ITV/Twitter Joshua Sutcliffe, left, a maths teacher, was suspended by his school for thought crime; an activist

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The initiative, claims the Church, is to ensure that all schools tackle "discriminatory behaviour", though it is doubtful if many pupils were even aware of the concept of transition until the recent institutionalised obsession with the subject. This latest exercise in politically correct posturing follows news earlier this week that vocal pressure group Action for Trans Health is demanding the abolition of legal gender for everyone: an end to birth certificates and the provision of free sex-change hormones and puberty blockers. Parts of this radical agenda might well be implemented for Action for Trans Health has already had a significant influence on government policy. The organisation has not only trained hundreds of NHS staff but also played a central role in the 2016 Parliamentary inquiry into gender recognition reforms. The fact that such a demented fringe group is given official attention illustrates the dangerous stranglehold that the trans lobby has on our public life. We are living in an age of extremism where all common sense has been inverted and a tiny group of revolutionaries can dictate the social agenda.

That such a demented fringe group is given official attention shows the dangerous stranglehold that the trans lobby has on public life

Instead of standing up to this insanity our civic leaders have surrendered. This year has been the year of transgender madness. The signs of moral collapse are all around us, as graphically demonstrated by the recent NHS survey in Lancashire that asked 10-year-olds whether they feel "comfortable in their gender". In the same vein, the Government recently pledged to press ahead with plans to let people officially change their gender without medical checks. As we reached the end of a troubled year, this ideological fever is sweeping through every area of society, reflected in the arrival of unisex changing rooms and the fashion for abolishing traditional pronouns. The Girl Guides Association announced that boys who identify as female will be allowed to share showers and toilets with girls. It is no surprise, given the state's neurosis about gender fluidity, that the number of under-18s referred to the NHS's gender identity service is rocketing up from just 97 in 2009 to more than 2,000 in 2016-17.

Dave Benett/Getty After decades of advance the trans lobby threatens to destroy female freedom

This destructive craze is all too reminiscent of the mania for barbaric brain surgery that gripped Western medicine in the middle of the last century. In the 1940s and 1950s there was a fashionable theory that mental illness could be treated by a brutal procedure called a lobotomy, in which a pair of ice picks were inserted through each of the patient's eye sockets to remove parts of the frontal lobes. Presented as enlightened, the enthusiasm for lobotomies was profoundly cruel. Mental suffering was usually worsened while hundreds died from their operations. It has been estimated that between 30 and 40 per cent of those who underwent this surgery were gay, because they or their families were unhappy with their sexual orientation. One eager pioneer, the American Dr Walter Freeman, also lobotomised at least 19 children under the age of 18. We sneer at past psychiatric practice but aren't we too sliding into our own dark age by succumbing to the tyranny of the trans movement with its contempt for humanity, innocence, womanhood and freedom? This lobby has been able to exert such dominance because of its aggressive determination to silence debate. A classic example of this Orwellian culture of oppression is the case of Joshua Sutcliffe, a maths teacher, who was suspended by his school simply because he said, "Well done girls" to a group of pupils that included one who identified as a boy. Accused of "misgendering" - a thought crime in modern Britain - he was disciplined for having "contravened the school's equality policy".

Tommy Lindholm/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty In the 1940s some thought mental illness could be treated by a brutal procedure called a lobotomy