Environment Agency drops ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from policies

Source: GOV UK

 

From Coalition for Marriage:

Dear marriage supporter,

The Environment Agency has removed the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’ from its staff policies.

The quango said it has instead started using “primary carer” in its maternity, paternity and shared parental leave policies to make them ‘gender-neutral’.

The revelations come in the agency’s 2020 application to LGBT lobby group Stonewall to be included in its list of “top 100 employers”, recently seen by the Times (£).

The agency also said it had told workers they can request “more than one passcard... in order to be able to express different identities on different days”.

A staff survey was also said to have asked employees to confirm whether their gender identity matched the “gender I was assigned at birth”.

The public sector agency added that it brought these ideas to bear on procurement, stating that for all relevant contracts, “we ask potential suppliers to submit details of their EDI [equality, diversity and inclusion] policy as part of their submission”. It is a fair bet the agency will be looking for similar transgender-friendly policies from its contractors and suppliers as it has introduced internally. If so, it is using public funds as leverage to spread contentious gender ideology among private companies.

The latest revelations add to a picture of the crucial differences between men and women being erased as gender ideology spreads unchecked through public and private institutions. What kind of twisted ideology is it that sees mother and father as problematic concepts to be expunged?

Taxpayer-funded institutions like the Environment Agency should not be wasting public money on trying to erase basic facts about human biology or spreading nonsense about people changing sex, perhaps depending on the day of the week!

Much more needs to be done to stop this absurd ideology from doing any more harm than it already has. At C4M, we continue to fight against anything which undermines real marriage.

If you would like to support us financially, you can do so using the button below.

Please Donate

Yours faithfully,

(Signed) Colin Hart

Chairman

Coalition for Marriage (C4M)

See also

 Environment Agency goes woke for Stonewall from The Christian Institute.

and 

'Stonewall still receiving £1.2m in taxpayer subsidies' {16 January 2023}

Diversity, equity and inclusion gone mad.

From Divinity to Deviancy

Mary Stallard the new bishop of Llandaff follows Delyth Liddell, Methodist University Chaplain

and LGBTQI+ Gathering church leader at the Pride Cymru parade.    Source: Twitter

Celebrating diversity at Pride Cymru, the new bishop of Llandaff lost no time in identifying with her LGBTQ+ promoting sister bishops, the former bishop of Llandaff, June Osborne, the retiring bishop of St Davids, Joanna Penberthy, and the bishop of Monmouth, Cherry Vann, patron of Open Table. 

Diversity has become a euphemism for deviancy.

As the time approaches for appointing the next bishop of St Davids the Church in Wales needs to rethink its priorities.

From St Davids Diocese: 

"An Extraordinary Diocesan Conference is to be held on Saturday July 22nd., following the announcement that Bishop Joanna Penberthy is to retire on health grounds. The half-day conference will be chaired by the Archbishop of Wales, Andrew John, and will take place at Newcastle Emlyn Rugby Club when conference representatives will have the opportunity to discuss the future of the diocese and what they would like from their new bishop when he/she is elected in October."

Much has changed in the sixty + years since Church in Wales bishops held Oxford Firsts in Theology.

A return from deviancy to divinity is essential to restore any credibility to the Church in Wales if it wants to avoid being characterised as the queer church. 

Announcing the retirement of the bishop of St Davids, the Archbishop of Wales said "I want to thank Bishop Joanna for her ministry in the diocese and province. She has contributed significantly to areas of church life in particular on environmental matters and with our Social Responsibility network." Quite! 

Environmental matters and social responsibility are important but faith and worship still matter.

The Church needs bishops who win souls in a spirit of true equality and diversity.

BBC Sounds recently broadcast on the All Things Considered series  a programme titled 'Gender and Identity'. University chaplain Delyth Liddell was joined by bishop Mary Stallard and Sarah Jones, a transgender Anglican priest and vicar of St. John's in central Cardiff.

From the programme notes:
"... Pride is not just a celebration, it's also about protest, designed to get people thinking about acceptance, equality and deeper matters about identity. Today, we turn our attention to that very matter, considering gender. What does it mean on its most fundamental level? What did God intend? How does it make us who we are to ourselves and each other? And what of the interplay between biology, psychology and faith? Big topics and ones which can stir confusion, concern, and generate challenging questions."

