The Criminalisation of Parental Objections to Transgenderism

“The hypothesis that gender identity is an innate, fixed property of human beings that is independent of biological sex — that a person might be “a man trapped in a woman’s body” or “a woman trapped in a man’s body” — is not supported by scientific evidence“

Lawrence S. Mayer and Paul R. McHugh, Gender & Sexuality (Executive summary: Part III).* 

One does not have to be in ‘religious’ to perceive that the Labour Government has embarked New Zealand on the road to ‘hell’, and that its ideology is literally ‘satanic’. We are dealing here with policies that are designed to invert, to turn normality on its head, and create a society that looks like an Hieronymus Bosch painting. What they are implementing with far-reaching, perhaps irreversible results that are atavistic rather than ‘progressive’ have included:  

1. a ‘hate speech’ act with extra powers for the secret police, including an informants’  system [1]
2. a pervasive programme in the schools for denigrating the Settler heritage and Euro-New Zealanders, instilling a collective guilt-complex on white children [2]
3. a programme that is designed to permeate the entirety of the education curricula, dealing with ‘relationships’, Relationships and Sexuality Education: A Guide for Teachers, Leaders and Boards of Trustees – Years 1-8, focused on normalising the ideology of ‘gender fluidity’ among children. [3]

Concomitant with the Relationships curricula is a private member’s Bill before Parliament, from Green M.P. Marja Lubeck, that has the support of Government, (and the National caucus, after Judith Collins gave the matter a Google search: it is reassuring that such important matters are considered with such depth), that would outlaw what seems to be dishonestly defined as ‘conversion therapy’. ‘Conversion therapy’ invariably has religious connotations to most, perceived as shaming the subject with recourse to the Bible. The example given by The Spinoff is that of ‘Anna’s’ experiences with a youth pastor. [4] ‘Conversion therapy’ is dramatized in Seasons 8 and 9 of the Netflix series Shameless, where Ian Gallagher, a young bi-polar homosexual, finds himself with a cult following, which becomes the Church of Gay Jesus, among the ‘Rainbow community’ of young down-and-outers, who invade church meetings, disrupt conversion therapy and save hapless youngsters from parents, pastors and congregations.

Green M.P. Marja Lubeck summons up such imagery in the private member’s Bill, The Prohibition of Conversion Therapy Bill. Lubeck seems to be dishonestly interpreting all interventions that do not support gender fluidity as ‘conversion therapy’, which is defined in the Bill thus:

conversion therapy— (a) means any therapeutic practice or treatment administered to a person that seeks to change the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity, including, but not limited to, any effort to— (i) change gender expression: (ii) eliminate or reduce sexual or romantic attraction or feelings toward persons of the same gender; but

(b) does not include counselling intending to— (i) assist a person undergoing gender transition: (ii) provide acceptance, support, and understanding to the person in respect of sexual orientation or gender identity issues: (iii) facilitate the person’s coping, social support, or identity exploration and development, including, but not limited to, any therapeutic intervention that is neutral with regard to sexual orientation and seeks to prevent or address unsafe sexual practices providing such counselling does not seek to change the person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

professional means a person who is one or more of the following: (a) a health practitioner as defined in section 5(1) of the Health Practitioners Competence Assurance Act 2003: (b) a teacher registered under the Education Act 1989: (c) a social worker registered under the Social Workers Registration Act 2003. [5]

A counsellor or psychiatrist is classed in the same category as a pastor shouting passages from Leviticus.  A psychiatrist practising his profession could be jailed, as could parents (under section 10, as ‘parties to the offence’) seeking help for their son or daughter:

Offence of performing, offering, or advertising conversion therapy (1) Every person commits an offence who knowingly— (a) performs or offers to perform conversion therapy; or (b) advertises the performance of conversion therapy. (2) A person who commits an offence against subsection (1) is liable on conviction to a term of imprisonment not exceeding 6 months, a fine not exceeding $5,000, or both, and the professional is reported by court to his professional body. [6]

If attempting to remove a person from New Zealand for the purpose, the punishment proceeds to one year imprisonment, or a $10,000 fine or both.

Questionable Premises

Introducing the Bill, Lubeck generalises any and all efforts that might question the gender fluidity doctrine. Again, it seems very dishonest:

Conversion therapy is a flawed and abhorrent practice that continues to happen in New Zealand. This practice tells people that, due to their sexuality or gender, there is something fundamentally wrong with who they are and they should be changed. It has no basis in modern science or psychology, goes against every ethical requirement for practitioners, is demonstrably harmful, and has no place in New Zealand.

Conversion therapy is a practice or treatment that seeks to change, suppress, and/or eliminate a person’s sexual orientation, gender identity and, or gender expression. It is a practice that has been outlawed in a number of countries. It is opposed by numerous organisations, including the United Nations Committee against Torture, the Royal College of Psychiatrists London, the Canadian Psychological Association, and the Australian Medical Association.

