Several years ago, as those of you who’ve been around for a while will know, I got into a fight with my eldest daughter’s then school Principal. What began as a disagreement where I sought to be a reasonable, both sides have validity, let’s work out a path together kind of guy; ended in my total loss of confidence in many of our community leaders and politicians. It remains shocking to me to this day, that the weird world of internet activists wasn’t something to observe casually on the internet anymore, it was now in my daughters school, making educating her in the public system nearly impossible if we wanted to protect her from adult ideas like sexual partners and gender changes. Worst of all, these weird internet people who now occupied positions of power, like the School Principal, had the full and complete backing of our ‘conservative’ Liberal Party Government and their leader.

In the midst of all of that, and being told by Government Departments and Liberal Government politicians that I needed to be more ‘inclusive’ by allowing strangers to tell my six year old about sex when she went to school. That I needed to be more ‘inclusive’ and allow teachers to load her up with racist guilt because of the colour of her skin. And when everyone else seemed fine with this… the only thing I felt I could do was talk about what was happening. Maybe if more people knew we could do something about this?

And so I turned to writing. If no one with power to do anything would act, perhaps my voice could have some impact? So I started to write and tell my story and explain the problems we were facing and brainstorming solutions to these cultural issues. If I could gain no traction politically, then perhaps through writing other likeminded or curious souls could be helped and we could avoid someone else going through what we went through.

Many years ago I wrote a blog called Youth Ministry and Me, I got some good traction in that space, but in the 10+ years since I’d put pen to paper (or keystrokes to screens?) this whole new world of Substack had opened up, and it seemed to make more sense to fire up a new space to write, to build a collection of people interested in the things I was living through, noticing and seeking to change.

So I started a substack account, used my name as a place holder and told my story. And I’ve continued to try and keep you updated as well as reflect on events in our world. But I’ve always thought this space needs a better name than mine! And so finally I’ve arrived at a new name - Faithful Fatherhood. A new name for this substack/blog that I think reflects where I’m coming from and what I want to write about.

The Foundation - God as Faithful Father

Firstly, the name speaks of the only true, perfect and faithful Father - God. I’m a Christian. God is my Faithful Father. In the Bible, in Deuteronomy 32:4 God is described as “… the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he.” In 1 John 3:1 God is described as a loving Father who calls us His children. God is my Faithful Father. My rock, He is just and true and in His great love he has adopted me as His son. This is my foundation for life. I am an imperfect son, yet I am deeply loved, known by my Faithful Father and loved by Him. It is God and His faithful fathering of me that has well and truly sustained me through the trials. It is God’s justice and uprightness that sustains me when governments and friends let me down. It’s God’s love and forgiveness that sustain me when I let myself down. God is indeed a Faithful Father!

My Calling - Dad and Pastor

Faithful Fatherhood also speaks of who I am. Or who, more correctly, I aspire to be. It was my role as a Father that led me to launching this site. It was because I’m a Dad that I thought I had to say something about the posters that were being put up in our school. It’s because of my daughters that I won’t just agree to disagree with the idea that our Education System can be completely and totally captured by sex loving, Australia hating weird internet people. It’s for my two beautiful girls and their future that I care about the kind of place we live in and the kind of place we’re becoming.

As a Father I also believe my Faithful Father has given me a job to do. As the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians 6:4, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.” This is perhaps the most important, terrifying, exciting, life giving, joyous task I have for the next 10-15 years. I am a father with a job to do, to raise and disciple my children, and I want to do this faithfully.

I’m also a pastor leading an Anglican Church here in Hobart. When the Apostle Paul was writing to those he pastored in Corinth he said to them, “I am writing this not to shame you but to warn you as my dear children. Even if you had ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. (1 Cor. 4:14–15).” There’s a sense in which we Pastors carry a spiritual fatherhood for those God places in our orbit through our ministry to shepherd and guide towards The Faithful Father. So I write as one concerned not just for my own flesh and blood, but for my spiritual brothers and sisters who I want to help discern how to live for Jesus best in our broken and messed up world.

Looking Ahead - Pressing On

And so as a faithful father, following The Faithful Father I write here at what I’m going forward calling Faithful Fatherhood. You don’t have to agree with me about all the God stuff to follow along. I’m sure there’s much we can find that we agree on anyway, and I hope for those not of faith, you’ll find my reflections useful and thought provoking. For those who share my Christian faith I hope you’ll find the musing of a fellow brother in Christ helpful and useful in your own journey with Christ.

Here at Faithful Fatherhood, I will continue to wrestle with cultural changes as they impact our family, our faith communities, our nation and our world. And I’ll endeavour to share reflections of what it’s like to try and live out my faith as a broken imperfect man who, “…forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 3:13-14).

If this resonates with you, let me know in the comments. If you’re a parent or a pastor wrestling with similar things, don’t forget to subscribe so you don’t miss the next reflection.

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Thanks for reading Faithful Fatherhood.

Every now and again you’ll read something and it will just be so outrageous and so egregious that it simply cannot be allowed to stand without a response. For me this was learning of the Australian Health Practitioner and Regulation Agency sanctioning Dr Andrew Amos for his work advocating against the medicalisation and mutilation of children under the guise of “gender affirming care”.

