Radical border closures and radical sexuality laws are both causing great damage:
Imagine losing one of your own twin babies because of government stuff ups and the out-of-control arrogance of our leaders. Imagine being arrested for showing concern about your children and their choices concerning sexuality. These are just two recent examples of how proud and power-hungry rulers in Australia are causing so much damage and disaster.
If their decisions did not have such negative ramifications for others, that would be one thing. But almost always foolish and dictatorial actions by our rulers can have very real disastrous outcomes for us ordinary peons. These leaders usually do not have to live with the consequences of their decisions – but we do.
A mother from the New South Wales North Coast is grieving the loss of her unborn child after seeking medical treatment in Sydney as she was worried it would take too long for a border exemption into Queensland. Her family waited 16 hours for a flight to Sydney and another six to seven hours for emergency surgery. Scans eventually revealed one of her twins had died. https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6185291220001
Like most of us, this poor mother was totally confused about all the arbitrary, irrational and draconian lockdown laws, including border closures. She had wanted to head north to a nearby Queensland hospital, but she was aware that earlier the Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk had said this: “People living in NSW they have NSW hospitals. In Queensland we have Queensland hospitals for our people.”
Because of this cavalier and heartless rhetoric, this mother feared that she would be stopped at the border, so she took this much longer, circuitous route to a Sydney hospital, and now one of the twins is dead. So much for “we’re all in this together.” Add this to all the other horror stories about closed borders and the damage they are causing to so many people.
Gotta love how some of these leaders think. As one quote making the rounds on the social media puts it, “The left thinks compassion on the borders only applies to foreigners.” Yep. They are usually fully in support of open borders when it comes to illegal aliens and the like, but they are quite happy to break Australia up into little fiefdoms, which may well be unconstitutional anyway. As Alexander Downer recently tweeted “I don’t think an Australian state can legally close its borders to other Australians under section 117 of the constitution.”
But let me turn to my second example of rulers drunk on power, foisting their radical agendas on the rest of the population. This involves a new bill rushed through in the ACT Parliament which effectively criminalises parents and teachers.
On Thursday the Sexuality and Gender Identity Conversion Practices Bill was passed through the assembly. Proper debate was not allowed on this and 85 per cent of parents in the ACT did not know this bill was coming. It is supposed to be about protecting young people, but it is really all about adult activism and radical sexual agendas. As one news report says:
From early next year conversion practices used on protected persons will attract up to a 12-month jail term or a fine of $24,000. It also provides for civil penalties, giving the ACT Civil and Administrative Tribunal the power to issue orders against people complained about, and order redress and compensation. The bill defines sexuality or gender identity conversion practices as “a treatment or other practice … the purported purpose of which is to change a person’s sexuality or gender identity”. Under the bill, practices related to supporting a person who is undergoing or considering a gender transition are not banned. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/act-bans-gay-conversion-therapy-with-sexuality-gender-bill/12600956
This is utterly confused and misguided. If a young person has questions about his sexuality, and wants help in removing unwanted sexual attractions, parents and others should be allowed to offer that if it is requested. They should not be treated as criminals and tossed into prison.
And the absurdity of this is those who DO want help and counselling to try to change their sex as in the transgender push can freely do so. The bottom line is this: if you are not happy with unwanted homosexual attractions, tough luck – you are stuck with it, and no one better dare to offer you any help. But if you are a young boy who thinks he is a girl, you not only can get all the help and advice you want, but parents seeking to even question this could also become criminals overnight.
Thankfully some voices of concern have been heard. The ACT Liberal Opposition Leader Alistair Coe said this about it: “The lack of clarity has serious consequences. It risks criminalising ordinary Canberrans who act with love and compassion. Kids could sue their parents.”
The former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson said this is deeply concerning: “We’re at a cultural crossroads, the whole thing has become deeply concerning. This offensive and very badly drafted piece of legislation is strangely enough at very best completely meaningless, but at worst potentially unbelievably dangerous.”
And Prof. John Whitehall, the National Chair of the Christian Medical and Dental Fellowship of Australia said this: “We do not support, in any way, coercive and aversive therapy. But we do believe that an adult should have the human right to seek and receive help with stress suffered from unwanted mental pre-occupations including, but not limited to sexuality.”
