2022 was an interesting year, in February a Bill called the “Conversion Practices Prohibition Legislation Act 2022” became law.

An article about the legislation makes the new law sound great…

“This new legislation isn’t about criminalising open and respectful conversations about sexuality and gender,” they wrote. “It’s been carefully designed to make sure that general expressions of religious beliefs or principles — as well as health practitioners or other people providing legitimate care and advice — won’t be penalised.”

However, less than 6 months later a groundbreaking documentary called “What is a Women” came out, we now find ourselves in a situation where we need to work through the issues that this legislation causes.

But before we get into the legislation we need to consider an important premise. The modern left is famous for using Orwellian double speak, and this legislation is rife with it. Consider this…

If a person says they are gay, they are referring to their sexual attraction. This is really indisputable because of its very nature, therefore trying to change who someone is attracted to would indeed be an attempt at conversion.

However when it comes to gender, if someone tries to change their gender, that would logically be called conversion. However this is where the doublespeak comes in, the gender activists refer to changing a gender as “affirmation” and supporting it as “conversion”. The fact that deliberately misleading language has made it into the legislation is terrible. But that is just the beginning.

Before we start we need to understand the key goals of the legislation, as stated in the act…

“Purpose of this Act
The purpose of this Act is to—
(a)
recognise and prevent harm caused by conversion practices; and
(b)
promote respectful and open discussions regarding sexuality and gender.”

Right away the problematic nature of the legislation is revealed. The act goes on to say…

“(2)
However, conversion practice does not include—
(b)
assisting an individual who is undergoing, or considering undergoing, a gender transition; or”

So right away we have Orwellian double speak. A gender transition is conversion. However this conversion is legal and protected by the act. What the legislation does is make it illegal to prevent conversion and prevent the transition. To make it clear if a surgeon is planning on castrating a boy or removing breasts then the benefits can be discussed (are there any benefits?), but a parent is not allowed to disagree. The legislation is designed explicitly to protect only one side of the debate, correct me if I am wrong, New Zealand is meant to be a free country right?

Most importantly we have constitutional legislation in New Zealand that exists to protect our basic rights. The Bill or Rights Act states…

“13 Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion
Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion, and belief, including the right to adopt and to hold opinions without interference.”

It also states…

“15 Manifestation of religion and belief
Every person has the right to manifest that person’s religion or belief in worship, observance, practice, or teaching, either individually or in community with others, and either in public or in private.”

So lets see what this “conversion” legislation says about religious freedom, keeping in mind it was advertised as being carefully designed to respect religious freedom.

It gives an example of a conversion practice as “carrying out a prayer-based practice, a deliverance practice, or an exorcism intending to change or suppress an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

So if you have a child of say 15 years of age, and that child… a boy, wakes up one day and decides they are a girl, if you say a prayer in public for them to find the strength to realise they are a boy. You have committed a crime against this act as it is written.

It is unclear how far this legislation could reach, if a Priest gave a sermon disagreeing with gender ideology, and encouraged the congregation to pray on the matter. If one person at the back is harbouring the mistaken idea that they were “born in the wrong body”, has that priest committed “conversion therapy”. What if the prayer was broadcast via a live radio broadcast? The legislation doesn’t mention where the like would be drawn. Its vagueness on the limits makes it a powerful weapon of censorship.

Now lets get real, this legislation does not respect freedom of religion, it directly violates both sections of the Bill of Rights Act mentioned above.

I can’t stress enough how bad this is, if you are not even allowed to pray for you child, a boy, to have the strength to realise that they are a boy. Then we do not have religious freedom in this country. This legislation has killed the right.

Now if that isn’t bad enough it gets worse.

The conversion act states…
“A person commits an offence if the person performs a conversion practice on an individual and knows that, or is reckless as to whether, the individual—
(a)
is under the age of 18 years; or
(b)
lacks, wholly or partly, the capacity to understand the nature, and to foresee the consequences, of decisions in respect of matters relating to their health or welfare.”

The punishment for this offence is 3 years.

This is interesting because you need to understand that even telling a 15 year old boy, who suddenly claims to be a girl, that they are in fact a boy is now considered “conversion”.

So you can go to prison for 3 years for that! And if you didn’t know that they are under 18 then you are reckless! I guess that means no discount on your sentence for your “recklessness”.

It also makes it an offence to “convert” a person who doesn’t understand the consequence of their decisions regarding their welfare. This could be interpreted to mean the entire trans community. I mean how many people who take medication they don’t need. Have themselves sterilized and have their genitals mutilated really understand and can foresee the consequences of their decisions? Logically if they did they wouldn’t be doing it. There is a follow on problem to this that trans people are legally allowed to groom people who lack the ability to foresee the consequences, it’s just the rational side of the argument that is blocked.

Now this is incredibly problematic, lets say a 5 year old claims they are a lion, or perhaps a pirate. Obviously any parent can say they are not a lion or pirate.

However under this act if a 5 year old boy suddenly claims they are a girl. Simply saying they are a boy is illegal.