Personally I have never encountered non-acceptance or unequal treatment in race, colour or sexuality in decades of church life. Quite the reverse, yet comments are often received from protestors. But that is all they do, protest and abuse others. There is no supporting evidence. No engagement or acknowledgement of other commentators' desire to protect the sacrament of holy matrimony. Difference of opinion is simply dismissed as phobia to silence any opposition.  

After 2,000 years of scholarship and witness Anglicans are expected to believe that interpreting scripture to please oneself is the way to salvation. I think not.

This is the result: "I believe in a non-binary God whose pronouns are plural."

Next stop polyamory!

Postscripts 

[29.06.2023]

From the US:

The Queering of the Episcopal Church by David W. Virtue DD

Why is America tolerating indecent exposure at Pride events? by Family Policy Institute of Washington

[30.06.2023]

From C4M: PRIDE: THE ANTI-MARRIAGE PLATFORM

[11.07.2023]

Lesbian Methodist Minister and chaplain at Cardiff University, Delyth Liddell, says that "visible gay role models are key to changing attitudes about the LGBT+ community in churches".
On 'All Things Considered' the bishop of St Asaph, Gregory Cameron, is to share his thoughts with the chaplain on his vision for an "inclusive Church".

That is selective inclusion of course because the bishops have decided that there is no place in the Church in Wales for Anglicans who keep the faith.

Six green bishops sitting on the bench

Church in Wales bishops 2022 from left: Bishop John Lomas, Bishop June Osborne, Bishop Gregory Cameron, Archbishop Andrew John, 
Bishop Joanna Penberthy, Bishop Cherry Vann and Bishop Mary Stallard.                Source: Church in Wales

According to the 2021 census for Wales, 46.5% of the 3,063,456 population have no religion. Christians represent 43.6% while 6.3% declined to answer the 'Religion' question.

From Wikipedia, three Roman catholic dioceses, the Archdiocese of Cardiff, the Diocese of Menevia and the Diocese of Wrexham care for 209,451 Catholic souls (nearly 70,000 per bishop).

The (Anglican) Church in Wales with six dioceses has become rather shy in publishing statistics. In 2018 the adult average Sunday attendance was 26,110 giving a figure of 4,352 souls per bishop. Today the attendance figures must be very much lower.

Illustrated above are the seven Church in Wales bishops who were to attend the 2022 Lambeth Conference giving them "a chance to 'speak and act for the good of our world'." Sadly their view of the world is no longer in step with the majority of Anglicans.

Assistant bishop Mary Stallard was appointed by the archbishop to assist him in the management of Bangor diocese because he was said to be too busy in his capacity as archbishop. Stallard has since replaced the bishop of Llandaff, June Osborne who retired amid allegations of bullying.

The diocese of St Davids has had to manage without a bishop as a result of Joanna Penberthy's long periods of sick leave documented in Church Times suggetsing that they are not that busy after the long absence of the former bishop of Monmouth.

From published sources it appears that the archbishop's 'busy schedule' is mainly political with a spot of PR beach cleaning thrown in. 

He would have more credibility as archbishop if he turned his attention to the spiritual life of the Church in Wales. Instead he chose to promote the Energy Footprint Tool in his presidential address to the Last meeting of the church's Governing Body. 

He also announced that "the Church would hold an Environmental Summit next year to bring together key stakeholders with the aim of making Wales 'an exemplar of good practice'." - Unlike their position in the Anglican Communion, part of the 15% criticised for 'dragging the Church into apostasy'. 

The archbishop has since been invited to join the Gorsedd by accepting the Honorary Druid Order, the Blue Dress, which is for Service to the Nation!

It is expected that a new bishop of St Davids will be elected in October following Joanna Penberthy's retirement at the end of July. So no more politics please. 

Joanna in St Davids and June Llandaff fulfilled an agenda which has seen the first partnered lesbian bishop in Great Britain being installed in the diocese of Monmouth.

The rot has deepened. A Christian teacher was dismissed from The Bishop of Llandaff Church in Wales School, Cardiff, after sharing his beliefs on marriage at a staff training seminar. He had been urged to talk about his beliefs on marriage but was sacked the next day for 'hate speech'.

The teacher called his dismissal an "attack on Christianity" and “an affront to freedom of speech and freedom of thought".

He is not alone in his views. Many souls have been lost to the Church because there is no room in the Church in Wales for Anglicans who maintain their traditional Christian beliefs.

