Proposed Victorian Bill is likely to harm not help women

The State of Victoria wishes to be at the vanguard of the sexual devolution. Sadly, Victoria is already becoming an unsafe place for vulnerable children who struggle with gender dysphoria. Just as with the recent passing of euthanasia laws, concerns expressed by the medical fraternity were overlooked in favour of radical political and gender theorists from institutions such as Latrobe University.

 

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It is not only children who will suffer from these radical and non-scientific agendas but also women. I know of one situation where a young woman was forced to play football (AFL) against a male who identified as a female. She feared for her safety which is understandable given the physical difference between the average male and female. As a growing number of women are now indicating if the transgender agenda continues it is likely that women’s sport may cease to exist in a few years time. 

A story emerged from the United Kingdom this week concerning a group of less than impressed boys. In an age when we are recognising how big the issue of pornography is among boys, a not so smart teacher decided to take a group of school boys on an art exhibition to see ‘feminist art’. The boys weren’t so much exposed to art as they were to bare-breasted middle-aged women! In normal circumstances, authorities would be called and the adults charged with sex offences, but apparently, this is ok.

We live in astonishing times.

In their latest effort, the Victorian Government has decided that transgender women are being discriminated against under current laws. At the moment if anyone wishes to change the gender on their birth certificate, sex reassignment surgery is required. According to the Attorney General, Jill Hennessy,

“Everyone deserves to live their life as they choose, and that includes having a birth certificate that reflects their true identity.”

 The proposed legislation will eliminate the need for women to have vaginas and so forth, and men (sorry, women) with penises can be legally recognised as women. You can imagine the social problems that will arise from such a decision.

In a piece in the Weekend Australian, Ms Rayner, a former state and federal human rights commissioner and University of Melbourne philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith, express grave concerns over the Bill and are asking for it to be rejected.

“Sex should not be a matter of belief…If progressives want to disincentivise sex-reassignment surgery, they should protect gender expression, or gender identity, or trans status, separately — rather than trying to shoehorn it into sex.” Dr Lawford-Smith said.

They have likened the Bill to last week’s story coming out of Canada where a transgender woman is taking a woman to court for refusing to wax his testicles.  That’s right. Once again, in a normal world when a man demands a woman to touch his privates she is entitled to say no and to be protected by law, but in today’s Canada, he is the victim and she the perpetrator. Indeed, should the Victorian Bill be adopted, we can expect to see all manner of confusion and also litigation against religious groups who insist upon recognising biological gender rather than one’s self-assuming gender. Indeed, it is not only religious organisations that may find themselves in trouble with the law but also sporting clubs and schools and secular organsations. It is telling that Dr. Lawford-Smith, a self-identifying lesbian, is calling for the Bill to be rejected.

This isn’t about justice, this is about redefining the fundamental nature of women and men. It is the insane devolution of humanity at its most basic form. Biology no longer determines what is a man and what is a woman. Chromosomes, hormones, reproductive parts and sexual appendages now have no bearing on what constitutes male and female. The only factor that matters is how the self defines themselves. As Ben Shapiro astutely remarked last week, is female a set of stereotypes or is it biological? We are being told that it cannot be biological because a woman can have a penis just as men can give birth to children. Therefore,  femaleness must be definable by social stereotypes, a criteria of observable non-physical differences from males. But of course, the dilemma is that we are not permitted to suggest that men and women have any differences beyond the biological. So which is it, is a woman defined by biology or by stereotypes?

I write this as a leader in the Victorian community. I also understand that because I’m a Christian, my concerns will be automatically binned by some; I appreciate why.  Churches have lost almost all their moral impetus after facing scandal after scandal. The sexual sins uncovered inside some churches and religious organisations is beyond evil, if that is at all possible. And yet, how can one stand by and be silent in the face of such unhealthy legislation.