This is a bizarre and totalitarian restriction of both the freedom of parents and free speech in general.

Can you tell me any other situation where a parent can go to prison simply for telling a child the truth?

The truth should never be illegal in any society. Nor should it be condemned or censored.

The Bill of Rights Act also says…

“14 Freedom of expression
Everyone has the right to freedom of expression, including the freedom to seek, receive, and impart information and opinions of any kind in any form.”

So according to the Bill of Rights I have a right to impart an opinion of any form. So even my freedom of religion is dead, at least I have free speech. Lets see.

So the Bill of Rights act not only protects free speech, it protects any opinion regardless of truthfulness.

But the Conversion act not only destroys freedom of religion, it also destroys free speech and parental rights as well…

To be clear, the promoters of this bill mentioned that general expressions of principals won’t be penalised. However this is where it gets complicated.

The bill only prohibits “practice, sustained effort, or treatment”

Now having a conversation or even a prayer is speech, not practice. Practice, sustained effort, or treatment refer to deeds not words.

The definition of Practice shows this clearly…

“the actual application or use of an idea, belief, or method, as opposed to theories relating to it.”

So because someone having a conversation isn’t applying an idea it shouldn’t be prohibited by the act.

However, and this is where the attack on free speech comes into play, the act gives example of what it considers conversion practice, such as…

“using shame”
“encouraging an individual”
“carrying out a prayer”

In other words there is a contradiction in the legislation itself, the legislation bans practices, the examples given ban words.
So we must be clear, the intent of the law was and is to ban simply having a conversation about it. Pure and simple. So this legislation has killed freedom of speech itself. I never thought I would live to see the day where a piece of legislation banned encouragement!

What’s really interesting is why the government felt the need to provide gender ideology with so much protection. I mean this ideology, along with all other ideologies are protected by the bill of rights act. So why does it need extra protection?

There are two basic answers.
The first is that it is infallible
The second is that it is vulnerable

Now if the idea of gender identity is infallible it wouldn’t need any protection at all. However we know it isn’t this option because even politicians are smart enough to know that nothing is infallible.

This brings us to the second idea, normally if an idea is vulnerable it is because it is wrong and simply can’t stand any sort of critique. Logically ideas that are wrong and harmful should never receive special treatment by law. Logically if a young person tells you that the path to their happiness lies in taking a bunch of unnecessary medication and getting surgery to have their genitals removed, the idea is so illogical that it deserves to be ridiculed so that person doesn’t make a mistake.

To be clear it is a mistake, their are multiple websites dedicated to people who have detransitioned and tell their stories. You can and should read them. But you shouldn’t need to, their isn’t a single happy and well adjusted person on the planet who will tell you that the secret to happiness lies in removing body parts, changing your appearance, taking medication you don’t need… and forcing you ideas on others.

You may say that I am ignorant of the history. Don’t you know that gay people were given electro shock therapy in this country? Yes I do know that, and it sickens me. However if you are going to try to convince me that we have made progress it will be a hard sell. Because we used to believe that electrocuting people, including mentally unwell people will make them better. Now we believe that cutting off people genitals will make them better. If you are going to tell me that is “progress” then you are wrong. In a bizarre twist worthy of Orwell’s 1984 the legislation that should have been passed decades ago to protect free sexual attraction, has been implemented in 2022 to protect those doing far worse harm to young people today.

The legislation takes a bizarre turn when it prohibits in section 10, the right of an individual to choose to have a discussion about this…
“It is not a defence to a charge under section 8 or 9 that—
the individual on whom the conversion practice was performed, or a person on behalf of that individual, consented to the performance of that practice;”

Now this is just bizarre, for a piece of legislation to protect and encourage a course of action where the person seeks happiness through transgenderism. It is now not legal to have a two sided discussion even when they consent?

Regarding the next point, it is not cut in stone because the legislation is not crystal clean on this point, but it seems to me if a parent has a 16 year old girl, suddenly comes home one day and says “I think I might be a boy”. A literal interpretation of this legislation seems to make it illegal to simply say “you are confused you are a girl”, or perhaps just the words “you are confused” are also so called “conversion”. I wonder if you ordered a DNA test and showed your child the result, would that also be considered “conversion”.

The bottom line is we are going to have a lot of people in our society making illogical decisions when logical advice is illegal.

Now we can’t have a conversation about the impact of the legislation without having a conversation about the gender ideology movement.

Matt Walsh did make an important documentary about the definition of a woman. Whilst this is a very important question, it is not the most important one. This is because there is a cause and effect principal at work. The reason we are now debating the definition of a women is because an attempted change has been made regarding the definition of Identity.

The correct definition of the word identity is…

“a person’s name and other facts about who they are:” from the Cambridge dictionary.

Another good definition is…

“Your identity is who you are.” (Colins dictionary)
“Abu is not his real name, but it’s one he uses to disguise his identity.”

So this is important, identity is about facts, and anyone making a claim that is not factual should not claim that it is their identity. So using a non legal name is an attempt as disguising an identity. As is a man with the correct chromosomes claiming to be a woman.

