“The affirmation model undermines the parent-child relationship and the entire structure of the family by putting the parents in a weak and frightened position,” Dr Jillian Spencer
“Transgender advice causing harm to children” is the headline in today’s Australian newspaper.
Slowly, truth is outing.
The headline was generated because of a meeting of victims of LGBTIQA+ ideology, medical experts, legal academics and concerned politicians which occurred at the Victorian Parliament House this week.
The group is calling for an urgent inquiry into Victoria’s conversion therapy laws which passed with the support of the Liberal party and were Liberal policy at the last election.
Bernie Finn, who was later expelled from the Liberal Party because of his pro-life and pro-family views, was one of a handful of Liberals to vote against the laws.
He has now joined Family First has is the party’s lead Senate candidate for Victoria at the next federal election.
Family First believes the laws, which ban victim-requested prayer and jail parents, doctors and counsellors who advise children against irreversible gender conversion therapies, should be completely overhauled.
Those of us involved in the Family First Party have been among those, who for many years, have been sounding warnings and calling for action to protect children.
The party has been running a "Close the Gender Clinics" petition which has attracted thousands of signatures. Please sign, if you haven't.
Sadly Liberal and Labor politicians beholden to LGBTIQA+ political ideology have been blind and have run a protection racket for the LGBTIQA+ child gender clinics operating out of major children’s hospitals in this nation.
With children and young people being chemically castrated and physically mutilated by experimental gender conversion therapies, what has been occurring under the cloak of the rainbow flag is a scandal.
It’s one thing for politicians and the media to ignore what they perceive to be “fringe activists” like Family First and other lobby groups on what they see as the “hard right” of politics, it’s another to ignore the growing number of dissenting clinicians who are courageously speaking out.
It’s even harder to ignore those damaged – people now known as “de-transitioners”.
The confronting headline in the Australian was because of the Parliament House gathering which included de-transitioners Jay Langadinos and Mel Jeffries, two women who had their breasts surgically removed so they could identify as men and now regret it.
Langadinos is suing her psychiatrist Dr Patrick Toohey in the NSW Supreme Court claiming Toohey “failed to take precautions” to avoid risk of harm “in the nature of loss of her breasts, uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries”.
Jeffries, who had been sexually abused as a child and just wanted to fit in, courageously spoke to the recent Channel 7 Spotlight program about how she was lured into thinking she could change gender.
Apart from reporting by the Australian newspaper, Spotlight was among the first serious mainstream media investigations into the unfolding scandal occurring because of LGBTIQA+ ideology.
Sadly politicians have been silent about the Spotlight program since it aired.
Among the clinicians speaking out, there’s probably none braver than Queensland Children’s Hospital child psychiatrist Dr Jillian Spencer, who was stood down from a job she loved because she questioned using irreversible therapies on children such as puberty blockers, cross sex hormones and surgery.
Here is what The Australian reported about Dr Spencer’s contribution to the meeting:
Dr Spencer, who was controversially stood down from clinical duties at the Queensland Children’s Hospital earlier this year following a complaint about her treatment of children with gender dysphoria but remains employed by Children’s Health Queensland, said it was “not compassionate to ignore the complexity” of gender dysphoria by treating it with the affirmation model, which has been adopted across Australia, despite being abandoned in overseas jurisdictions including Sweden and Britain.
The affirmation model involves encouraging children who present with gender dysphoria to socially and then medically transition. This can involve the prescription of puberty blocker medication from ages 10 to 12, and cross sex hormones from as early as 14.
“The research studies indicate that treatment with puberty blockers does not lead to improvements in mood or psychosocial functioning, or in the symptoms of gender dysphoria.
“There is no evidence they reduce the risk of suicide,” Dr Spencer said.
She said treatment with cross sex hormones led to “lifelong implications of infertility, impaired sexual function and irreversible changes to the body, as well as the physical health side effects, consequences and risks.”
“The affirmation model undermines the parent-child relationship and the entire structure of the family by putting the parents in a weak and frightened position,” Dr Spencer said. “This is because the gender clinicians provide false information to parents that without gender affirming care, their child will … likely die by suicide.”
In 2016 when I appeared on the ABC’s Q&A program I cited Swedish research which showed the suicide rate among people who had had sex change surgery was 20 times higher than the non-transgendered population.
I was fact checked and found to be correct.
Sadly, parents of gender confused children are never told this.
This week’s meeting at the Victorian Parliament is welcome and more forums like this are necessary. But the information presented is not new.
The damage being done to children and young people by LGBTIQA+ ideology and the protection of it by politicians and the media is a scandal.
Family First is working to raise women and men who will stand for Parliament around the nation and courageously advocate for the truth.
While ever Liberal and Labor back so-called “conversion therapy” laws and so many other Woke ideas which are harming the economic and social fabric of our nation, raising this political movement will be necessary.