How Parents will be prosecuted by new Gay Conversion law – a response to Marja Lubeck
There has been an opinion piece by Eddie Clark arguing Parents won’t be caught up in the poorly thought out Gay Conversion Therapy law.
Eddie is wrong.
Now I love the Rainbow Community, want to see them prosper and want their best interests advanced, however I see the Gay Conversion Therapy Law as a knee jerk reaction from a Government desperate to gloss over their failures in mental health, poverty and housing.
Most of the population thought this law would be about stopping nutty Christians from performing exorcisms to pray the gay ghosts away and on that front we can all agree but it’s quickly become apparent that this isn’t just about praying the gay ghosts away and could easily extend to parents who don’t give permission to allow their children to start puberty blockers.
Eddie’s review of the law is heavily invested in simply interpreting it from the exorcism point of view and only touches upon puberty blockers from an incredibly simplistic position.
Eddie claims if you talk to your child about not taking puberty blockers that doesn’t represent a systematic repression of identity which is fine, BUT if a parent DOES refuse consent, IT WOULD represent a systematic repression of identity which is exactly what the Regulatory Impact Statement from the Ministry of Justice warns about…
“conversion practices are attempts to change or suppress sexual orientation, gender identity or gender expression”. They are defined as practices directed towards another person “based on that person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression, and are performed with the intention, or purported intention, of changing or suppressing the person’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression”.
family interactions would also be captured if they meet the definition of conversion practices”.
“It would be a criminal offence for parents, or other members of a family, to attempt to change or suppress the sexual orientation, gender identity or expression of children within the family.”
…again, I love the Rainbow Community, want to see them prosper and want their best interests advanced, however locking up parents for 3 years because they don’t want to agree to puberty blockers is an insanely puritanical option!
Let’s not forget that the Ministry of Health in 2018 recommended that we DO NOT criminalize Gay Conversion Therapy, something almost everyone supporting this conveniently ignores. They argued education was a far better option.
Official Information Act requests show that in 2018, Associate Minister of Health and Green MP Julie Anne Genter was advised by the Ministry of Health:
“Due to the current protections that are in place, and the need to balance the rights of people with preventing harm, it is not recommended that a legislative ban of conversion therapy would be the most effective way to reduce the harm it causes…”
The ministerial advice also notes that people have the freedom to willingly engage in the practice, that protections already exist in the health sector, and that a ban “could be inconsistent” with the NZ Bill of Rights Act 1990 “which provides for rights of assembly, free speech and rights to freedom of religion”.
We on the Left go on and on and on and on about how counter productive and damaging prison is, yet the second it’s an issue we feel passionate about like Transphobia we suddenly become a Caligula revenge fantasy.
Again, love Rainbow Community, prosper, interests advanced but I was lukewarm about throwing Christians in prison for 5 years for Gay Conversion and I’m really tepid on throwing Parents in prison for not agreeing to puberty blockers.
This is Labour Party MP Marja Lubeck who commented on the Daily Blog last week accusing me of misinformation me for crimes against Woke dogma…
This seems an ill informed post. Really needs to speak with survivors and try to at least get a glimpse of what it’s like for them. It’s not possible to understand what it’s like when you’re standing on the sidelines using your imagination informed by your own experience which didn’t include discrimination, marginalisation, exclusion, ridicule, harassment etc because of who you are, because of your sexual orientation or gender diversity.
So much misinformation.
Fact check: the bill has a high threshold. It explicitly excludes “providing acceptance, support, or understanding of an individual; or facilitating an individual’s coping skills, development, or identity exploration, or facilitating social support for the individual”. Good parenting surely includes “providing understanding, facilitating identity exploration”.
The bill also requires actions to “cause harm or serious harm”. It requires approval of the attorney-general before a case makes it to court. It must be “performed with the intention of changing or suppressing their sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression”.
…claiming that you need the Attorney-General to sign off on any Gay Conversion prosecution isn’t a safety valve!
Look, this is either a feel good woke virtue signal that you never intend to actually use – hence the AG sign off, or even more horrifically, Labour and the Greens are actually saying these will become political prosecutions where the Police and the Crown are sidelined in the pursuit of law by a politicized Attorney-General.
Which one is it? Woke virtue signal no one will use or politicized prosecutions?
We currently allow young women to have abortions without parental consent, maybe we could extend that to Puberty Blockers so that we don’t get into situations where parents can be arrested for refusing consent?
I love the Rainbow Community but I also love not putting people needlessly into the hell hole of prison for crimes that Labour and the Greens can’t even quantify.
In a rational world I’m sure we could find a work around, but this is woke world now and anyone suggesting that imprisoning someone for breaching woke dogma immediately themselves becomes a target for a lynching.
