The New Puritans: How the Religion of Social Justice Captured the Western World

by Andrew Doyle

A few years ago a teacher friend of mine suddenly found himself confronted with the kind of anti-gay language he had not heard in a long time. For whatever reason, pupils at this boys’ school had rediscovered terms such as ‘faggot’ and ‘queer’ as insults and were apparently bullying those who they perceived to be gay. He sought advice from Stonewall, the country’s leading gay rights charity, in the hope that they might be able to send some resources to help tackle the problem. I saw these ‘resources’ for myself. They took the form of a series of posters and pamphlets, none of which addressed the issue of homophobic language but instead focused on the importance of respecting those who identify as alternative genders and prefer to be known by ‘they/ them’ pronouns. Needless to say, this material was useless. It did not address the actual issue that my friend was facing and, as an English teacher, it would be sending mixed messages if he were to suddenly advertise the use of ‘they’ as a singular pronoun when he was trying to uphold grammatical standards. On further investigation, we soon realised that Stonewall had quite recently pivoted into new ideological terrain. No longer was this an organisation committed to the rights of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals, but it had instead developed a singular fixation with transgenderism. There are many organisations that campaign specifically on behalf of trans people, and they have good reason for doing so. Those who are affected by...