A detailed article by the Dean of Law at the University of Queensland Professor Patrick Parkinson is well worth reading. It concludes:
Parents ought also to be concerned. If expert practitioners have no idea what forms of therapy the ACT Assembly wants to criminalise, how can parents know? Yet if they take the child to Sydney, unable to find a practitioner to help their child in Canberra, they risk 12 months in jail. Chief Minister Andrew Barr has indicated amendments will be made to the definition, but whether they are satisfactory remains to be seen.
If the Assembly wants to prohibit forms of gay conversion therapy that have long since disappeared, so be it; but there is no similar evidence of harm from the practices of clinicians dealing with gender dysphoria. The medical profession should be left to itself to work out optimal treatment approaches. https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/6894776/acts-conversion-therapy-ban-puts-practitioners-at-risk/?cs=14264
Dan Flynn of the Australian Christian Lobby says this about the legislation:
Fundamental human rights protect more than mere expressions of beliefs. They guarantee the freedom to teach and counsel adherence to those beliefs; they protect the family, their privacy and right to raise their children according to their beliefs. This ill-conceived amendment implies that expressing those important rights may be criminal acts.
Parents who raise their children in accordance with their moral and ethical beliefs about sexuality and gender may become criminals. A faith leader who encourages their followers to live by long-held religious tenets on sexuality may become a criminal. https://www.acl.org.au/mr_act_conversionbill
Finally, one very important group dedicated to these matters is CAUSE (Coalition Against Unsafe Sexual Education). See their important website, Free To Change. Many concerned experts, including former homosexuals, are a part of this organisation. They are very concerned about these sorts of dangerous and harmful laws. As they state:
Our governments are trampling on people’s rights to personal happiness by passing laws that will make it illegal for people who have unwanted same-sex attraction or unwanted Gender Dysphoria to get any assistance or help at all. They claim no-one leaves their LGBTIQ lives and that all therapy hurts people. Professional counselling, medical assistance, prayer or support groups, even parental advice to children, are all now being labeled as Conversion therapy. https://www.freetochange.org/
They have put out a press release on the ACT bill which reads in part:
WHY THIS BILL MUST BE REJECTED
- Many people struggle with unwanted thoughts, attractions or mental preoccupations of various descriptions that distress them and the ability to seek help to be rid of these is a fundamental human right.
- Some may struggle with unwanted depression, others may struggle with unwanted addictions and still others may struggle with unwanted attraction to members of the same sex or unwanted feelings that they are born as the wrong ‘gender’.
- So, just as the depressed person or the addict has the fundamental human right to seek help for these unwanted feelings, so does the person who has unwanted same sex attraction or unwanted feelings of gender confusion.
- Parents should have primary responsibility for the care and well-being of their children and if they feel that their child should have therapy for feelings of gender confusion, then they should have the fundamental human right to seek such help.
- Contrary to stereotypes, this therapy is really no different from therapies used in the management of other unwanted thoughts or preoccupations. It will typically involve some kind of counselling and will often involve support groups.
- Children who are referred to ‘gender clinics’ often end up having major operations to completely rearrange their anatomy and take medications that can have long term harmful side effects including sterility. The therapy we are talking about has none of these risks. It is simple and safe and the study shows that it results in major reductions in suicide risk.
- Any laws that remove the rights of individuals to have such risk free therapy to reduce their risk of self harm is a breach of their fundamental human rights.
- Any laws that prevent parents from seeking therapy that is simple and safe for their children is also a breach of fundamental human rights.
- All Australians, young and old have the fundamental human right to get help for any unwanted attractions and this ACT bill will be a breach of this fundamental human right.
This can be summed up best by Dr Con Kafataris, contributor to the study:
“Sexual orientation and gender identity can be complex issues for young people. Australian parents and counsellors should be freed to help children with therapy and counselling about their sexual orientation and gender identity in the way that is best for them and to discuss all types of changes with them-straight to gay, gay to straight, transition away from or back to gender of birth. It is neither ethical nor appropriate for any government to think it can legislate that young people can only change in one direction and make it a crime to help them consider other options. Typically, proponents of laws like this one say they are needed to reduce suicide risk but our study suggests that laws like this one are likely to worsen mental health and suicide. Therefore this bill should be rejected as the authoritarian infringement of human rights that it is.”
This bill is but another example of derelict leadership running roughshod over the rights and well-being of ordinary Australians. Whether it is over-the-top- lockdown measures and border closures which are causing so much harm and damage, or radical sexuality legislation, they are all to be resisted before even more people are hurt.
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