Scott Morrison put his head above the parapet for girls, women, and children in week one of the election campaign, but at the unfurling of a rainbow flag, took the knee.

Attempting to signal to mainstream Australia that he backed his two champions for saving women’s sports, Senator Claire Chandler and Warringah candidate Katherine Deves, Morrison trod on a landmine hiding in plain sight.

Monday saw Morrison heaping praise on his captain’s pick for Tony Abbott’s old seat of Warringah on Sydney’s northern beaches:

‘Katherine Deves over there in Warringah, you know, she’s standing up for something really important, and that is to ensure that, you know, when it comes to girls playing sport and women playing sport, that they’re playing against people of the same sex.’

While the Quiet Australians cheered, the reaction was swift and brutal from the well-oiled LGBTQ+ political machine and its media allies.

Suddenly left-wing journalists were trawling through Deves’ social media, unearthing ‘Nazi slurs’ and ‘bigoted’ comments about trans kids. I’ll return to this shortly.

Despite Deves’ high media profile as the co-founder Save Women’s Sport Australasia, the leftist media had never taken an acute interest in Deves’ social media.

But with the prospect of light being shone on the LGBTQ+ political agenda for children, girls, and women during a high profile election campaign, it became imperative that Deves be silenced.

The pile-on was on. A textbook cancel culture operation swung into action to silence her.

Within 48 hours, Morrison capitulated.

‘The government does not have any plans for that (Save Women’s Sport) to be a government Bill. It’s a Private Member’s Bill,’ said Morrison, backtracking.

Inadvertently feeding the trolls, Morrison went on to say Deves had apologised and withdrawn her comments.

As Morrison and Liberal campaign HQ folded like a cheap suit, Deves was further humiliated by being forced to delete her Facebook and Twitter accounts. Welcome to the party of free speech.

On Good Friday, Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott intervened, telling the Sydney Morning Herald:

‘She’s a tough, brave person who’s standing up for the rights of women and girls, for fairness in sport. I very much admire her and can’t understand the pile on from people who claim to be supporters of women’s rights.’

Abbott’s willingness to be crucified on Deves’ behalf seems to have saved her, stiffening Morrison’s spine enough for him to, by Saturday, resist growing pressure to have her dis-endorsed.

Her survival as Liberal candidate for Warringah by Resurrection Sunday is an Easter miracle.

But it was not before ‘modern Liberals’ Senator Andrew Bragg and state MP Matt Kean thumbed their nose at the PM, and Abbott, and joined the pile-on.

‘These kinds of horrendous views are not okay, and I’m sure the voters of Warringah agree. Time for the Liberal Party to beat them to it and disendorse her,’ Kean told news.com.au. ‘There is no place in a mainstream political party for bigotry.’

He also posted a tweet voicing a similar sentiment.

There is no place in a mainstream political party for bigotry. Coming out as Trans would be hugely challenging, especially for kids, and political leaders should be condemning the persecution of people based on their gender, not participating in it. https://t.co/3gMymtzvz3

— Matt Kean MP (@Matt_KeanMP) April 15, 2022

So, what are these ‘horrendous’, ‘intolerant’, and ‘bigoted’ views the media, LGBTQ+ political activists, and ‘modern Liberals’ say must be shut down?

News.com.au journalist Samantha Maiden breathlessly reported that Deves had tweeted that transgender children’s bodies had been ‘mutilated’ and ‘sterilised’, even tweeting the picture of a topless girl who had her breasts removed during gender affirmation surgery.

‘They (mainstream Australians) will not stand for seeing vulnerable children surgically mutilated and sterilised,’ Deves said, in the now-deleted tweet.

Instead of investigating Deves’ claims about the harms of LGBTQ+ ideology to children, Maiden wrote as if Deves had committed a mortal sin.

Yet images of these children are accessible via Google and there is a growing global de-transitioner movement, with UK woman Kiera Bell, who lost her breasts to LGBTQ+ ideology, serving as a prominent whistleblower.

There is no doubt that children are being harmed, as Stassja Frei, the founder of the Coalition for Biological Reality, wrote so eloquently in The Spectator Australia last week.

What about the assertion Deves’ used a Nazi slur? This is where it is important to read what she said, not believe the fake news.

‘I’ve got three small children. I have skin in the game on their behalf and people just weren’t willing to speak up and I just felt compelled to do so. I’ve always loved 20th century history. I think many people say, “I’d never be one of the villagers that stayed quiet when the trains went past.” I would have been part of the French resistance. But when all of this was happening and no one was speaking out, I thought this is it. This is the moment in my life where I am going to have to stand up and say something against the status quo and against the establishment, and say I don’t think this is right and it might come at a cost to me, but I have to say it.’

And boy (forgive the gendered language), has it come at a cost.

But how can anyone reading Stassja Frei’s article or Kiera Bell’s story to not be challenged about their silence on what is happening to children behind closed doors in our new and secretive gender clinics?

She is right to point out that history shows bad things happen when good people are silent.

Deves’ claim that up to half of all transgender women are sex offenders may not be accurate, but it does contain a documented underlying truth about offending rates that needs to be talked about it.

The UK police and National Health Service recently nearly covered up the rape of a woman on a single-sex hospital ward because apparently there were no men on the ward.

Another of Deves’ ‘crimes’ was to say she was ‘triggered’ by the rainbow flag.

So what? This is a political flag that, among other things, demands biological males be allowed to compete against and shower with girls and women as part of a radical overhaul of sports.

Announcing that Deves would not be disendorsed, Morrison showed weakness which is a red flag to trolls.

‘And so I think the comments that Katherine has made, obviously, were insensitive. And she’s admitted that.’

But how does one sensitively talk about the surgical alteration of children or the placing of girls at risk in sport?

Verballing her again, Morrison went on to say: ‘There are ways that she’s expressed this in the past that she no longer feels comfortable with. And it’s important that she understands that and learns those lessons. Which she has.’

Anyone who has watched Deves’ articulate and measured media advocacy on behalf of women and girls over the past 12 months knows this is rubbish.

Morrison thinks he can assuage the rainbow tiger when his head is in its mouth.

His insipid ‘backing’ of Deves won’t be the end of the LGBTQ+ activists’ attempts to shut down debate and stop a woman of courage from entering the Parliament.

Lyle Shelton blogs at www.lyleshelton.com.au. You can follow him on Twitter.

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