Gender reassigned to the ideological sin bin

Under the Covid radar, the ACT is set to cement into law the triumph of gender ideology over common sense.

It is obvious that the ACT government pushed this bill under the COVID radar. Picture: iStock

The ACT is set to become one of the first jurisdictions in Australia to cement into law the triumph of gender ideology over common sense. It is be­ing achieved under the guise of a bill outlawing conversion therapy, which was supposed to be debated on Thursday but was postponed, due in part to unexpected public reaction.

The reason is that this bill, which ostensibly outlaws “conversion” therapy for sexual and gender identity issues, is not really about outmoded and cruel conversion therapy; it is about stopping any therapy for gender dysphoria, even in minors, other than to affirm transgender identity. This has been achieved by a clever sleight of hand. There is no real definition of conversion therapy in the bill. Instead, the bill endorses any therapy that validates transgenderism and criminalises anything that doesn’t.

By using the word conversion, and deliber­ately conflating outmoded and unethical techniques of gay conver­sion with legitimate therapies aimed at easing a young person’s anxiety about gender identity that enable them to accept their biological sex, it compounds opacity with deceit.

The bill is about ideology, not welfare, which is clear in the opening statements, which affirm the validity of all sexual and gender expression. One may well ask why it is the business of a government to tell us this, and the ideological purpose becomes clearer when it gives examples of the types of therapies that would be considered legitimate: only those that affirm sexual expression and identity — so, by extension, criminalising any therapies that don’t.

This would encompass even the most benign forms of open-ended psychotherapy for gender-confused children, many of whom have other psychological problems.

The proposed ACT bill goes much further than the similar Queensland law and is potentially far more damaging to fundamental human rights, particularly the rights of parents. This is because the ACT bill, unlike the Queensland law, is not aimed solely at psychotherapists and other medical personnel. It is aimed at everybody, even parents. Any parent potentially could be charged with an offence if they try to prevent an adolescent or a child — even an underage child — from seeking trans-affirmative treatment, and there is even a provision to allow underage children to agree to their own treatment without parental consent. What is more, it penalises anyone who wishes to remove a child to another jurisdiction for treatment. The penalties are harsh, including incarceration and unlimited fines.

Outmoded and sometimes cruel gay conversion therapies, often based on aversion techniques, are universally rejected in psychiatric circles. However open-ended therapy, particularly for children displaying transgender traits, which helps them to conform to their biological sex and usually attempts to treat their underlying psychological disorders, such as autism, is perfectly valid. But this is not what the transgender lobby wants — it wants one route only, the path to a gender reassignment clinic.

Dianna Kenny, formerly professor of psychology at the University of Sydney and currently in private psychotherapy practice, has pointed out that the legislation is fatally flawed by virtue of its “illogical and ill-founded ideological base”. It is based on the ideology of gender identity rather than gender-related psychological treatment. Consequently it is a minefield, particularly for those treating children and adolescents.

“The legislation does not specify how these proposed changes to clinical practice in transgender therapy will be administered, or how professional bodies overseeing the work of health practitioners will interact with those administering the proposed legislation,” Kenny says.

She warns it is “steeped in errors” but, most important, it also has not defined the term conversion therapy with any rigour or accuracy and “deceitfully conflates lesbian and gay issues with transgender issues”.

The transgender lobby seeks to make the validation of gender identity at all costs the only approach and has used suicide statistics to bolster its claims. Lately, however, this ideology has had a few setbacks.

The Tavistock in London is being sued by adults who underwent reassignment surgery as children, and Swedish research claiming children who underwent gender reassignment surgery were less prone to suicide, which has been used as evidence by clinicians in Australia to make surgery more easily available, has been proved false. The August 1 edition of the American journal of Psychiatry had to publish a rare correction, an editorial and letters from a dozen psychiatrists, clinicians and researchers in four countries identifying multiple flaws in the 2019 Swedish paper, with the conclusion that the data showed “no improvement in mental health after surgery or hormonal treatment”.

It is obvious that the ACT government pushed this bill under the COVID radar. It has ploughed on with this legislation while the federal government is distracted by the crisis and the federal Health Minister’s inquiry into gender reassignment for very young children has not begun. A cross-section of stakeholders, including independent schools, was sent a fact sheet describing the proposed ban but was given only 18 working days to submit feedback. This was said to be in lieu of the standard public consultation “due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19”.

However, the uproar during the past week when news of the bill became widespread has, one hopes, allowed the ACT government time to put in acceptable amendments and clearer definitions. As the independent schools rightly state: “This approach is unacceptable for a law which allows for complaints to go through the ACT Human Rights Commission, as well as the creation of criminal offences, the regulation of health practitioners, and the treatment of ‘conversion’ prac­tices as a form of child abuse or neglect.”

Those of us who live in the territory have become almost blase about the never-ending quest of the Labor-Green alliance, with a majority of one, to refashion the way we live, and now the way we think. But the legal tactics of the trans lobby mean the rest of Australia also may have to get used to it — sooner rather than later.