The college’s “Summary of beliefs relating to gender as a school of Special Character” was then leaked to the media.
The document rules out the existence of non-binary students. It prohibits transgender students from using the toilets, uniforms, names and pronouns that align with their gender. The document states that allowing trans students to take puberty blockers is inconsistent with the college’s Statement of Special Character and therefore prohibited.
A transgender student who attended the college attempted suicide after the school misgendered and dead-named her and did not allow her to wear the girl’s uniform. People close to the student said the school threatened to suspend her if she did not wear the boy’s uniform. A staff member told the student that “God doesn’t make mistakes”.
The college’s board chair Paul Shakes said, “We don’t believe people get a randomly assigned body at birth,” and that, “God’s good purposes for us include our personal and physical design as male and female, and we believe that is, including from a scientific perspective, a perfectly reasonable belief to hold.”
Experts disagree with Shakes, his scientific perspective, and his God. Experts have widely accepted the existence of intersex people and rejected the notion that gender is a binary of men and women.
Shakes says, “We simply ask them to respect our beliefs.”
Bethlehem College is a state-funded school. Taxpayers do not have to respect anti-queer bigotry. The church and the state were separated to keep Christian extremism from eroding people’s personal lives. The college is forcing the church on children, and it is doing it with taxpayer money.
That wasn’t the end of the Bethlehem College saga. A college counsellor, Marli de Klerk, shared a post on Facebook claiming that the ministry was teaching primary school students that “you may be born in the wrong body and you can simply change your biological sex.”
De Klerk suggested that instead of letting trans students be trans, we should “find real solutions to young people’s pain rather than deliberately teaching lies to little ones”.
Principal Larne Edmeades sent all parents a letter in which De Klerk stated she was concerned by the number of children who are “encouraged” to believe they are born in the wrong body.
Teaching students the existence of gender diversity is not “encouraging” people to believe they are born in the wrong body. That’s like saying teaching white kids that black kids exist will make the white kids black. It makes no sense.
Shakes says the college’s “beliefs will not be changing”.
Bethlehem College is rotten to the core. Many have told me that if people dislike the college, they should go elsewhere. Why should queer students have fewer opportunities to get an education than non-queer students?
The school’s modern-day segregation of schools based on sexuality and gender identity is unacceptable. Queer students must be able to go to whatever school they want and receive an education free from discrimination.
The ministry has sat back and let the ill-treatment of queer students continue for far too long. Bethlehem College has an extremist Christian anti-queer agenda, and the ministry must end it.
Shaneel Shavneel Lal (they/them) was instrumental in the bill to ban conversion therapy in New Zealand. They are a law and psychology student, model and influencer.