This is profoundly sad and harmful, both for Victorians wanting to change their gender and for people around them. I have had the opportunity to speak to the issue of gender dysphoria before, not as a medical expert, but as a community leader who values all people and who is deeply concerned about the radical and unscientific approach being adopted by our political leaders. Victorians struggling with gender dysphoria deserve our care and loving support, but as most clinical psychologists will explain, the majority of people wrestling with dysphoria will return to and be content with their biological sex. Those who continue to identify with the opposite gender need our affirmation of their dignity, but not a confirmation of their self-misconceptions. We don’t tell people with other disorders that their feelings are right and true. Do we agree with teenage girls suffering from eating disorders that they are overweight? It would be cruel to do so.

The sexual revolution knows no boundaries. It is one steep descent with nothing but jagged rocks at the bottom. From time to time, the next redefinition and social regression slows down because of hairpin corners (i.e. commonsense, scientific fact, or moral integrity), and then it’s off at speed again until the next hairpin. But what is left? There are few turns left on this destructive road. 

“There is a way that appears to be right, but in the end it leads to death.” (Proverbs 14:12)

I trust that common sense will prevail, but in Victoria, we have little hope of that. In the midst of growing mistakes, the good news of God offers hurting and confused Victorians are better hope than the misleading efforts of our moral deconstructionists. The years ahead are going to create such confusion about what it means to be human. We need an example to show people, we need a Saviour who is good enough and loves us enough to redeem and restore. Thank God there is one better than ourselves to whom we can point our fellow Victorians: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Timothy 2:5)

 

(I made a small edit on July 29th)


New Victorian sex law a gender headache

by Bernad Lane

A law put up by Victoria’s Andrews government could expose women offering intimate services such as pubic waxing or underwear fitting to discrimination complaints if they reject trans women customers who still have penises, veteran human rights lawyer Moira Rayner has warned.

 

The new law would allow self-declared trans women, who possess a penis and have not undergone any sex-reassignment treatment, to change the sex that appears on their birth certificate, giving them access as women to equal opportunity protection.

Ms Rayner, a former state and federal human rights commissioner, said that, if enacted, the legislation could allow a Down Under version of Canada’s Jessica Yaniv case, in which a trans woman has lodged anti-discrimination complaints against 16 beauticians who did not want to handle her penis and testicles in order to grant her wish for a brazilian wax…

Federal Court Judge judges marriage

In the space of a few short years, we have created a new narrative in Australia, and it is one that our culture by in large assumes to be true and indisputable: do not judge another person’s sexuality.

When I took my 2 boys to the cinema last week to watch ‘Black Panther’, a new film was previewed, ’Love, Simon’, a story of a teenager who discovers he’s gay and falls in love with a classmate. Following this was Apple’s new advertisement celebrating same sex marriage. The new morality is clear and insistent,

“what you feel is who you are”.

“Don’t change. You cannot change. It is determined from birth.”

The weakness with this logic is that some people do change, as a Federal Court Judge has recently determined. A woman who entered Australia on a student visa, married a Lebanese man who is living here on a protection visa.

From the report in the Sydney Morning Herald,

“According to the AAT, the woman’s husband had been granted a protection visa on the basis of his homosexuality and feared persecution in Lebanon.

The tribunal wrote to the woman in January last year and said it was “difficult to see how the sponsor can have a commitment to his marriage to you when he has not told you about his claimed homosexuality”.

The woman’s lawyers wrote to the tribunal and said it was “not irrational or unreasonable for a former homosexual man to undergo a radical change in his sexual desires and now be fully in love and dedicated to his wife and family”.

The woman’s lawyers urged the AAT to consider the “cogent evidence” before it pointing to a genuine relationship, including the fact that the couple had a baby daughter.

But the tribunal found the couple were not credible witnesses. It said “the gay rights movement has, for decades, fought for the acceptance of homosexuality as a sexual orientation from birth, not something that … is a matter of choice or will or accident”.

The tribunal said it did not accept “the generalised argument that it is not unknown for a previously heterosexual man who has been married and has children, to enter into a homosexual relationship”.

“Without wishing to continue to generalise, it is most likely that such homosexual men have always been homosexual and have married and had children to comply with what were considered societal norms,” the AAT said.

