Welcome to the Australian Christian Lobby Voice for Values this episode contains
discussion of themes some may find confronting
Welcome to Voice for Values I'm Martyn Iles
In the last couple of episodes we have been discussing this idea of heteronormativity
A word that has been given to a range of realities in our society that you and I once took for granted
Facts such as boys are boys and girls are girls
And that boys and girls grow to become men and women men and women tend to be attracted to each other
In heterosexual relationships and they tend to marry and form classical families
This is now given a political label of heteronormativity
and activists are seeking on many fronts to undermine this feature of Western culture
We talked about the philosophy that underlies this queer theory in the first episode
We talked in the last episode about some of the legal agendas that are going on with changes to policy and legislation
Specifically around marriage anti-discrimination laws and conversion therapies
Which seek to entrench queer normativity in place of heteronormativity in our political structures
Today I am joined once again by our resident expert on such matters Dr. Elisabeth Taylor the Director of ACL's Research
Dr. Taylor welcome to the program
Thank you very much
Dr. Taylor in today's episode
I'm really interested in hunkering down into particularly the education system and other
parts of our society that seek to target children with this belief
That attacks heteronormativity and in its place
indoctrinates children around to a queer normative way of life
And how that's being done and what in fact are the consequences and you know
One of the key places this is happening and this has become very well-known through say for Safe Schools program
and all the publicity that that received and various other programs of its type
one of the places that it's happening very strongly is in the education system in our schools
So how is it that the children of perhaps all of our listeners but children in Australian society at large are coming into contact with
queer theory queer normativity and attacks against heterosexual ideas
Well all through the school system
we've talked a little bit in previous episodes about the influence of social media and even
publications for teenagers like Teen Vogue who you wouldn't necessarily think we're particularly radical, but even the mainstream media the ABC is very
Telling good news stories about
Transgender people families that have managed transitioning and it's all worked out marvelously
Polyamorous relationships that have saved marriages and how great all of that is
So there's a very positive spin put on a lot of this
You know in a number of different ways all through culture, but specifically in the school system
The Safe Schools program is one that they wrote a curriculum called 'The All Of Us Curriculum'
And that they've now recognised is really an overreach because it was explaining very clearly for the benefit of school children
this worldview that they are promulgating whereby
sexuality and gender
exists on a spectrum it's it's not binary and
Gender is independent of biology
There's a whole range of things there
But it's basically queer theory
and for a long time the Education Minister was reluctant to
recognize that queer theory was being taught in schools
And if you talk to I've had letters from the Department of Education and Western Australia
For example saying Safe Schools has nothing at all to do with queer theory
but of course this is nonsense because you can only say that if you've not read the curriculum or if you don't understand what queer theory is
because this is very clearly queer theory being offered up to children as though it's truth
And I was speaking to some activists after a protest and there was quite an interesting conversation because they were saying
Yes of course Safe Schools is teaching queer theory to children what's wrong with that?
Because they're from their point of view they were saying what queer theory doesn't teach that heterosexuality is wrong
you're very welcome to be heterosexual within queer theory, but what's interesting about that is that
Heterosexuality is entirely invisible in queer theory
So particularly when you think that adolescence is the stage when
the job of adolescence really is to go and find out who you are in the world
What is your own identity and what these programs are teaching
Now that the essential parts of identity that you really need to nut out as a priority
are your sexual orientation and your gender identity and once you've worked those things out that you'll know exactly who you really are
And these teaching tools that we're talking about
Whether it's something that is presented by the Safe Schools coalition or whether it's one of these others like the gender bread person and this was
found in some Queensland schools and is used overseas and various others
Basically the way they teach queer theory to a child is to say hey start thinking about yourself differently
Start thinking about who you're attracted to on one spectrum how you identify in your heart about your gender on another spectrum
You know what your biological sex looks like on another spectrum
and so they break up all of these things and they ask kids
am I right in this
they ask kids to identify where they sit between the two extremes whether it's gay and straight
Or whether it's male or female or whether it's any of the other spectrums
Which you may be able to enlighten us - they're asked to nominate a place on the spectrum where they may find themselves
Rather than just saying I am a boy I am a girl
The teaching tool itself is presented as if they're probably somewhere in between
Yeah
That's right
because that's the effect of looking at a spectrum is that you would
Imagine a bell curve you imagine that most people are sort of somewhere in the middle, aren't they? And
So what essentially what's being taught and it's through quite a lot of different HP
Health and physical education curricula, so it was in crossroads in New South Wales
It informs the respectful relationships of materials in Victoria
But it's basically the idea that biology sex gender and gender expression
vary independently
So they all exist on a spectrum and they all vary independently
So once you've worked and you put those four things together, there's an infinite number of combinations
And so therefore you can find out the unique properties that make you distinctly you if you work out if you work this out now
The schools aren't saying it tell me where you fit on this spectrum
but they're just presenting an anthropology of belief about the human person, which is
fundamentally different to anything that most parents I think out there would recognise
And I think most parents are looking at these tools
I think the opposition leader in Queensland said Deb Frecklington when they found the gender bred person in Queensland schools
She said that you know she was confused by looking at the teaching tools because there's so many infinite options
about how you may feel about yourself the question you ask is how do I know whether I feel this way?
