The Tablet has a great tradition of opposing discrimination in any form. That your editorial (“Men, women and the image of God”, 13 August) intends to shield transgender people against prejudice and intolerance deserves praise. But you also give the impression of wanting to whitewash gender theory, even in its radical forms, and dismiss church opposition to it as misguided.

The critical reflection on gender roles in family and society and their redefinition in recent times has largely been a blessing for all concerned. The Church, to its own detriment, has been slow to recognise this. But does this justify a wholesale approval of gender theories? Wrong social theories turned into ideologies can do untold harm as the tragedies of the last century testify. A theory that declares gender a pure product of social conditioning, as Judith Butler and others seem to do, can have dangerous practical consequences. A social worker told me recently about a mother who, asked about the gender of her child, said: “That question my child will decide when it is old enough.”