The tribunal said it did not “disagree that it may well be the case that some heterosexual men have homosexual desires, or vice versa, or that some people are genuinely bisexual” but this was not what the husband had claimed.”

Maybe this marriage is legitimate and maybe it’s not; I don’t know the hearts of this couple,  but I certainly wish them the very best in their marriage. It is interesting though, the one thing we have been told incessantly over the past year is that we cannot deny other peoples love, and to deny them marriage is phobic. Indeed, who are we to even define love for them? And yet, here is a case of a marriage that doesn’t fall into line with the new morality’s code of ethics, and because of that it must be bogus. Really?

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Federal Court Justice Jayne Jagot was correct to dispute the Tribunal’s conclusions about sexual orientation. The notion that a person’s homosexuality is determined at birth has no scientific support and there is plenty of anecdotal evidence that demonstrated that some people do change. It is quite possible that there are genetic and biological factors which influence a person’s sexual orientation, and that there are also environmental and social reasons. The fact remains, some people do experience change in their sexual orientation.

This is one of the presenting dangers with the transgender issue. Young children are being taught in our schools that if they feel as though they identify with a particular gender they must be that gender and should now start transitioning into that gender. But as the research shows, the overwhelming majority of children who experience some form a gender dysphoria will grow out of it by the time they are adults.

It would be wrong and pastorally irresponsible to ever say to someone that they can or must change their sexual orientation. No doubt there are horrific stories about well-meaning people who have inflicted all kinds of mental scarring on people because they’ve tried to force a change. This is of course, precisely the kind of conversion therapy that is now being practised in Australia, and even within our schools, with impressionable children being led down paths that will create all manner of trauma for them in the future.

It is notable that a Federal Court Judge has exposed a popular narrative, although it’s unlikely to make any serious dent in the public conversation, because facts and non conformist stories are often not taken seriously. While many Australians who identify as LGBTIQ will hold onto that identity throughout their lives, others won’t. Some people do change, and others again will continue to struggle with their gender identity or sexual inclinations, but are convinced that they should live within the sexual framework outlined in the Bible. Sadly, such diversity of personal stories rarely reach our televisions, films, and education curriculum, because they don’t fit into the narrow narrative of the new Australian myth.

There is another story worth hearing, a better story, a more certain and freeing story. It brings clarity to a culture that is becoming increasingly confused, and brings hope to people who discover that the sexual revolution doesn’t deliver on its promises. The Christian message isn’t, ‘be straight and get married’, it is far greater and extends far deeper.

I am reminded of Rosaria Butterfield’s testimony,

“when I came to Christ, I experienced what nineteenth-century Scottish theologian Thomas Chalmers called “the expulsive power of a new affection.” At the time of my conversion, my lesbian identity and feelings did not vanish. As my union with Christ grew, the sanctification that it birthed put a wedge between my old self and my new one. In time, this contradiction exploded, and I was able to claim identity in Christ alone.”

While Butterfield’s sexual orientation did change and she is now married with children, this is not the experience of everyone who has same sex attraction. Indeed, there are many Christian men and women who remain single, same sex attracted, and living fulfilled and celibate lives. This can only mean that there is something more integral and sustaining and satisfying which is found in an identity that becomes ours through faith in Jesus Christ.

Charlotte Elliot says it so well. Her hymn, ‘Just as I am”, was made famous by Billy Graham. Even two centuries after she penned these words, they tell us of a wonderful story that can become our story,

Just as I am – and waiting not

To rid my soul of one dark blot,

To Thee, whose blood can cleanse each spot,

-O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – though toss’d about

With many a conflict, many a doubt,

Fightings and fears within, without,

-O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – poor, wretched, blind;

Sight, riches, healing of the mind,

Yea, all I need, in Thee to find,

-O Lamb of God, I come!

Just as I am – Thou wilt receive,

Wilt welcome, pardon, cleanse, relieve;

Because Thy promise I believe,

-O Lamb of God, I come!