A revival is needed to regain them and slow the Church's decline. That will require a holy man of God, not an apostate.

The Church in Wales can not afford to fluff the election of the next Bishop of St Davids, The motto of the patron saint of Wales was 'Keep the faith' not abandon it.

"What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?"

Drakeford should follow Sturgeon and resign

Queues on the A494 in Deeside (Image: North Wales Live/Hadyn Iball)                                                                                                               Source: Daily Post

  
Welsh First Minister, Mark Drakeford, eagerly jumped on the Scottish gender recognition band wagon suggesting that Wales should have its own self-identification system.

Proposed plans to make it simpler for someone to legally change their gender were subsequently unveiled by the Welsh government despite much criticism of Nicola Sturgeon's stance.

More recently the Welsh government announced that major road building projects in Wales are to be scrapped in a move to 'put environment first'.

That is reminiscent of the First Minister's decision to scrap the M4 relief road around Newport in South Wales leading to "permanent tailbacks on the M4".

Described as a 'Kick in the teeth' for North Wales the latest move has again attracted some well deserved criticism that citizens have been ignored.

The best thing the First Minister of  Wales could do is to once again follow the lead of the Scottish First Minister and resign taking his crackpot obsessions with him.

Postscript [20.02.2023]

Third Menai crossing and Deeside 'Red Route' axed as major road-building plans scrapped in Wales

The M4 in south Wales: A 'joke' of a road that seems destined to remain a problem

Resigned to Anglican Bishop Blunders!

The Bishop of Reading, Olivia Graham, attracted more criticism than she might have anticipated after the first of four 'environment' talks on Care for creation. 

The Rev Peter Ould tweeted: "What rampant heresy is this @oxforddiocese? God did not pour 'godself' (searches Bible for word) into the Universe. God and the universe are clearly distinct. This is basic theology."

After criticism of the bishop's video message Oxford diocese added this comment: "A number of commentators have said that the core message of this film by the Bishop of Reading is pantheistic or panentheistic. Of course, this isn’t the intended message of the film. Read a response from Bishop Olivia here." As a woman of some notoriety might have said: Well she would say that, wouldn't she?

Up North, the Bishop of Carlisle is facing calls to quit after he wrote – but later withdrew – a character reference for a paedophile priest. The issue became public after the Independent Inquiry into Child Sex Abuse (IICSA) released its report into the Church of England's handling of child sexual abuse. The inquiry’s damning report concluded that the Church of England failed to protect children from sexual abuse.

The Church in Wales did not escape criticism in the IICSA Report. The Inquiry found that "to date, the Church in Wales has never had a programme of external auditing, so there has been no independent scrutiny of its safeguarding practices. It also highlights record-keeping as a significant problem for the Church; the Inquiry’s sampling exercise demonstrated both poor record-keeping and a total absence of records in some cases."

'Barry Morgan's true legacy!' wrote a regular commentator under a previous entry. 

The former Archbishop of Wales did much to encourage the like-minded to interpret scripture as they pleased in pursuit of their secular, political goals. Something that attracted a stinging response from An Anglican Theologian among others.

Liberal drift is the legacy of Western Anglicanism. Oceanographer and former Presiding Bishop of the US Episcopal Church, Katharine Jefferts Schori, mentor of women bishops in Wales, left the Episcopal Church in a dire state of decline, foundering like the Church in Wales with the Church of England following close behind.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, leader of the Anglican Communion, has often faced criticism, most recently from child sex abuse victims who have called for the Archbishop to quit. 

Archbishop Welby said that the damning findings of the IICSA inquiry were a 'big wake-up call' but he refused calls to resign insisting that he was "better staying in the role to continue his work"!

There have been previous calls for archbishop Welby to resign here, here and here. In the unlikely event that he were to go there would be more problems. His replacement would be political, not spiritual, causing more problems for the Anglican Communion.

As the current Archbishop of Wales said when he replaced Barry Morgan, it would be more of the same but faster, thus further hastening the demise of the Church of England and Western Anglicanism.

Catch up Drakeford

Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford                                           Source: BBC/Wales News Service

The slogan 'Taking Wales Forward' reminds me of a Latin teacher telling  his class about advertising ploys. He used the example of Craven A which, he alleged, gave smokers a sore throat so promoters used the slogan, "Will Not Affect Your Throat".

