IN Bernard Lane’s excellent report for The Weekend Australian on the astounding debacle that is Queensland’s draft LGBT conversion therapy ban, there is this era-defining smithereen on the cancellation of a lesbian event because the woman involved doubts the womanliness of men pretending to be women:
In a tweet, Mardi Gras organisers thank Professor Pantsdown for alerting them, and said the event had been struck from the festival listings.”
More importantly, real professors of medicine have slammed the Palaszczuk government’s proposed “ban” as meaningless (there is no such ‘conversion therapy’ in Australia anyway) and potentially dangerous because the legislation would outlaw attempts to “change” an under-18 person’s preferred gender identity. By “change,” the government means bolster or regularise a patient’s biological gender, were his her understanding of it to be at the root of a treatable physiological or psychiatric crisis. That means specialists would be prohibited from doing anything to stymie physical and hormonal ‘transition’ to a preferred gender (the so-called “affirmative” model). Therapists and clinicians who help such youngsters accept their own physical sexuality over against a chosen identity could be imprisoned for up to 18 months. Imprisoned. This despite the fact that the safety and ethical wisdom of gender reassignment surgery and treatments are being questioned by experts around the world. The Mardi Gras tiff is a theatrical manifestation of a bigger, scientific debate:
Kim Oates, an emeritus professor of medicine from the University of Sydney, urged Queensland “not to oblige therapists to pursue (sometimes deleterious) hormonal intervention as the only form of intervention and to permit psychotherapeutic support for selected cases (of gender dysphoria), as this has been shown to be effective”.Before the rise of the affirmative model, the vast majority of young children diagnosed with gender dysphoria grew out of it, emerging as gay, lesbian or bisexual adults happy in their bodies.
Lane reports that Health Minister Steven Miles did not consult any mainstream medical organisations before holding a wholly fake “roundtable” on the subject. The Australian Medical Association opposes the bill, as does the Queensland Law Society which has described it as “almost hopelessly unworkable.” Activist body – LGBTI Legal Service Inc – supports the government’s proposal. While the minister is listed as the Hon Dr Steven Miles on the Queensland parliamentary website, he did an arts degree in politics and journalism at university before completing a PhD on trade unions. It seems that what started as a traditional leftist virtue-signalling exercise in relation to gay conversion therapy was commandeered by extremists to piggy-back compulsory acceptance of gender “fluidity” into law. Doctor Miles went along and is now responsible for one of the biggest goat rodeos in the long, entertaining history of goats. A parliamentary committee has now called for the bill to be completely re-worked. For the record, however, a Labor government was on the verge of jailing doctors for not mutilating minors. Gender-related crises in adolescence need to be treated by doctors with solid life experience, not by an authoritarian state whose goofball health minister is a union clerk.