MEDIA WATCH: Doesn’t cancelling Simon Bridges over Gay Conversion Therapy comments prove him right?
Simon Bridges criticised for ‘shameful’ conversion therapy comments
Golriz Ghahraman and the youth branch of the National Party have called out comments Simon Bridges made where he said banning conversion therapy was an attack on free speech.
I hate to be ‘that guy’ but isn’t cancelling Simon Bridges over his Gay Conversion comments proving him right about Cancel Culture?
For the billionth time.
Anyone who believes in a magical flying invisible spell casting Wizard for their moral and ethical compass and uses that magical flying invisible spell casting Wizard to force a sexual orientation on another human being is fucking insane and incredibly damaging.
You can’t pray the gay ghosts away and anyone suggesting otherwise is a demented clown.
I don’t think anyone should be able to charge money for Gay Conversion Therapy because surely it breaches Consumer rights and fair trade practices (but then again so would Tarot card readings) and I don’t think anyone under the age of 18 should be able to consent to these things.
B-U-T
Are we saying an adult who chooses to pray the Gay away is not allowed to?
Who will we be arresting here? The religious quack selling this nonsense or the person who chooses to seek it out?
Again.
I think Gay Conversion Therapy is crazy and harmful and stupid, but I think there are an enormous amount of things that are crazy, harmful and stupid that we don’t criminalise.
What I would hate to see is some religious nutter actively attempting to breach the law and becoming a martyr for this stupid cause.
But while we are on the topic of Gay Conversion Therapy and Gender Conversion Therapy, would THIS type of Conversion Therapy be allowed?
A couple are refusing to reveal the sex of their 17-month-old baby to their close family because they want to protect them from ‘unconscious gender bias’.
Mother Hobbit Humphrey, 38, and father Jake England-Johns, 35, who live on a houseboat in Keynsham, near Bath, said they are currently dressing 17-month-old Anoush in both boys and girls clothes.
The married couple, both members of the Extinction Rebellion climate action group, are also asking friends and family to address the toddler using the gender-neutral pronouns, ‘they’ and ‘them’.
I love that the Mums name is ‘Hobbit’.
Look, I’m old fashioned. I think parents have an obligation to love our children unconditionally and provide space for children to be children and that if those children decide in their own experiences that they are gay, Bi, Trans, queer, heterosexual, assexual or polyamorous they should be respected for their choice and be allowed to establish their sexual orientation and identity, but parents pushing ideological straightjackets onto their children, be it for religious or woke identity politics reasons, should be challenged.
Ultimately what we should be aiming for here is our kids to know they are loved no matter who they love or how they love. I’m not sure criminalising people who haven’t reached that place and look to God to fit into a heteronormative sense of ‘normal’ is the best way to achieve that.
Let’s at least agree on this, if you want to arrest anyone, let it be the person selling this bullshit Gay Conversion service, please don’t in a moment of woke overkill criminalise the confused people seeking it.
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I’m all for banning sexuality conversion therapy – many times it has been shown to be harmful and that it doesn’t work.
And I agree that it’s great if parents accept their children, however they identify.
But so much of gender identity seems to rely on sexist stereotypes – effeminate males and butch females. I think such non-conformity with gendered norms is absolutely fine, and shouldn’t be the basis of discrimination… buuut… it doesn’t automatically mean a person needs to transition.
I think parents should retain the right to decide if their child is prescribed puberty blockers, opposite sex hormones, and/or surgery that alters some secondary sex characteristics. Under age young people do not have the maturity to decide if it is right for them as the UK judges decided in the Keira Bell vs Tavistock court case. They deemed puberty blockers as being an experimental treatment based on the evidence provided by the Tavistock.
https://www.judiciary.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Bell-v-Tavistock-Judgment.pdf
As a teen, Keira was prescribed puberty blockers, later testosterone and a double mastectomy. In her 20s she decided that was a mistake, and that her mental health issues that led to her wanting to transition, weren’t investigated by the Tavistock before she was prescribed puberty blockers.
Some people find medical and surgical transitioning makes their lives better. Others find it doesn’t make them feel better about themselves, and was a mistake. There’s currently no way of telling if a person will benefit from medical and surgical transitioning – especially if the affirmative approach is used, whereby anyone who says they are trans, should immediately be affirmed as such. There’s no way of telling which people will later detransition.
The current affirmative approach, adopted by LGBT+ organisdations internationally, would regard as ‘conversion therapy’ any counselling, or therapy to deal with co-existing health i mental issues. Such therapy or counselling should be allowed, especially for those under age.
Mature adults should be free to make their own decisions about whether to transition medically or surgically, as long as they are fully informed about the long term impacts.
People identifying as trans,non-binary, etc who don’t, or don’t want to, undergo any medical or surgical procedures, remain, like many of us, gender non-conforming males or females.
Here’s the deal. I think free speech is important and that everyone has the right to say what they want (to a certain extent). But what he is doing is voicing his opinion that oppression and torture should remain legal. It’s hate speech. Also, freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequence especially when talking about social backlash.
Ok. Who do you think we should arrest if we make Gay Conversion illegal?
If we allow our thought to dwell on hate and the destruction of what we perceive as the other, we are the sinner.
If we let ourselves to be tricked and convinced by fundamentalist theological hoodlums’, we are the sinner
If we shut down speech because of fear, we are the sinner.
Don’t get distracted in this debate, those who want to peddle a perverse form of Christianity which a select few get to speak for God, are the problem.
Therapy is not speech.
In therapy there is an acknowledged power imbalance. The therapist has a duty of care towards the patient. All health services in NZ are covered by the Health and Disabilities Act, and that includes conversion therapy.
These are facts that contradict the nature of free speech. Entirely different.
If you believe adults should be free to make their own decisions about their lives and bodies, you cannot support a ban on conversion therapy.
Nah mate. Its medical mumbo-jumbo and will be regulated just like any other charlatan trying to pawn their false practices. It’s just hitting the headlines different.
Therapy is a form of professional expertise. If one does not have particular professional expertise, one should not be practicising it, because one could easily harm others. Do any of the fundamentalist Christians who undertake ‘ex-LGBT’ conversion counselling actually have professional qualiifications or expertise in this area, because one suspects that professional associations don’t approve of this either.
As for Bridges, the fact that Collins decided to take preventative steps against him suggests another dimension to it- that Bridges was trying to destabilise Judith’s leadership through dragging the party toward the unelectable raving right.