Conversion therapy is a practice that should be relegated to history. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of stories about the impact conversion therapy has had on our Rainbow community in New Zealand. Continuing to allow people, particularly young people, to be subjected to this unproven and widely condemned practice does not reflect the values of modern New Zealand. [7]

The Ministry of Education’s Relationships and Sexuality Education is attendant with this Bill, being committed to teaching children that gender is not predicated, and can be contrary to male/female biological sex. If parents dare intervene jail awaits.  What kind of Government is it that attempts to induce little boys and girls to question their gender, and try to determine a life-course at such an age? Under such ‘freedom’ the way seems open for the elimination of the age of consent. This is not far-fetched, given the nature of the ‘anti-authoritarian kindergartens’ established in Germany by the Left during the 1970s. During the 1980s the German Green Party backed paedophile lobbies as a reflection of its anti-authoritarian ideology. [8]

Bad Science

Like anything, what is normal and organic can be distorted beyond recognition. It is such legislation as this together with the Relationship and Sexuality curriculum that is designed to ‘convert’ on the basis of an ideology; to recondition especially the young according to a doctrinal vision of New Zealand as ‘inclusive’ and ‘tolerant’. This inclusion and tolerance does not include the rights and duties of parents, and the sanctity of the organic family (which is regarded as the seedbed of ‘Fascism’, according to Leftist Critical Theory).

The watershed moment for the lobbyists came in 1973 when homosexuality was declassified as a disease by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). Until then homosexuality had been classified by the APA as a ‘sociopathic personality disturbance’. The change of classification was ideologically driven. A particularly cogent description of the process of declassification was given by the widely experienced psychiatrist Charles W. Socarides. [9]He wrote of the ‘revolutionary changes’ this decision had brought to multiple factors:

A significant portion of society today is of the belief that homosexuality is a normal form of sexual behavior different from but equal to that of heterosexuality. Many religious leaders, public officials, educators, social and mental health agencies, including those at the highest level of government, departments of psychiatry, psychology, and mental health clinics, have been taken in by a widespread sexual egalitarianism, by accusations of being ‘undemocratic’ or ‘prejudiced’ if they do not accept certain scientific assertions thrust upon them, as if deprived of all intellectual capacity to judge and reason. It is my contention in this paper that this threat of revolutionary change in our sexual mores and customs has been ushered in by a singular act of considerable consequence: the removal of homosexuality from the category of aberrancy by the American Psychiatric Association. [10]

Socarides provided the historical background, referring to a 1963 enquiry into homosexuality by the Committee on Public Health of the New York Academy of Medicine. The committee in its 1964 report re-affirmed the then scientific consensus that ‘homosexuality is indeed an illness’, warning that ‘some homosexuals have gone beyond the plane of defensiveness and now argue that deviancy is a “desirable, noble, preferable way of life”’. Socarides urged an enquiry into the treatment of homosexuality, and this resulted in a Task Force of the National Institute for Mental Health issuing a report in 1969. However,  this had been stacked with those who had been biased in favour of normalising homosexuality. The Task Force report neglected to provide an opinion on homosexuality being ‘arrested psychosexual development’, hence lending tacit approval to its normalisation.

At this time homosexual agitation began to intrude on scientific conferences: ‘Meanwhile, militant political homosexual groups continued to disrupt a number of scientific programs both at the national and local level in which findings as to the psychopathology of homosexuality, its origins, symptomatology, course, and treatment, were going to be discussed. …’ Psychiatrists who maintained the traditional opinion came under attack in the APA journal Psychiatric News, and a campaign of threats of violence emerged. In 1972 Socarides succeeded in having the New York County District Branch of the American Psychiatric Association to establish a task force on homosexuality comprised entirely of psychiatrists, drawn from the ‘major medical centers of New York City’. After two years of deliberation the task force ‘attempted to submit its report on homosexuality to the Executive Council of the New York City District Branch of the APA’. However the report was ‘not acceptable’, so the task force published the report in 1974, without recognition by the APA New York Executive.

In mid-1973, Vice President Judd Marmor of the APA and John Spiegel, President, APA, and other psychiatrists met with the Gay Activist Alliance, the Mattachine Society and its female ancillary, the Daughters of Bilities, and the Nomenclature Committee of the American Psychiatric Association at Columbia University, New York City, to discuss the deletion of ‘homosexuality’ from the diagnostic nomenclature. [11]

The meeting with Marmor and Spiegel was fruitful: in November 1973 a cocktail party was held at the Washington D.C. APA headquarters celebrating the revised definition of homosexuality by the APA’s Nomenclature Task Force on Homosexuality, headed by Dr. Robert L. Spitzer (Columbia University), who had never previously addressed the matter.