Meanwhile 190000 kids are in poverty, 4000 in motels, 22512 are on emergency housing wait lists, generations are locked out of homeownership and the planet is burning.
But sure, let’s spend legislative time on this instead.
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Lubeck is trying to alienate parents, and succeeding. Any educationalist, and any parent, could tell her that children differ, and that there are few hard and fast rules that can, or should be applied as fix-ts for kids. Educational philosophy has always been child focused, and a politician, of all people, claiming that there is just one way of addressing a particular issue is the personification of ignorance and arrogance.
Marja would be better advised to stick to the basics, liking ensuring that children have food, and shoes, and homes and schools which not infected by mould and rot, and stop dumping on parents in sensitive situations.
“We on the Left go on and on and on and on about how counter productive and damaging prison is, yet the second it’s an issue we feel passionate about like Transphobia we suddenly become a Caligula revenge fantasy.”
While this statement is chillingly accurate, it causes me to despair of the misuse of the labelling as “left”, those who display all the self centeredness of any good libertarian.. or “right winger”.. correct me if I’m wrong, but as one who has embraced socialism since I was a teenager, being left wing was more about collectivism than individualism. Being left wing, (soc, dem soc) in NZ, for me at least meant that I supported the collectivist approach to how society feeds, houses, educates, heals itself, which, as a consequence, should lead to a better educated , healthier, more diverse society that is working towards developing a culture that has tolerance at its core.. Tolerance for the diversity of human existence, whether understood or not by individuals within society.
What has been labelled “wokeness” to me, has more relevance in historical terms to the “book burning” purges of vital information that have plagued humanity, and the planet throughout our history..
To call this behavior “the left”, as in “left wing”, is a misnomer. A misleading and self defeating misappropriation from those who would have the engine, and running gear of our developing country running like it could, and should, so that we can get on with the evolution of a mature, and tolerant culture… One that can look after itself. Together..
Dude, even if you are right, 3 years is a maximum sentence, so it will only be dished out to the worst offenders. You’re overreacting.
Over-reacting ? No, the sex and gender obsessed pollies are overreacting in a scenario where they are far from expert. But I guess that Oranga Tamariki can step in and look after all the children of prison- bound parents, short term or long term, so that’s that then, problem solved…
Morons such as Marja Lubeck are going to if they don’t know it already, are going to give children the right to send there parents to jail. Let that sink in.
Of course. The first person last week’s murdering Plymouth UK incel shot was his mother.
I suggest that there are Green persons majorly motivated by their own historical family issues which are getting in the way of objective concern for other real live children, or for the environment we all live in.
Yet another list MP from another culture, lecturing multi-generational New Zealanders on her perceptions of their shortcomings will not be missed if party ratings drop, and she does too. Trying to justify imprisoning parents, or punishing them, takes us places where angels fear to tread.
Well if children are abused mentally or verbally for the gender I’d isn’t it best if orangi tamariki step in as they do with other forms of child abuse
Clark and Lubeck are utterly disingenuous. Given that most children with gender dysphoria grow out of it, changing the law to require parents and therapists to affirm a ‘transgender identity’ for those children (which is what this Bill would do) is a stupid idea. It’s stupid for three reasons:
1. Affirming a transgender identity in a child sets them on a path of lifelong medication, harmful surgeries and a high risk of infertility and loss of sexual pleasure. That should be a last resort for adults with severe gender dysphoria, not a production line for children.
2. Children who grow out of gender dysphoria often grow up to be gay, so putting those children on a trans production line is effectively itself ‘conversion therapy,’ ie instead of “pray the gay away,” homophobic parents are given the option to “trans the gay away.”
3. The Bill would criminalise good parents and therapists, ie the ones who try to see if a child’s gender dysphoria can be overcome via therapy or by just waiting to see if they grow out of it. Whether or not they get prosecuted or even just subjected to the personal hell of a Police investigation that doesn’t result in prosecution, it is wrong in and of itself to criminalise those people.
Psycho Milt- The thing is, the long term physiological effects of puberty blockers in at least two specific areas, are not yet known. This means that all children taking them, are essentially being used as guinea pigs. Parents are right to tread cautiously here, and the Min of Health most certainly should. Lubeck’s declaration of war on the parents of troubled children is disgraceful.
Gender dysphoria is real, as are the psychological problems associated with it, but you are also correct in saying one size doesn’t fit all. Government should know this, but clearly it doesn’t.
As usual, it is the children of the poor whom this govt bullying will impact on most. The well-heeled can afford
expert medical, counselling and legal help, including further along the track, if things pan out in an untoward or unwanted way. Nothing is simple.
Marja wrote: Good parenting surely includes “…facilitating identity exploration”.
No. It does not.
To paraphrase some bloke in the US, “Get your agenda-driven, 50+ year old’s claws OFF my five year old child’s junk”.