On the red-hot debate about child gender clinics, Dutton can’t work out whether he’s Arthur or Martha.

If only the LGBTIQA+ political movement would leave their agenda in the bedroom as Peter Dutton wistfully muses.

Asked about Donald Trump’s declaration that there are only two genders, the Opposition Leader bizarrely took the conversation into the bedroom.

“I'm in the (John) Howard mould of not being interested in what's happening in people's bedrooms. I've got no interest in people's relationships.”

But the current debate is not about bedrooms.

It is about girls’ and women’s sports, male access to their private spaces and about the child gender clinics which inject kids with puberty blockers that sterilise them.

The Opposition Leader’s comments on Sunday in an interview with Sky’s political editor Andrew Clennell reveal that he is either incredibly naïve and misunderstanding of Howard’s position on protecting children, or he is trying to placate a small but powerful LGBTIQA+ political lobby and its backers within the Liberal Party.

It can only be the latter.

For the record, John Howard did more than any Liberal politician to stand up to LGBTIQA+ activists and to protect gender norms in law.

In 2004 he legislated to protect the definition of marriage in law, something Malcolm Turnbull worked to undo in 2017.

Unlike Howard, Dutton is running from a fight.

Like everyone fighting for man-woman marriage, Howard’s motive had nothing to do with prying into people’s bedrooms, it was about keeping what people did in their bedrooms in the bedroom and not inflicting it on the rest of the population which is what has happened since.

In trying to place himself above the “culture wars” and keep the election focus on cost of living, Dutton badly misreads Howard and continues to dance around one of the greatest medical scandals in our history.

He is essentially playing Russian Roulette with the lives of children at the hands of Australia’s child-sterilising gender clinics.

When pressed by Clennell on whether he would follow Trump and restore two genders to passports, Dutton said: “We're not changing, I've been clear about that. Our policies aren't going to change.”

So much for keeping LGBTIQA+ politics in the bedroom. A Dutton government will keep gender fluidity in public on government documents where government sanction of it continues to send confusing messages about biology to vulnerable children.

“I've been clear in relation to there being two sexes and a group of people, obviously, outside of male and female, a small group… who are intersex or indeterminate,” Dutton told Clennell.

Maybe Dutton is simply naïve. The suffering of the tiny number of people who are intersex or of indeterminate gender has long been disingenuously used by LGBTIQA+ political activists to deconstruct biological norms and advance the false idea that every child’s gender is fluid.

Three weeks ago, when Donald Trump declared there were only two genders and de-funded clinics which inject children with powerful puberty blockers and cross sex hormones, Dutton squibbed when asked about his approach and said he would not be following suit.

Pressed days later by Sky host Peta Credlin, who understands with crystal clarity what is at stake in the gender debate, he conceded there were only two.

He said girls’ and women’s sports should be protected and reiterated that again yesterday with Clennell.

“I think there is a real live debate in our country about what happens in women's sport. I think girls and women should be protected,” he said.

“I do think that a young girl who wants to compete in the 2032 Olympics, but can't place at the moment because she's got biological males competing against her, I think that's a real problem.

"And I think there is a debate in our country in that regard.”

Tick for that, although he’s made no policy commitment.

So-called moderate Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, again on Sky, said the Coalition would not be restoring the true definition of woman, if elected, in the Sex Discrimination Act.

Then last week, Senator Pauline Hanson moved yet another motion for an inquiry into the practices of Australia’s child gender clinics.

When asked about 18 of his Senators voting with Hanson and the motion failing because of other Liberals working with Labor and the radical Greens to protect the gender clinics, Dutton said the issue was a “conscience vote” for the Coalition.

Seriously?

On the red-hot gender debate, Dutton can’t work out whether he’s Arthur or Martha.

Conscience votes in the coalition have historically been for matters of life and death – the killing of unborn babies in abortion and the killing of the aged and infirm through euthanasia.

Because so many Australian children have been harmed by LGBTIQA+ gender fluid ideology, Dutton can’t keep dodging it.

The Crisafulli government was reluctantly forced to halt the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones in Queensland while it conducts an instigation following revelations a Cairns clinic injecting 12-year-olds without parental consent.

Days later, Labor’s federal health Minister Mark Butler tried to get the puberty blockers flowing back into the bodies of kids in Queensland by announcing a slow-burn federal inquiry which he said meant the Queensland inquiry could stand down.

Thankfully the Crisafulli government held the line, and the blocker ban remains in place in one state.

But the reality is no more inquiries are needed. The UK’s Cass Review proved child gender treatments are conducted with poor evidence of efficacy and lots of evidence of child harm.

The Tavistock clinic in London was closed two years ago as a result. Many of the Nordic countries have moved to stop the child gender clinics along with Donald Trump.

Australia is an outlier and Dutton, as a conservative leader, should be clear but he’s not.

If there was one so-called culture war issue which would be a winner for Dutton with mainstream Australians, it would be protecting children from the child gender clinics.

That he doesn’t have the courage to commit in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the harm of LGBTIQA+ gender fluid ideology is testament to the power of this political lobby and its grip on the Liberal party.

Protect your kids and grandkids, vote Family First.