That's right
So there's a confusing element to this is that correct?
Absolutely and also the promotion of the idea that you need to explore
so and I think this is one of the things that is quite sad about this is that
We used to have a whole range of different relationships which were regarded as good and wholesome
But now it's all sexualized
So if you are attracted to someone or if you admire them, well, that might be a sexual attraction
Maybe you ought to explore that more
Maybe you're bisexual and ow will you know unless you've tried it
So if two girls are besties in year 10, they may in fact be lesbians
That's right well, that's right
Why wait till you 10, you know, we've got some in year 5
And so these innocent friendships are being sexualized and promoted as sexual and
Children are being encouraged to regard them as sexual and I think that that's a shame
So I want to return to this idea then of what happens with children who are confused with this ideology through the schooling system
And other parts of society once once this work is done
We'll be right back after this
Voice for Values at acl.org.au
Welcome back to voice for values I'm Martyn Iles
I'm joined today by the Australian Christian Lobby's Director of Research
Dr. Elisabeth Taylor to talk in our third episode about heteronormativity
What these beliefs about being straight about being boys and girls gender sexuality marriage, etc
how they are being attacked by activists through policies and laws in our society, but also
pertinent to today's episode through the education system
And we've talked quite a bit about the teaching tools that are used in our schools and that children are exposed to and
the confusing effect that they can have on a child particularly in relation to what their gender identity might be and what their
sexuality might be and the encouragement that they receive to explore those things which could be potentially
harmful, but I want to now just take a step back and have a look at
you have now children that have been exposed to these teaching tools and maybe
substantially confused as a result or certainly are exploring things that you and I were never
encouraged to explore in the past and it could lead them down all kinds of avenues
What happens now?
Let's say a child says well, I think I might feel like a boy and not a girl anymore what happens to them?
So if you look at the Education Department policies in different states
There they have elaborated how to treat transgender
We'll just talk about transgenderism for these purposes
because transgenderism in children is a relatively new idea
There are adult transgender people who felt that they always knew that that they were transgender and
so one of the approaches has there has then been to look at children who express some sort of gender dysphoria
and to believe that that will persist
In fact the evidence overwhelmingly says that
conservatively at least eighty percent of those children post puberty will not identify as transgender and yet
And this is very difficult to explain the logic here
The policy is nevertheless to affirm as a permanent fixed property the gender expression that a child states at any age
and this is happening now for preschoolers as well
and so if at school is presented with a child who says no actually
I know I look like a girl but I'm a boy in South Australia
For example, the role of the principal is to affirm that child in the opposite gender even without the parents knowledge or consent
So I think this is something that most parents would find quite alarming my little daughter Dorothy's going off to school and at school
She's being treated as though she is
Sam all day long she's wearing a boy's uniform and and being treated by everybody
There is oh, she's a boy and then she's coming home to me still I'm in the dark about it
I still think Dorothy's just being treated like a girl at school in
Victoria they've gone one further and said it may be necessary to affirm a child, you know
Different gender identity even without any sort of specialist backup at all. So no medical intervention. No parents
No teachers and no counselors
Nobody is there to say or to even question it they just they need to affirm
In fact looking at the policies you think you'd just be safest affirming any gender as long as it's not congruent with biology and you'll be safe
And by affirmation really we're talking at this stage about social transition
So the girl is the call to he and given the different uniform and so forth
But of course once the social transition is in place and the child becomes
used to being treated as the opposite gender or whatever gender identity it may be as you said in the Victorian case
other things can follow from there is that there's puberty blockers there's hormones and things like that
so you can actually embark on a very radical trajectory towards gender reassignment
I mean, what is the wisdom of doing that to a child if a child comes up and says I'm gender dysphorical
I feel like something else
There's that pathway or there's the pathway of saying, no Dorothy you're Dorothy you're a girl
How about we wait around you keep wearing your dress and we'll see how things go particularly with adolescents
What's the wisdom of either of those approaches?
