Christian politician who thinks being gay is a ‘choice’ comes out as a ‘massive transphobe’, to the surprise of no one
Amanda Stoker MP wants people to stand with her against the “transgender agenda”. (Facebook)
A Christian senator who thinks being gay is a “personal choice” has now said Australians must resist “hard gender ideology” to “protect” their children.
Amanda Stoker, the senator for Queensland, also opposes plans to ban gay conversion therapy in Australia.
In an interview with The Australian, a Murdoch-owned paper that has been condemned for its “appalling” coverage of trans issues and “obsession with humiliating trans people”, Stoker repeated her misinformed view that giving puberty blockers to trans kids is “harmful” and “wrong”.
Stoker failed to mention a landmark study published last week in medical journal Pediatrics, which found that giving puberty blockers to trans teens who want them significantly reduces their likelihood of trying to die by suicide in both the short and long term, as well as significantly reducing their likelihood of experiencing mental-health problems.
But the results of this first-of-its-kind study into the impact of giving puberty blockers to trans teens have not been published in The Australian’s ‘gender-issues section’ (headlines in the section include “They’re castrating children”, “Transgender project ‘out of balance'”, “Sex not a matter of belief”, and “Corrupting kids’ thinking”).
Instead, Stoker gave her own personal views on puberty blockers. “There is a lack of research showing these treatments are the best way to deal with gender issues, and a growing body of evidence that they are harmful,” she said, without citing the “growing body of evidence”.
Confusingly, given that the latest scientific study literally found that puberty blockers can be “life-saving” drugs, Stoker added: “The scientific method should prevail here, not hard gender ideology.”
Amanda Stoker also alerted readers to a petition she started against “political correctness”, called “How you can stand up to the transgender agenda”, which also says that children must be “protected”.
In December 2018, Stoker wrote a piece for the Australian Financial Review criticising “identity politics”, in which she said that being gay is a choice.
“To obtain the protection, or indeed the promotion of the state, one must identify some attribute through which a special victimhood arises. These can be outside an individual’s control (such as sex, race or disability) or matters of personal choice (such as gender identity or sexuality),” Senator Stoker said.
As has been pointed out on many, many occasions, being gay is not a choice and it is homophobic to suggest a person should or could choose not to be gay.
In May 2019, Stoker denounced a proposed ban on gay conversion therapy in Australia, saying that it was “contrary to common sense”.
“They also want to bring in prohibitions on what they call ‘conversion therapy’ but in practical terms it could stop a doctor from referring somebody who is experiencing gender confusion to a counsellor,” she said on a Sky News programme where she talked about how the Labor party’s policies on gender and sexuality were destroying the traditional “family unit”.
“This is extraordinary,” she said, adding that banning conversion therapy “goes contrary to common sense” and that “people should be concerned”.
Despite – or perhaps because of – her anti-gay and anti-trans views, The Australian described her in its January 28 interview as a “free speech champion” and “rising star of conservative politics”.