The proposed change to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual went to the APA Reference Committee. Socarides and two others who held out for retaining a scientific rather than an ideologically driven approach ‘received a hearing immediately preceding the Board of Trustees vote on December 14, 1973’. Socarides was given five minutes to present his case, arguing against something that he saw would become a dogma.

The Board of Trustees voted practically unanimously against us, with two abstentions. It is interesting to note that only two thirds of the members of the Board of Trustees were present, barely enough to constitute a quorum for this important decision. Were some members simply avoiding a confrontation with the majority view already determined and adamant in their conviction? Otherwise, how could one explain their absence on such a critical issue? [12]

Several weeks later the Board’s vote was explained as being based on two items. The first was the position paper of Spitzer’s Nomenclature Task Force on Homosexuality, Psychiatric News stating that it was ‘essentially upon the rationale of Dr. Spitzer’s presentation that the Board made its decision’. [13] Ignoring the corpus of material on the subject, Spitzer’s conclusion was that homosexuality did not meet the requirements of a psychiatric disorder since it ‘does not either regularly cause subjective distresses or is not ‘regularly associated with some generalized impairment in social effectiveness or functioning’. [14] Secondly were the conclusions of Drs. Marcel T. Saghir and Eli Robins from their book Male and Female Homosexuality (1973). Socarides states that Saghir and Robins had not used psychoanalytic methodology, but rather a survey of homosexuals recruited via homosexual advocacy organisations.

A petition for a referendum on reversing the Board’s decision was signed by 243 participants at the APA conference in New York. In April 1974 a vote of the APA membership was held. Despite behind-the-scenes lobbying by homosexual activists, of the 10,000 who voted 40% disagreed with the Board’s decision, ‘asserting that there were no legitimate scientific reasons for the APA’s change in fundamental psychiatric theory’. However, only 25% of those eligible to vote had sent in their papers. [15] It is therefore a myth that a majority of the APA’s members voted in favour of the Board’s decision.

Post-Human

Since the politicised landmark decision of the APA there is now a 120+ selection on the sliding scale of ‘gender fluidity’. In the name of individual identity, the individual is being detached from organic bonds and reconstituted as part of an amorphous mass of pseudo-individuals all walking in the same direction. Behind a bogus ‘freedom’ the alchemical formula of solve et coagula: dissolve and recombine, is operative. Already transgenderism and transsexuality are becoming passé, with the new talk being of the post-gender post-human able to work better and longer:

At the beginning of the 21st century, however, posthumanist and transhumanist discourses about using technologies to intentionally transcend the limitations of the human body began to address the transcending of gender. Trans- or post-humans would at least be able to transcend the limitations of biological sex, and would eventually be able to transcend the biological altogether into cybernetic or virtual form. … A post-biological species would by definition – although perhaps not completely in the male transhumanist imaginary – be a post-gendered entity. [16]  

Further reading:

*Lawrence S. Mayer and Paul R. McHugh, Sexuality & Gender: Findings from the Biological, Psychological & Social Sciences (2016), https://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/preface-sexuality-and-gender

[1] K. R. Bolton, Imposing Aroha: Labour’s Brave New World, Action Zealandia,   https://action-zealandia.com/articles/imposing-aroha-labours-brave-new-world).

[2] Bolton, Aotearoa New Zealand Histories, Part I: New ‘Histories’ Curriculum, The European New Zealander, https://theeuropeannewzealander.net/2021/01/03/aotearoa-new-zealand-histories/

[3] Bolton, Their Target: Your Children, The European New Zealander, https://theeuropeannewzealander.net/2020/11/14/their-target-your-children/) 

[4]Sherry Zhang, Soul destroying: what conversion therapy in NZ looks like, The Spinoff, https://thespinoff.co.nz/society/11-10-2020/it-was-pretty-soul-destroying-what-conversion-therapy-in-nz-looks-like/).

[5] Prohibition of Conversion Therapy Bill, https://www.familyfirst.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/PMB-Prohibition-of-Conversion-Therapy-Bill.pdf

[6] Ibid. Part 2: Offences relating to conversion therapy.

[7]Ibid., Explanatory note: general policy statement.

[8] Green party in Germany to investigate backing for paedophiles in 80s, The Guardian, 14 May, 2013,  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/may/14/green-party-germany-paedophiles-80s

[9] Charles W. Socarides was clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, New York; taught at  Columbia University and the State University of New York Downstate Medical Center,  and was co-founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality; which is dishonestly portrayed as practising ‘conversion therapy’ (see the unbalanced Wikipedia entry for the association: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Association_for_Research_%26_Therapy_of_Homosexuality)

[10] Ibid.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] R. L. Spitzer, ‘The Homosexual Decision-A Background Paper’, Psychiatric News (1974), pp. 11-12.

[14] Socarides, op. cit.

[15] Ibid.

[16] George Dvorsky and James Hughes, Postgenderism: Beyond the Gender Binary, IEET Monograph Series, Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, March 2008, p. 7.