Far from taking Wales forward, Latin scholar Mark Drakeford, Wales' First Minister  is set on taking Wales backwards in his decision to block the long awaited M4 bypass around Newport in South Wales often seen as the gateway to Wales.

The long suffering people living along side the M4 around the Brynglas tunnels and motorists have to endure mounting pollution from traffic blockages while the First minister pats himself on the back for saving bugs and beetles on the Gwent levels.

Frustrated by the decision, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he would "do the things the Welsh Government has failed to do" and "unblock the Brynglas tunnels".

A spokesperson for the Welsh Assembly responded "It's an entirely devolved matter and the first minister has made his decision."

Forever playing catch up in Wales Drakeford has prided himself on taking a different route to the UK government particularly on pandemic restrictions claiming to be guided by expert advice.

Another expert, the planning inspector who spent more than a year considering the case for a new M4 route south of Newport gave it his overwhelming backing but Drakeford ignored that expert opinion.

Having spent £114m of taxpayers' money before the scheme was axed including £44m on a public inquiry, First Minister Drakeford axed the scheme because of its cost and impact on the environment.

Boris Johnson's intervention suggests that the cost of the relief road to remove the Bryn Glas bottleneck is firmly guaranteed but Drakeford and his environmentalist friends are more content to leave local residents and motorists fuming as long as creepy crawlies remain content in the salt marshes of the Gwent levels, unseen and unheard of until progress is mentioned.

It would have been better for the long suffering people of Wales if Mark Drakeford had stuck to Latin.

Postscript [16.07.20]

The panel of experts set up to consider alternatives to the M4 relief road has concluded that "some sort of charging mechanism is necessary" to encourage people to use public transport, cycle or walk.

Having scrapped the Severn bridge levy on people entering Wales a new M4 charge is proposed to "provide revenue funding for transport services", including more rail stations between Cardiff and Severn Tunnel Junction, thus increasing the risk of spreading the Coronavirus, Covid-19, on crowded train services.

The alternative to these proposals is to build the relief road as recommended by planning experts but the First Minister of Wales continues to insist on protecting 'rare' birds which would fly to other habitats and largely unseen insects.

With the next Senedd election due to be held in May 2021 there will be an opportunity for realists to dump Drakeford for a politician who puts people before bugs.

Postscript [21.08.20]

Comrade Drakeford has spoken: " 'That decision is over': Mark Drakeford says £1.3bn M4 relief road will not be happening. 'There is no point in people hankering back to it'." The arrogance of the man.

Wales, Wales!

Gwent Levels                                                                                                                                                          Source: RSPB

“The Gwent Levels is Wales’ equivalent of the Amazon rainforest for sheer diversity of wildlife."

 - The Wildlife Trusts

The Amazon basin                                                                                              Source: Mongabay.com

Frustrated drivers trying to enter and leave Wales through the M4 bottleneck in Newport, Gwent, will, depending on their outlook, have mixed views on the statement by First Minister, Mark Drakeford, who rejected the idea of a proposed relief road on grounds of cost and on "the impact of the relief road on environmental considerations around Gwent."

When challenged on his decision the First Minister said "even if we could have afforded it, I would still not have signed the orders."  

The Amazon rainforest covers much of northwestern Brazil, extending into Colombia, Peru and other South American countries. It is the world’s largest tropical rainforest extending over 5.5 million km². 

The Gwent Levels, described as a 'fantastic wild haven', occupies a tiny strip of coastal land extending over 71 km² and is characterised by its flat land with 'reen' drain ditches similar to the Wentlooge levels on the other side of Newport.

The Amazon rainforest comparison reminds me of progressives in the Church in Wales with their 27,359 regular Sunday worshippers representing themselves as 'The Church' when taking views contrary to the vast majority of the 85 million members of the Anglican Communion.

Responding to the debate on her ‘divisive’ motion that the Church in Wales should cease to ordain people who did not agree with women’s ordination, the Archdeacon of Llandaff, Peggy Jackson, said that those who entered the priesthood were clear that the Church was not “in two minds” about women’s ministry. Those who found themselves “at odds” with a particular aspect of what the Church believed must “protect and operate their own arrangements and conscience how best they may.”

Jackson was right. The Church is not in two minds. She is. She and like minded individuals continue to misrepresent the beliefs of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church for their own ends while seeking to exclude orthodox Anglicans from their new, 'inclusive' church.

A 'divisive' Archdeacon of Llandaff                                 Source: Church Times