For three nights running (9, 10, and 11 February), ABC News NSW spruiked NSW independent MP Alex
Greenwich’s bill to ban conversion practices. No matter that no such bill has been tabled in parliament, or that parliament isn’t even sitting, or that the text of the bill isn’t even publicly available, or that the draft of the bill hasn’t even been finalised yet. However our main beef isn’t the lack of newsworthiness or the blatant election advertising.
Our big concern is that the ABC misled its audience about the nature of Greenwich’s proposed legislation.
Greenwich’s bill is a Trojan horse that promotes trans-extremism under the guise of banning gay conversion practices.
Conversion ban, or conversion mandate?
The ABC chose to hide this, and instead shamelessly promoted him and his bill.
Yes, Greenwich’s bill would ban conversion practices for gay men and lesbians – so far so good. However it would also ban conversion practices on the grounds of gender identity meaning that the ‘affirmation only’ approach would become mandatory, with health practitioners prevented from making professional judgments regarding ethical practice and suitability of care for children and young people with gender dysphoria. Most ironically, practitioners would also be prohibited from addressing factors such as internalised homophobia or a young person struggling to accept their feelings of same-sex attraction, thereby legally enforcing conversion therapy for same-sex attracted individuals, who, under the affirmation model, are encouraged to live heterosexual lives identifying as the opposite sex. (LGB Alliance
Australia told Greenwich all of this in July last year. Not that it’s made any impression on him.)
Buried under the flag
Did the ABC coverage explore any of this? On the contrary, it buried it under the rainbow flag. The Thursday 9 th Feb item talked only about Greenwich as intending to ban ‘gay conversion practices’. Likewise on Friday 10 th Feb: ‘Mr Greenwich has drafted laws that would criminalise efforts to change or suppress a person’s sexual orientation’.
Saturday 11 th Feb was a little bit different: the reporter at least recognised that Greenwich’s bill is to deal with ‘gender’ as well as ‘sexuality’, and for the first time there was an indication that not everybody in the community is hunky-dory with Greenwich’s proposal. However the only opposition Aunty could see was from ‘religious groups’ with ‘biblical views’ – no acknowledgment of the droves of secular people with valid objections, like LGB Alliance Australia and the feminist groups who argued against conflating gender identity with sexual orientation when similar legislation was under consideration in Queensland and Victoria.
Thanks to James Kirkup at The Spectator, the world has known for three years how the international trans lobby hides its unpalatable proposals inside more popular reform – the Trojan horse strategy. This is exactly what Greenwich is doing here.
Aunty, you’re complicit in this. You’re behind the times. You’re misleading people. You badly need to lift your game.
Tell the truth. It’s what us tax-payers pay you to do.