“The Lord our God is merciful and forgiving, even though we have rebelled against him;” (Daniel 9:9)

100 notable Australians have written a letter to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, calling for a federal inquiry into kids gender therapy. The list of signatories includes senior medical professionals, academics, and politicians including former Prime Minister Tony Abbott and former Deputy Prime Minister, John Anderson. Lest we think this is a partisan statement, the names attached to the letter belong across the political spectrum. 

I commend the letter to the Prime Minister, and indeed, to Victoria’s Premier Jacinta Allan. 

This letter has been written off the back of growing evidence that vulnerable children are being led to permanent life-altering procedures without sufficient medical or ethical reasoning. Earlier this week, the Queensland Government was forced to act and pause transitioning procedures on minors when a hospital was allegedly caught performing dangerous procedures on children as young as 12, without the consent of parents.  Also this week in the United States, President Trump signed an executive order, stopping Federal support for the gender transitioning of young people. 

These actions are but the latest of a growing number of Governments around the world who have pulled the plug on radical gender interventions. Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden, France and New Zealand are among the countries who are taking action to ban, or at least pause, medical intervention on children suffering from gender dysphoria.

It took the bravery of young people in Great Britain to sound the alarm, young adults who at the time were children and subjected to the transitioning movement in the UK health system. The result was the CASS review (2024). The doors were blown open and the UK Government was forced to shut down the Tavistock Clinic and hit the emergency button to stop pumping children with hormones, chemicals and even surgical procedures. Despite the preaching by gender progressives, evidence is scant (if not fabricated) that children are better off having body parts amputated or chemicals injected into their bodies. 

The days of using children in the service of gender theories are numbered. I believe this is one of the great evils of our time, for it cuts against the very nature of being human, and being male and female.  It is to our shame that our society ever encouraged such ideas. Governments may wait until they are swamped with legal action or they can take the moral ground and take action now. 

Obviously, there are all kinds of important issues here. The note that I wish to sound in this particular article is one of mercy. Mercy is a word that has been used a lot over the past week in relation to gender and children. It is a word that can be used and misused, applied and misapplied, and so in light of the letter to Australia’s Prime Minister, I would like to add a word of mercy. 

The question of gender fluidity and children changing genders is often framed around acceptance and intolerance, affirmation or bigotry. Unfortunately, this kind of binary approach is unhelpful and is often untrue. It isn’t hatred to affirm biology and to believe that biology determines gender. Neither is it intolerance to appreciate that there are children (and some adults) who struggle to accept their physical bodies and the gender that comes with that. Words matter.

We need to differentiate between these children who deserve our love and care, and those who promote the ideology of gender fluidity and who are responsible for inflicting lifelong damage onto these children. 

For example, when Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde recently called for mercy and compassion, she wasn’t asking Americans to save children from gender therapy. She was calling on President Trump to affirm their gender confusion and enable the very social and medical processes that we know to be unethical and harmful. The Bishop may have used some of Jesus’ language but her meaning is a world apart from the kind of mercy Jesus offers and that we all need.  We may or may not approve of President Trump and much of his character and rhetoric, but his latest executive order is sensible. As the letter to the Prime Minister demonstrates, the concerns are not left or right, but moral and medical. 

I realise that there are some who have caste doubts over this interpretation of Budde’s views. But I am simply accepting her teaching. Words have meaning. The Bishop of Washington DC has expressed her views on sexuality and gender on other occasions, and lest she has experienced a Damascus road repentance in the last few weeks, her meaning in the sermon corresponds to her regular teachings. 

The notion of Divine mercy is too good and holy for us to revise or use in the service of political progressivism (and political conservatism). 

Mercy is showing kindness. Mercy is not telling children lies or encouraging them to believe in mistaken identities and shuffling them off to a hospital for puberty blockers and even castration. As the letter to the Prime Minister intimates, there are better ways. 

Mercy involves patience and love, and hope. Mercy doesn’t deny reality or brush aside physical or psychological anxieties but learns to sit and journey with someone until the light of day. 

As a Christian, mercy takes a Christ-like shape. I think of the episode when Jesus met a Samaritan woman (John ch.4). As far as society was concerned, this particular woman had 3 strikes against her name and so ostracising her was considered the right thing to do: She was a a woman, she was a Samaritan, and she had sexually broken past. Jesus didn’t follow those rules of engagement. Jesus didn’t reject her, he showed compassion. He engaged in conversation with her. He didn’t ignore or pretend that her sexual history was unimportant, but rather, Jesus went further and showed mercy. Mercy didn’t involve encouraging her to pursue sexual sin or impropriety. He revealed to her the hope of Israel and through this offered her living water that would quench her thirst forever. 

Churches who choose to mimic the message by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde are more damnable than any other group in society, for they claim to speak in the name of God and offer faux mercy.

Churches, if your community is not already a safe place of truth and kindness, goodness and mercy, you are not ready to receive the growing number of young Australians who need to know of the hope of the gospel. If your view of mercy means accepting the culture’s latest gender theory, then your church is not ready to care for those who experience trauma and who are struggling with their body, mind and soul. 

What did the Apostle Paul say, 

“Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship.”

Prime Minister please listen to the concerns outlined in the letter. And Churches,  learn mercy from Christ and not from our culture’s talking points. 

As Jesus said, ‘go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’

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Update: January 31st, 1:45pm, Federal Health Minister Mark Butler has ordered a “comprehensive review” into gender therapy practices for children in Australia. This is a good step. Let’s pray that it is indeed a ‘comprehensive review’. I will add, that until such review is complete, all such ‘therapies’ and practices should be paused, to avoid causing further harm to countless children