I absolutely can't understand why you would want to transition Dorothy before puberty before you found out whether or not she is one
You know one of the two in ten who conservatively speaking won't be happy being Dorothy on the other side of puberty
I really can't understand the the long-term benefits of that but it is
wrapped up in compassion that we are affirming Dorothy as Sam because you know, she really is a boy
but as you say the medical effects of getting that wrong are incredible because Dorothy is
conceivably if she follows the pathway of medicalisation is sterilised in this process
Double mastectomy's, hormones, broken voices and beards and all sorts of things
Well, that's right
Yeah, but even if it goes no further than social transitioning, this is an experiment
We haven't done this before we haven't actually
found out what happens to a generation of children who are told that they are somebody else
from the age of four and this is an extraordinary thing
And the chances of a child then coming back and saying to the entire adult world that thinks that they're Sam actually no
you're all wrong and I was wrong all this time, and I'm Dorothy
I mean that that is going to be an incredibly traumatic difficult process for the child to
reconcile with their
biological sex and yet, that's the most desirable outcome because this is a recipe for happiness
it doesn't involve a lifetime of medical intervention and yet if you were to propose that then the
Transgender movement would say well that's transphobic because you're saying that being gender congruent is better than being
than being transgender and there's an important aspect of the value of the human person here because I think from a Christian point of view
everybody is equally valuable in the eyes of God and
And has the same
incredibly they're infinitely precious but within that we can say that there seemed to be some recipes for a happy life and
the suicide rates in the transgender population suggests that there are some problems associated with gender incongruence
which don't lead to happiness now the answer to that is to say that it's all stigma
And that social stigma is entirely responsible
So they don't find happiness because there's social stigma that says but as a transgender person
They're less valuable or they're not accepted in society and integrated so well
Because of heteronormativity because we've got these binary ideas
So this is why these binary ideas are actually killing people they're actually a form of violence heteronormativity
So Heteronormativity is harm
Absolutely!
It is hurting particularly transgendered kids
LGBT oppression is woven into our society
And so in order to get rid of heteronormativity and therefore LGBT oppression
We need to unweave society in radical ways
which I don't think many people are prepared for
Just briefly what about people who do go down the transition path?
Is there enough of them yet for us to understand whether or not that does indeed lead to their happiness?
oh, there are a great number who are detransitioning and they
are not met favourably by the movement
So if you go onto YouTube and you type in detransitioning, you'll find 40,000 testimonies
particularly of young women who are
detransitioning and mostly they're saying stay away from the gender experts because I was just going through a strange phase
and once I worked through those issues now, I realise I am a woman and I'm reconciled with my femininity but
Meanwhile, they've got broken voices and five o'clock shadows and there's received hormone treatment so it's tragic
So we're left really with the question hanging
What is compassion is it indeed that transition and that process that leads to
that brokenness and trouble
Or is it to affirm a child in their biological sex as has been done for eons under a so called heteronormative paradigm
This has been a most enlightening three episodes on the issue of heteronormativity
I encourage you to listen to all of them and I've been joined today by Dr. Elisabeth Taylor
Dr. Taylor Thank you for your time
Thank you, Martyn
Voice for Values from the Australian Christian Lobby at acl.org.au