Barbara Kay: The case for deep-sixing Bill C-6

Justice Minister David Lametti hold a press conference on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Oct. 1. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK/THE CANADIAN PRESS

In reference to this, it is appropriate to bring up that at the end of last month, 306 members of Parliament approved in principle the bill C-6 of “conversion therapy”, with only seven votes of the conservative party against it. The House of Commons justice committee is reviewing the public’s responses.

Likewise, it is well known that C-6 defines “conversion therapy” as any “practice, treatment or service designed to change a person’s sexual orientation to heterosexual or gender identity to cisgender, or to repress or reduce non-heterosexual attraction or sexual behavior”. Certainly, the bill is deeply problematic, starting with the preamble, which states that it is a “myth” that gender identity “can or should change”. And it is not a myth that gender identity can change.

Flaws since the preamble

It is worth mentioning that if one or two of Canada’s leading experts in gender dysphoria research had been consulted in drafting the bill, the working group would have learned that without invasive intervention, 80 percent or more of the boys with gender dysphoria who identify as the opposite sex revert to comfort in their natal sex after puberty.

Notably, a recent presentation by Pamela Buffone to the permanent committee on justice and human rights-respecting C-6 illuminates this central fallacy at the very heart of the bill. The Buffones await a hearing date in the Ontario Human Rights Court. They claim that a form of “conversion therapy” was practiced with their daughter in her first-grade classroom. Likewise, the Buffones met with everyone, from the teacher to the top of the educational system chain, and were blocked at all times. In fact, they were told that this was “the new reality” that they had to accept.

Likewise, in a critique of Bill C-6, American transsexual Scott Newgent extrapolated a story from a Swedish study that analyzed mental health outcomes after gender-affirming surgery. In it, a young trans man calls home, sobbing: “Mom, I can’t have kids… I have early-onset osteoporosis, and I will be dependent on drugs for the rest of my life. Mom, I was a lesbian and a kid; why did you let me do this to my body?”

Source: Barbara Kay | National Post