Gender Agenda in Primary Schools Harmful to All

Media Release 15 May 2016
Family First NZ is warning that an Auckland primary school’s efforts to cater for a 6-year old with gender identity issues will be harmful to children in the long-term.
“While the separate unisex toilet is a short-term solution, it ultimately fails to acknowledge the political ideology being pushed, the confusion it will cause to all children, and the long-term harm it will do to school communities,” says Bob McCoskrie, National Director of Family First NZ.
“What is most disturbing is that our state education system is pushing gender ideology and assuming that a 6-year-old has the cognitive ability and maturity to somehow know that their biological sex is separate to their gender identity – a completely non-scientific construct.”
“What children really need is affirmation of their unique personality and appropriate treatment for their unhappiness and other presenting emotional issues, and appropriate support for parents – but definitely not gender confusion which denies biological reality,” says Mr McCoskrie.
Research shows the overwhelming majority of children who experience gender dysphoria grow out of it by the time they reach puberty. And studies indicate that two-thirds of transgenders suffer from multiple disorders at the same time, which is called “comorbidity”.
Promoting the normality of ‘gender change’ amongst very young children has been labelled ‘child abuse’ by the American College of Pediatricians in the US.
“Instead of recognising the issue as gender discordance, groups such as Rainbow Youth and the Human Rights Commission misdiagnose the child as transgender and ask the parents to support rather than treat cross gender desires and behaviours. Such advice is ultimately harmful to the child. It also fails to acknowledge the psychiatric literature which demonstrates that it is possible to help these children learn to embrace the goodness of their gender.”
“And when adults and the Education Ministry are encouraging children to turn up to school confused about their gender and unsure whether to use the boys or girls toilet, it’s a recipe for disaster and confusion for all our children who should be enjoying themselves just being kids,” says Mr McCoskrie.
“It is neither enlightened or loving to pretend we can just let children decide which gender they want to be.”
“I don’t think a seven-year-old has enough life experience to understand precisely what they’re doing. I think it’s better a person gets to puberty and through puberty…” before such drastic and consequential efforts are taken.”
GEORGINA BEYER
“On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity.” “I don’t think the goal of therapy is to make a child feel bad about who they are. It’s helping kids understand themselves better and what might be causing them to develop what I call a “fantasy solution,” that being the other sex will make them happy.”
DR KENNETH ZUCKER, leading researcher and clinician, chair of the group that determined how this issue would be handled in the DSM
“Treating these children with hormones does considerable harm and it compounds their confusion. Trying to delay puberty or change someone’s gender is a rejection of the lawfulness of nature… Children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions, second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons.”
PROFESSOR OF PSYCHIATRY PAUL MCHUGH, whose studies of transgender surgery brought the procedures to an end at Johns Hopkins University
ENDS