National Affairs Rory Leishman
In Ottawa couple deserves immense credit for their resolute opposition to the transgender propaganda that was persistently inflicted on their six-year-old daughter in a Grade 1 class at an Ottawa public school.
According to an application before the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal, the teacher (JB) of the daughter in this case (NB) allegedly initiated a series of lessons on gender identity early last year in the course of which NB and other youngsters in the class were shown a YouTube video entitled, “He, She, and They?!? – Gender: Queer Kid Stuff #2.” It is a slick production featuring a young actress dressed and groomed like a boy who advises the little children: “People who are trans do not identify with what the gender doctors tell them they are when they are born.” Really?
JB (the teacher) followed up by drawing a gender spectrum on the board ranging from boy to girl, and asked each student to indicate where he or she fit. NB placed herself on the furthest end marked “girl” only to have JB contradict her, telling the class that “girls are not real, and boys are not real.”
NB (the six-year old) was deeply upset. Upon returning home, she repeatedly asked why girls are not real. Her parents tried to reassure her that, regardless of what the teacher had said, girls really are real. NB was not convinced. Following a lesson by JB on sex changes, she told her parents that she was not sure she wanted to be a mommy and asked if she could “go to the doctor.”
Naturally alarmed, NB’s parents tried to persuade JB, the school principal and the Superintendent of Education for the Ottawa Carleton District School Board to modify the gender-identity lessons so as to at least affirm the gender identity and biological sex of non-trans little boys and girls like NB.
These appeals were all to no avail. Consequently, NB’s parents transferred their daughter to another school, but did not give up their struggle with the School Board. Together with the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), headed by an exceptionally talented litigator and dedicated human-rights champion, John Carpay, NB’s mother has taken legal action against JB, her school principal and the School Board.
Citing the bans on discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity in Section 1 of the Ontario Human Rights Code and the equality rights provision in Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms as expansively interpreted by the courts, NB’s mother and the JCCF are calling on the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to protect the human rights of little girls who identify as girls from the blatant discrimination on the basis of sex and gender identity that was inflicted upon JD in her Grade 1 class.
Of course, none of these allegations has yet been tested in court.
A swelling transgender panic has engulfed not just Canada, but also many other countries. In England, for example, London’s Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) (until recently, more accurately known as the Gender Identity Disorder Service) received 2,590 referrals in 2018-19, up from 678 in 2014-15 and just 97 in 2009/10. At referral, the great majority of these children was less than age 17; 52 were under age seven.
Like other gender identity clinics around the world, GIDS routinely prescribes puberty-blocking drugs for gender dysphoria. In a recent review article in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, even Canada’s family physicians were advised that it is also appropriate for them to treat children suffering from gender dysphoria with puberty blockers, but not before age 10.
Is this use of puberty blockers safe? That, to say the least, is doubtful.
David Briggs, associate professor of sociology at The University of Oxford, points out that puberty blockers “have never been licensed for treating children suffering from gender dysphoria … anywhere in the world.” Furthermore, GIDS warn on its website: “Although puberty suppression, cross-sex hormones and gender reassignment are generally considered safe treatments in the short term, the long-term effects regarding bone health and cardiovascular risks are still unknown.”
The mind boggles. Over the past eight years, GIDS has prescribed puberty blockers for more than 1,000 adolescents under age 18, including more than 200 under age 14. What can possibly justify such reckless use of an experimental treatment with potentially serious side-effects?
Given the potential risks of puberty blockers, the known and irreversible effects of cross-sex hormones and the permanently mutilating results of sex-reassignment surgery, all Canadians should want to protect all children from gender dysphoria. And it follows, in particular, that all Canadians should solidly back the mother of NB and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms in their steadfast opposition to the subjection of vulnerable children to pernicious transgender propaganda in the public schools.
