COVID-19 blamed for transgender law stealth

ACT’s government has blamed COVID-19 for skipping public consultation on a new law that could send therapists to prison.

Andrew Barr, Chief Minister of the ACT, is a prominent campaigner on LGBT issues. Picture: Getty Images

The ACT government has blamed the pandemic for its decision to quietly sidestep public consultation on a contentious new law that could send mental health professionals to prison.

A Christian education group learned indirectly about the secret consultation on June 17, halfway through the process, and was told by Chief Minister Andrew Barr’s central government agency that “standard public consultation” had been abandoned “due to the ongoing impact of COVID-19 on public engagements”.

In November Mr Barr made headlines with a promise to ban “gay conversion therapy” but critics protest the proposal goes beyond protection of adult sexual orientation to unwisely lock-in the changeable “gender identity” of teenagers, prohibiting anything but “affirmation” of self-declared trans status.

This potentially denies troubled young people the careful psychotherapy they need and puts them on the path to unproven “gender affirming” hormonal drugs and surgery, according to some clinicians, Christians and parents, with the issue causing bitter division among LGBT people as well.

“I don’t think anyone would dispute the fact that trying to force a change in someone’s gender or sexual orientation is unethical,” said Sydney psychiatrist Roberto D’Angelo, who sees patients with “gender dysphoria” (or distress at feeling “born in the wrong body”).

“The problem is that unless the legislation is extremely carefully worded, any therapy which does not ‘affirm’ the young person’s gender could potentially be seen as conversion therapy.

“I see many young people who become distressed after discovering that they are same-sex attracted and then subsequently conclude that they are trans, and hence ‘straight’.

“Concerns have been raised about whether we are in fact administering a form of gay conversion therapy to some of these young people by providing gender-affirming care, turning gay teens into straight ones.”

A short ACT government fact sheet seen by The Australian says “changing a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and/or gender expression has the potential to cause harm”.

It floats criminal penalties as an option for the new law, promised by the end of 2020, but says “legitimate services” such as the “affirmation” of gender identity will not be prohibited.

Trans activists internationally have rebadged gay conversion therapy as part of the campaign to bring laws and policies into line with purely self-identified trans rights. The term normally refers to mostly bygone, sometimes cruel practices in the American deep south to try to “cure” Bible-believing gays.

Victoria’s Premier Dan Andrews promised Australia’s first new-generation “conversion therapy” ban at the 2019 Midsumma Pride March in February 2019 but Queensland tried to gazump him and took medical bodies by surprise with a rushed consultation during the 2019-20 summer holidays. The evidence and drafting for the Queensland bill were savaged, and it was withdrawn.

In the ACT, Christian, Muslim and Adventist schools with around 3000 students have joined forces to protest the failure to hold proper public consultation and the lack of detail in the “totally inadequate” fact sheet.

“What we’re for calling for, is the government to conduct a full public consultation — this is an important issue both for public health but also for religious freedom,” said Mark Spencer, public policy director for Christian Schools Australia.

Mr Spencer rejected the government’s suggestion the pandemic made public consultation too risky.

“That just seems to be a very poor excuse for what seems to be the sort of consultation they want to control the outcome of,” he said.

He said the government had in fact been running “pop-up” public consultation on other issues, and in any case, the belated invitation for his association to comment on conversion therapy was by email.

The government did not repeat the pandemic consultation excuse when contacted by The Australian.

A spokeswoman said Mr Barr’s plan to legislate was “no secret” and his central agency had held a “direct, targeted consultation” with “those most likely to be affected”. These talks ended on Monday.

This process enabled a “safe and respectful discussion” of an “emotional and sensitive issue”. The government refused to identify the groups it had consulted.

Being told that you are broken, can break you.

LGBT Canberrans are not sick or unnatural and we do not need to be ‘changed’, ‘cured’, ‘converted’, ‘healed’ or whatever term is used by practitioners harmful and outdated “conversion therapy”.

It’s time to put an end to this. pic.twitter.com/G01wN6XU1r

— Andrew Barr MLA (@ABarrMLA) October 31, 2019

Other institutions, including Sport Australia, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Australian Press Council have produced trans activist-friendly guidelines while refusing to say which groups they consulted, citing “confidentiality” or “privacy”.

