What’s wrong with this picture?

In the library, a stand-alone display promotes a fairytale, utopian image of a rainbow lifestyle. Young minds are impressed. Changing gender is as simple as changing your mind. Untold happiness awaits those who embrace their inner gay person. Or so it seems…

Where are the warnings? Where are the stories about the dark side of this fantasy world? Where is the balance?

Suicide rates are up to 10 times higher among the LBGTI population than any other group in Australia. In the general population, the rate is 3.25% while the LGBTI reports a rate of 35% among transgender people.

Surely these figures, provided by LGBTI HEALTH are cause for concern. In the light of these figures, should our schools and libraries be promoting an LGBTI worldview to vulnerable young minds?

The LGBTI community blames ‘social exclusion and abuse’ as the reason for the high rates of suicide and constantly pushes for ‘inclusion and acceptance’. But does inclusion and acceptance reduce the suicide rate? Where are the statistics?

What if inclusion and acceptance don’t help?

What if the problems that lead to suicide are deeper than inclusion and acceptance?

What if suicide rates increase because of education in schools?

Where are the studies?

A subject close to my heart…

On 17 December 2005, my dearly loved gay sister killed herself. It wasn’t because she wasn’t loved, she was — by all the family, including her two adult sons.

She didn’t suffer any abuse or exclusion from us, or any of the aunts, uncles or cousins in the broader family. We loved her smile, her bright personality, her humour and her wit. She was fun to be around. Being gay didn’t change who she was, who she’d been all her life.

We loved her, pure and simple.

She wasn’t excluded at work, in fact, she received an Australia Day award for contributions to Australia through her work. She was successful and good at what she did.

So why did she kill herself?

A few weeks before she took her life, we were alone together, and she confided in me, “I’m broken and can’t be fixed.”

When I asked her why she thought that way, she opened up and told me what she’d been working through. As uncontrollable tears rolled down her face, she said, “I can’t undo what I’ve done. I can’t stay the way I am anymore, and I can’t go back to the way I was. I’ve ruined my life. What I was told was wrong. I can’t live myself, knowing I’ve been such a fool.”

She went on to tell me that her gay lifestyle started after seeing a counsellor who convinced her she had been sexually abused by her father as a baby.

I was horrified she could think such a dreadful thing about our wonderful, deceased father, and when I said so, she agreed. “I know! I don’t know how I could think such a terrible thing about him. It was wrong! But that’s what made me turn away from men. I realise now I was lied to. That counsellor just made it all up. And I believed her! That’s the worst part. That’s what I can’t live with.”

My beautiful sister killed herself because she couldn’t undo the damage done to her by false information given to her, while she was vulnerable, by someone in a position of trust.

Her death had nothing to do with ‘social exclusion and abuse’ but everything to do with being tricked into believing something which wasn’t true.

How many vulnerable children today are being put into that same position?

How many, if they give in to the fanciful enticements from the LGBTI community to change their gender, will one day wake up, too late, and realise they’ve made a terrible mistake; a mistake they can’t fix? What then? Death? Lawsuits?

This whole area is so problematic both morally and legally, our publicly funded schools, school counsellors and libraries should err on the side of caution.

First and foremost they should, as holders of positions of trust, be protecting vulnerable young children from making potentially devastating life choices.

To put the exceedingly high 35% suicide rate into perspective…

Our government warns against smoking. Warning signs are everywhere! This is because 6.4% of the population are at risk of dying from lung cancer.

Of the 60,000 Australian military personnel who were sent to Vietnam, 521 were killed and 3000+ were wounded. The percentage of killed and injured was 5.87%.

And now, here we have a situation where the danger to children is three times higher than ‘smoking’ and ‘Vietnam’ combined. Yet there are no warnings! What’s wrong with this picture?

We know that 1 in 3 transgender people are guaranteed to kill themselves, and yet our schools want to promote a transgender lifestyle to our children.

This is just not acceptable!

I am calling on the Minister for Education to protect all Australian children by suspending gender education across Australia, and by instigating a study into the real cause of the 35% suicide rate that accompanies the transgender lifestyle.

If you would like to write to the Minister yourself, here is his address:

The Hon Dan Tehan MP
Minister for Education
PO Box 6022
House of Representatives
Parliament House
CANBERRA ACT 2600