Miranda Devine: Bravo NSW, for dumping the Safe Schools program

An epidemic of transgender children is Safe Schools’ legacy
Herald Sun 16 April 2017
Family First Comment: Bravo Miranda Devine for calling the programme out. Wish we had similar commentators in NZ!
THREE years after it was launched by the Abbott government, the insidious Safe Schools program is to be axed in NSW and replaced with a real anti-bullying program.
Kudos to Rob Stokes, the only education minister in the nation honourable enough to tackle the sexual indoctrination program loathed by most parents and defended to the death by fanatical education bureaucrats.
“Bullying is a problem, whether you’re being bullied because you’re struggling with your sexuality or being fat or wearing glasses,” said an education source. “All this nonsense about gender fluidity has nothing to do with bullying.”
Funding has been allocated for a new program, expected to be ready by Term 3.
But incalculable damage already has been done by teaching children that gender and sexuality is fluid, that heterosexuality is not the norm, and that sex is arbitrarily assigned by a doctor at birth.
One consequence has been an epidemic in “transgender” children presenting to medical clinics since the advent of Safe Schools in June 2014.
Referrals for gender services to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, have tripled. Melbourne Royal Children’s Hospital had 250 children last year presenting with “gender dysphoria”, distress experienced because you feel you were born the wrong sex.
The NSW Education Department reports a “spike” in transgender students, including a four-year old in kindergarten this year “who has identified as transgender”.
Official statistics are tightly held but, anecdotally: one public school in Sydney’s eastern suburbs has five transgender children, according to the relative of a student; a regional NSW government Safe School had five transgender students at the start of last year, according to a former teacher; a Safe School in outer Sydney had 5 or 6 “transgender” children last year in Year 8, all girls, according to a concerned teacher. “Safe Schools definitely had something to do with all this,” he says. “We are losing this fight… very badly”.
One teacher has spoken to parents who, “suddenly received a note from their 14-year-old daughter claiming that she is trans and wants to be called a new name.” But, after her parents moved her to a non-Safe School, “she is largely over the confusion now”.
Last year a 15-year-old child known as “Lincoln” had both breasts removed at a Sydney hospital with the permission of the Family Court in order to “transition” to the male sex. Born female, Lincoln decided in September, 2014, at age 13, to begin living as a boy and was prescribed puberty-blocking hormones the next year.
One of the few doctors willing to criticise the “fashion in child surgical abuse” is Dr John Whitehall, Professor of Paediatrics at Western Sydney University, who questions the “massive intrusion into the minds and bodies of children… It’s a collective madness.”
Most transgender children will, “grow out of it through puberty if parents do little more than gently watch and wait… The worst thing that can happen is the child is adopted as a poster child for the school.”
With teachers being trained by Safe Schools to think gender is whatever you feel like, “it’s not surprising we’re seeing more kids responding to this propaganda and parents getting on board. It’s very hard for professionals to speak out.”
READ MORE: http://www.heraldsun.com.au/rendezview/an-epidemic-of-transgender-children-is-safe-schools-legacy/news-story/085d5681f6bc3dae2357302ab2bee227