A 2019 report on “best practice” in trans lobbying involving global law firm Dentons and a queer lobby group advises activists to “avoid excessive press coverage and exposure.”

“Much of the general public is not well informed about trans issues, and therefore misinterpretation can arise,” the report says. It also suggests lobbying “early in the legislative process” and linking trans campaigns “to more popular reform” such as same-sex marriage.

Mr Spencer said it was “simply not true” that Christian schools set out to change the sexual orientation or gender identity of students, and warned that “frighteningly broad” bans on therapy created fear and uncertainty which discouraged exploration of a troubled teenager’s issues.

“We’ll certainly express our views to young people — we want them to know the truth as we understand it, and the biological truth as well, but ultimately it’s going to be the young person who makes the decision,” he said.

“The whole premise of Christian faith is that we have free will and it’s up to individuals to make choices.”

Mr Barr, hailed as Australia’s “first openly LGBTI” head of government, has an LGBTIQ kitchen cabinet chaired by a trans activist PhD student of “queer health”, Isabel Mudford.

Ms Mudford is on the board of A Gender Agenda, a trans lobby group involved in a landmark 2017 Family Court ruling, re Kelvin, which made it easier for under-18s to get irreversible hormone drugs without judicial oversight.

Trans activist Isabel Mudford tweets her support for menstruation diversity.

In February, Mr Barr’s government objected to the proposed federal law on religious freedom, arguing it might protect doctors who did not want to give trans hormones.

The new campaign for conversion therapy bans relies on a 2018 report Preventing Harm from the La Trobe University sex research centre behind the pro-trans Safe Schools program and the Human Rights Law Centre, plus a three page summary from a 2018 inquiry by Victoria’s Health Complaints Commissioner Karen Cusack.

That summary claims “overwhelming evidence” of the harm done by conversion therapy but provides no data or detail, and The Australian’s requests for a copy of the unpublished report were ignored.

The Preventing Harm report features only two trans interviewees, one non-binary, and none under 18, and admits: “Without further research, it remains unclear where and to what extent trans conversion therapy is actually promoted and practised in Australia.”

Lawyer Anna Brown, chief executive of the country’s main LGBTQ lobby Equality Australia, helped write the report when she worked with the Human Rights Law Centre, and was involved in the re Kelvin test case.

She did not reply when asked if she was concerned about gender clinic medical treatments causing potential harm to same-sex attracted young people.

The Canadian psychologist and sex researcher James Cantor has criticised trans activists for misappropriating research on the harm done by attempts to change adult sexual orientation.

“There are no studies of conversion therapy for gender identity,” he said.

“Studies of conversion therapy have been limited to sexual orientation, and, moreover, to the sexual orientation of adults, not to gender identity and not of children in any case.”

Federal Labor’s 2018 national platform opposes “conversion pseudo-therapies” and pledges to prevent harm to “LGBTIQ people affected by them”.

In an April 2019 bidding war for LGBT votes after the same-sex marriage plebiscite, Labor said it was “committed to ending the practice of so-called ‘LGBTIQ conversion therapy’,” which the party conflated with “gay conversion therapy” in a nine-page letter of promises to Equality Australia.

In another lengthy pledge letter to the lobby group, the Liberal Party’s federal director Andrew Hirst also used these two terms as interchangeable, saying: “The Morrison Government does not support LGBTIQ+ conversion therapy”.

A spokesman for federal Health Minister Greg Hunt repeated this line but did not clarify whether the government was endorsing the pro-trans expansion of conversion therapy bans.

The ACT government spokeswoman said the definition of prohibited conversion therapy would not catch “practices by health service providers that are necessary to provide a safe and appropriate service or comply with the provider’s legal or professional obligations”.

Nor was the proposed law “aimed at impeding on the expression of personal religious beliefs”, she said.

The new US-based LGBT organisation Gender Health Query faults established LGBT bodies such as Equality Australia for appearing to put self-identified trans rights ahead of the welfare of young people who might undergo irreversible hormonal treatment and surgery because their awkward same-sex attraction gets confused with a more popular trans identity.

“The younger that minors transition, the more likely it is that over-medicalisation for intense but transient feelings will happen,” said Justine Kreher, a GHQ board member.

“Also, the medical consequences of transitioning under age are very serious, regardless of how stable the trans identity will be.

“This explains why some trans people support minors waiting to make permanent medical changes.”