To be clear, transgenderism is not an identity, it is an ideology, a set of beliefs, and a very irrational set of beliefs at that.

What is interesting is J K Rowling, in June 2020 she posted a tweet that implied that only women menstruate, now if you apply the principal that people should never get in trouble for saying something true… this shouldn’t have been a problem.

“‘People who menstruate.’ I’m sure there used to be a word for those people,”
“Someone help me out. Wumben? Wimpund? Woomud?”

Now the storm of intolerance that attacked Rowling was massive. You can see a taste of that storm at turfisaslur.com

However what is interesting is that Rowling didn’t back down… why should she when she is right after all.

So I would like to make the case that those of us who believe in truth are winning the culture war. Here is my proof, in June 2023, 3 years after the mundane comment that landed her it trouble Rowling tweeted this…

“’Cis’ is ideological language, signifying belief in the unfalsifiable concept of gender identity. You have a perfect right to believe in unprovable essences that may or may not match the sexed body, but the rest of us have a right to disagree, and to refuse to adopt your jargon.”

Now this is an atomic bombshell of a tweet.

She identifies gender correctly as an ideology
She points out the right of rational people to disagree
She points out how wrong it is for people to force ideological language on others

But the biggest (truthful) claim made in this tweet, which I suspect went over the heads of most people. It she points out that gender identity and gender ideology is an unfalsifiable concept.

So an example of an unfalsifiable concept is someone claiming that they have a family of invisible pixies living in their butt hole. This is an unfalsifiable claim because they can’t be proven to exist, and therefore can’t be proved to not exist.

To be clear this is a massive statement. I have been arguing for years now that their is no good science proving any of the claims made by gender ideologues. That they are in fact unfalsifiable, that they are… bullshit.

However what is most interesting is the reaction… Rowling got much less hate for that bombshell than she did for her earlier mundane statement. That tells me that the truth is winning.

We are even starting to see this with some Trans activists who seem to accept facts and truth.

For example Caitlyn Jenner said…

“I see these Trans women are real women… no you’re not, that’s the bottom line”

Blair White said…

“A transgender child is like a vegan cat- we all know who’s making the lifestyle choices.”

If you would like to learn more you should see the documentary “What is a Woman” (if you haven’t already). However there is another video available for free that is even better. It features Jordan Peterson and Miriam Grossman…
“Gender Insanity and Parental Trauma | Miriam Grossman MD | EP 347”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su2Z4_iQHz4

There was even a random YouTube comment that sums up the culture war neatly…

“Don’t talk to be about identity, when you won’t even acknowledge reality”

This is a perfect summation because all rational people want reality and facts to determine what’s right and what a persons identity is. However the gender ideologues and the radical left seem to want a persons ideology and feelings to determine facts, a position which is so problematic that its unworthy of being refuted here in full, but asking one question will suffice… how can society allow subjective feelings to determine identity in a way that is consistent and universal to all. For example if I identify as the chief of police… does that make me so? The answer is obvious. Facts determine identity, not vice versa.

I mentioned the purpose of the act earlier. I would now like to mention a couple of things about that purpose that need to be discussed.

“Recognise and prevent harm caused by conversion practices”

This is problematic, to be clear if someone insults your dead mother, calls you names or slings any other insult at you, they are not harming you.

This is because words cannot harm. If someone reacts emotionally to harsh words that is the choice of the person hearing those words. It is an indisputable fact that a person has a choice when they hear something they disagree with to react rationally or emotionally. That is their choice.

However this legislation attempts to drag us into the gutter of free speech by implying that someone’s guilt is determined by the emotional reaction of the person listening. This can never be acceptable in a free society. Whether you go to jail or not should never depend on the tears of someone listening you your words.

However the second purpose is just as bad, lets start with the exact wording then do a contraction…
“promote respectful and open discussions regarding sexuality and gender.”
promote respectful discussions regarding gender
promote gender

This legislation makes it crystal clear that it is there to push an ideology, and anyone who disrespects the ideology must be punished as a heretic. In a free society we should never have an ideology like this being pushed on anyone, especially at the expense of our basic rights.

Regarding the legal consequences of the legislation, as far as I know the legislation is untested. I shudder to think of the poor judge who has to wade through the mess. Or the Jury who should enact nullification. On the one hand the legislation claims to be banning practices, but the examples mention things that should be covered by free speech. One thing is clear, free speech, parental rights, freedom of religion and freedom itself all hang in the balance.

Lastly, regarding the Politicians who voted for this. It’s likely that every party except National compelled it’s members to vote for this legislation regardless of their opinions. I do wonder if some of those politicians, seeing now what has happened to Rowling simply for saying the truth. Do any of them regret it?

What about when they watched What is a Woman… I wonder how they felt seeing a woke politician being asked a simple question about the consequences of his legislation… and not even being able to stomach staying in the room facing the consequences of his decisions, let alone being able to answer the questions.

I do wonder how many of the politicians who voted for this legislation really believe in what they were doing. Or were they just buying votes from the woke mob by sacrificing our liberty at the alter of political correctness?