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Joshua Sutcliffe is an evangelical pastor who’s been accused previously of lecturing his maths class on religion and telling a school bible class that marriage should be between a man and a woman.

The 27-year-old from Oxford appeared on This Morning earlier today and is facing losing his job after he said “well done girls” to a group of students including one child who identifies as a boy.

During the interview, Holly and Phil corrected the teacher who repeatedly referred to the pupil as “her,” despite the complaint lodged against him.

He said: “Personally and under law in this country and biologically it makes sense for us to be man and woman.

“Our policies should be influenced by biology and law rather than what I would say an ideology.”

Mr Sutcliffe, a maths graduate who gained his teaching qualifications at Exeter University, previously said he had no official instructions about how to address the student, but along with other staff decided to use the pupil’s chosen first name.

However, he admitted that, as a Christian, he avoided using male pronouns such as ‘he’ and ‘him’.

The £30,000-a-year teacher said he was ‘distraught’ and had been reduced to tears as teaching was his life, and he branded the actions of the school as ‘political correctness gone mad’.

He said he thought no more about the incident until a parents’ evening when he was summoned to the head’s office to be told there had been a ‘transgender complaint’ against him.

It’s reported that the pupil’s family claimed he’d not only ‘misgendered’ the pupil but had unfairly given the pupil a disproportionate number of detentions for poor behaviour, though this later claim was not upheld during the investigation.

It is understood that the family’s main concern was that Mr Sutcliffe was picking on their child and they would not have complained about misgendering on its own as they are supporters of free speech.

Mr Sutcliffe said: ‘I had always tried to respect the pupil and keep a professional attitude as well as my integrity, but it seemed to me that the school was trying to force me to adhere to its liberal, Leftish agenda.’

There are unsubstantiated claims that Mr Sutcliffe had previously referred to the pupil as a girl and had lectured his maths class on religion.

Mr Sutcliffe, a pastor at an evangelical church in Oxford, also said that several years ago he had started a voluntary Bible club during lunchtimes at the school which had been well attended.

But this had been shut down earlier this year after he had answered a student’s question on marriage by saying the Bible described it as being between a man and a woman, prompting a complaint about homophobia.

 

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Andy West

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