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Earlier this month we published an article on medical activism and the harm it has caused children treated by the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS”) at the Tavistock and Portman Trust in London, UK.  After a damning report found GIDS to be unsafe, the National Health Service (“NHS”) ordered it be shut down.

As the Daily Mail reported, the closure next spring of the NHS’s only gender identity clinic for children is a vital and long overdue step in righting the wrongs of what could perhaps be the biggest medical scandal this century – the routine use of puberty-blocking drugs on children.  Struggling youngsters will now be sent to new regional centres and given better mental health support.

Despite this recent medical scandal, the Government of Victoria is going the opposite way.  Thanks to the Victorian Government parents are living in fear of criminal penalties if they refuse to agree to their child being pharmaceutically “affirmed,” wrote James Macpherson.

The below is extracted from a more detailed and longer article titled ‘How the Public is Kept Ignorant and Fearful in the Transgender Debate’ by James Macpherson.  Read the full article HERE.  You can follow Macpherson by subscribing to his Substack HERE.

If you attempt to dissuade someone from changing gender you can face up to 10 years in jail and/or a $200,000 fine. Organisations can be fined up to $1m.

The laws are part of the Daniel Andrews Government’s Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021.  The Victoria government argued the Act was necessary to prevent barbaric and harmful practices used to try to help gay people go straight.  The argument relied on historical examples of abuses such as electric shock therapy, and wild stories about attempted exorcisms.

That there has not been a single case since – oh I don’t know – forever of anyone using electrodes to try to shock a gay person into heterosexuality was not considered relevant.  Neither was it considered relevant that anyone physically abusing a gay person in an attempt to change their sexual orientation could be easily dealt with under existing laws.

New legislation was required, the government argued. And the new legislation went much further than banning physically abusive practices.

The Change or Suppression Act bans people from praying any prayer or offering any advice that might be seen as encouraging someone not to be homosexual. A prayer asking God to help a person resist homosexual urges or to no longer feel like they are in the wrong body would be illegal, even if the person being prayed for requested the prayer.

And it applies the same prohibitions on trying to talk someone out of changing their gender identity.

The new laws place health workers, pastors, teachers and caregivers at risk of breaking the law for giving advice that, five minutes ago, would have been considered normal. Earlier this month the Daily Mail reported that some psychologists and therapists had decided it was now too risky to treat minors for fear they might run afoul of the new laws.

Crazily, the new laws make it risky for parents not to affirm their child’s chosen gender identity. The laws also make it illegal for parents to try to stop their children from taking puberty blockers – experimental hormone treatments that recent studies have revealed may cause a myriad of problems including infertility, organ failure, arrested cognitive development, and osteoporosis.

This was devastating for parents and children since many of the children struggling with gender dysphoria were also battling mental health co-morbidities that required professional help.

It is no coincidence that these laws – the harshest in the world when it comes to protecting gender identity – have been passed in Victoria. Victoria is home to Australia’s largest children’s gender clinic – the Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne Gender Service.

The Royal Children’s Hospital Melbourne Gender Service is similar to the now discredited Tavistock Clinic in the UK which was sensationally shut down after a review found the clinic was failing children. There are now 1000 British families preparing to sue the Tavistock clinic for alleged harm to their children.