I don’t want the NHS deciding for me when and how I should die when they have such a perverse notion of how we should live. 

The book of Isaiah, written hundreds of years before the birth of Christ, nevertheless reported how He would die: 

“He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth; he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth.”

He knew then what it was to suffer greatly; to be betrayed; to suffer injustice. 

Perhaps here lies the key to perfect justice and what was achieved in that one life and death. 

The hope of forgiveness, of redemption, of a life beyond death where every tear will be wiped away from our eyes. 

It says of our God that he is not distant from our suffering but is there right bedside us in it. He draws near in our hour of greatest need. 

God does not force his will on us. After all, there can be no love without consent. 

I don’t subscribe to the “love is love” brigade. That merely opens the door to whatever floats our boat, no matter who is hurt in the process. 

I believe in the sort of love described in St.Paul’s letter to the church at Corinth: 

“Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails.”

I fall well short of this, of course, but my aim is true. 

The world tells us the opposite of these things: that love is proud and boastful; it is selfish; it takes what it wants and trusts no-one. 

And the way it creepily justifies, bobs, weaves and limps its way around these issues it is the sniper’s nightmare; an ever-changing, ever-moving target. 

God must weep when he looks upon his world. 

If we repeatedly reject Him he will give us what we want. 

CS Lewis put it best in his book, The Great Divorce:

“There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, “Thy will be done,” and those to whom God says, in the end, “Thy will be done.”

The choice is one for each of us to make.