After several lawsuits challenging binary gender values, Australia faces another strike against conservatives seeking to retain biological integrity.

This time in the political arena.

In August of 2023, a new bill was introduced into the NSW government called the Conversion Practices Prohibition Bill 2023.

In a nutshell, it seeks to do what the Change or Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act 2021 does, which is outlaw ‘conversion practices’ for LGBT people in the jurisdiction.

To this day, the nature of ‘conversion practice’ has been riddled with false stigma linked to historical (but outdated) notions of electroshock therapy.

The reality of ‘conversion practices’ is different. Today ‘conversion practices’ may look like a medical professional sitting in a room with a child suffering from autism or depression, attempting to establish the nature of why the child believes they should be granted access to life-altering cross-sex hormones that come with unwanted side-effects, before they reach the age in which they can legally consent to receiving a tattoo.

In 2023, ‘conversion practice’ could entail merely praying for someone who identifies as LGBT, including when they have consented to prayer.

The bill is far from practical in offering real support to those in the LGBT community, and instead is designed to penalise conservatives for offering medical, psychological, or religious-based advice, which is in fact, constitutionally protected.

Constitutional protections and freedoms for certain citizens are apparently absent in some governmental administrations. Those administrations appear to operate in some alternative reality of 1984.

All other Acts enacted by state Parliaments are not as superseding as the Australian Constitution itself, which governs the nature of all Acts to be made in states and territories. There are strong arguments in support of the idea that these conversion therapy Acts are constitutionally invalid, and you can draw on ‘religious’ provisions such as section 116, as well as democratic protections and free speech provisions that apply to all citizens, to make this claim. Democratic principles of equality before the law are enlivened through section 7 and section 24.

Political free speech is an inherent implied right all Australians have.

Many state governments appear to have forgotten about it.

Conservatives and religious-based entities are beginning to lose these freedoms due to poorly drafted Acts. Not only will they be penalised in their personal capacity if they choose to ‘convert’ an LGBT person through an act of prayer, for example, but they will lose professional rights and obligations. Doctors or psychologists dealing with LGBT people are about to face a barrage of legal suits against them, just for upholding their basic obligations as professionals wary of how negligence or incomprehensive diagnoses can damage patients in the short and long term.

Acts are not supposed to regulate private businesses insofar that professionals must operate in manners they were never trained to operate in. They were trained by experts spearheading the field, at universities, or other qualified institutions. The fact is, parliamentarians are often not experts in the field in which they seek to regulate. Legislative regulation therefore, must take place simultaneously with comprehensive and consistent expert advice, involving a diverse range of opinions that logically represent the actual democratic constituency.

That is not occurring with many of these conversion bills, as experts around Australia are being shunned, ignored, and censored for having alternative opinions to current establishment thinking. Some brave people have spoken out against their disqualification, and have even been endorsed by mainstream media outlets.

Channel Seven for example, aired a segment exploring the way some institutions handle LGBT children, running the promotional line, ‘It’s the most controversial story this year.’

This segment was very popular amongst Australians tuning in. The preview itself gained 47k views. It suggests there is significant pushback to the narrative enforced by this legislation. Drafting punitive Acts that seek to enforce and alternative view before it has been accepted by broad academic, medical, psychological and religious fields, is undemocratic, and frankly, despotic.

The second issue with the bill is that it involves the establishment of a ‘Civil response scheme’. This scheme consists of a board with ample powers that include educating the public about the nature of LGBT and conversion practices. In other words, ideology that is currently concerning parents and religious groups within schools is likely to expand.

The other issue with the bill is its amendment of the Children and Young Persons (Care and Protection) Act 1998 in which the bill will ‘provide that a child or young person is at risk of significant harm if the child or young person has been, or is at risk of being, affected by change or suppression practices’. ‘Harm’ language is a problem, as it may be used to further persecute institutions pushing back.

More worrying still, is schedule 2.2[1] of the bill, which states the following:

‘Schedule 2.2[1] amends the Crimes (Domestic and Personal Violence) Act 2007 to provide that a court may make an apprehended domestic violence order if it is satisfied that a person who has had a relationship with another person fears, on reasonable grounds, the other person engaging in or arranging a change or suppression practice directed towards the person.’

This is a serious concern for traditional parents who find themselves in situations where they face losing custody over their child should the child wish to identify as LGBT. How can some children even know their sexual predilection prior to puberty or during puberty, when hormone levels are all over the place? It is negligent to suggest every child must be an LGBT individual prior to undergoing proper medical and psychological analysis. If a child is caught up in the LGBT train, the bill stops them from being guided in a traditional way, by a loving and reasonable parent, who knows their child more personally and intimately than the government.

Imagine the government stepping in to legislate to seize control over your child’s own personal and individualised development… The legislation will penalise parents seeking to guide children in conservative ways.

And who is better suited to guide a child than the child’s actual parent themselves? The punishments established within the Act are disproportionate and wildly unacceptable.

The bill is bluntly put, a legal disaster.

The government does not think you are capable of guiding your own children.

They are legislating prematurely, and in an unacceptable, constitutionally invalid and regrettably impractical way.

Parents, and frankly society as a whole, should be up in arms that state governments are telling you plainly, that they wish to take things in an undemocratic, negligent, and potentially dangerous direction.