I had the privilege of meeting Dr Amos when he visited Hobart last year to speak on these very issues at a forum in Parliament House hosted by The Hon Carlo Di Falco MP. I commend his talk to you. (Watch Dr Amos' talk here).

For speaking up for children who are been harmed by doctors (and we should note AHPRA has done NOTHING about the doctors medicalising, mutilating and harming children) Dr Amos has been placed under restrictions meaning he must stop making public statements about this issue and he has had his ability to do any clinical practice restricted, possibly completely if I understand things correctly.

Meanwhile Doctors like Michelle Telfer who has been found by an Australian Court to provide poor ideological advice rather than sound evidence based best practice remain free of any sanction whatsoever.

This whole situation is bad enough but to have the regulatory agency act in what is such a partisan, ideologically driven manner is perhaps even more chilling. The board is supposed to keep us safe by regulating medical practice and practitioners in Australia. But today, in the sanctioning of Dr Amos, we learn it does no such thing. Rather it is completely ideological in its application of the law. The only logical conclusion one can draw from this is that you and I can have no trust in the medical status of any health professional we see. We have been reduced to using our own judgment rather than evidence. For though our health professionals may tell us they’re AHPRA approved, what does this mean? Simply they tow the ideological line approved by our Government regulation board. Nothing more nothing less. It seems no better than you or I assessing whether or not we like our Doctor based on their ‘vibe’. To arrive at this place in Australia, where health regulation seems no longer evidence based, but instead based on who holds the levers of power on the board and whatever their ideological whims might be is dangerous for every single Australian.

This cannot stand. We must be better than this. I pray AHPRA will quickly reinstate Dr Amos and remove his restrictions. I pray the board will relent from its drift away from evidence based medical regulation and will stop it’s drift towards ideological capture which is harming not just children, though that is bad enough, but all of us.

So what can we do?

1. Pray

2. Submit a complaint to AHPRA about this decision
   You can do that here - https://www.ahpra.gov.au/about-ahpra/complaints

   I’ve published my submission on X which you can use as a basis for your own. That can be found here - https://x.com/chrisbowditch/status/2028248892832391207?s=20

Perhaps it seems a little strange for an Australian Anglican Minister to want to write about an American Christian and conservative activist. And yet a week after being woken up to my wife saying “Charlie Kirk has been shot” to watching the horrific video on X, and in light of what’s happened since then I think it worth reflecting on this giant of the faith.

I can’t quite remember when we stumbled across Kirk. No doubt it was connected to our own struggle against our local State Government school and our failed fight with our supposedly conservative State Government to help us stop the sexualisation and politicisation of our kids in school. The identity politics of the left and the deep harm it’s doing to a generation of young people and the failure of anybody in Australian politics to realise the problem and stand up to it causes one to look further afield. And so somewhere in the midst of all that, we found Charlie Kirk. Not only was he a great debater, but it was clear he understood what we had experienced here in Tasmania. That the institutions of our society are totally and completely captured by an ideology that will destroy us - anti-Christian left wing identity politics. But more than that, Charlie was clear that more important than politics, was making sure people heard the good news about Jesus. He was politically passionate, but far far more passionate about Jesus. He seemed like a good man to follow.

As an aside, somewhere along the way Kirk, or the person running Kirk’s X (formerly Twitter) account followed me so I like to think I at least helped him think through an issue once in return for all the ways he helped us.

Without qualification, Kirk’s death is a tragedy. He was a young husband and father. I’ve watched a few too many videos in the past week of his little daughter running up to him, hugging him, sitting on his knee and playing with him. There was one particular video where he’s in a toy shop with her and she basically forces him to buy her the toy she wants. As a girl Dad, it’s so easy to put oneself right there and it’s so obvious the pain his children will carry for the rest of their lives, not to mention his loving wife Erika. Our comfort in the midst of the sadness is that Kirk, an imperfect sinner like us all, loved the Lord Jesus. He was welcomed into his Father’s house and is now with Him in glory. Our prayer for his beautiful young family is that God’s peace and love is real and present in a powerful way for them at this time. The gospel is so so powerful in our world’s darkest times.

As we were processing Kirk’s murder last Thursday morning (Australian time), what I wasn’t expecting to have to process was the sick and vile response to it. Even though I’ve battled against school Principals who think I deserve to have my rights ignored because I’m a white Christian male. Even though I’ve been defeated by a Government Education Department that thinks being inclusive means excluding me. Even though I’ve experienced first hand the vile anti-Christian hatred, and hatred for those who express their belief that men can’t become women… I was naively unprepared to see people celebrate and excuse the execution of a man at a University campus sharing ideas.

And the response was vile and rampant. I’d never heard of Hannah Ferguson prior to last week. Ferguson rightly got called out for her outrageous post a few hours after Kirk was shot. According to her Kirk is “a viral sensation for meeting intellect with pure hate”. She then spent a whole slide misquoting and misrepresenting him followed with the words “extremist is not an understatement”. She then had an entire slide about his words about supporting the American Constitution’s 2nd Amendment (the right to bear arms) which again are ripped from their context. On and on she went until she arrived at what she knows for sure:

• she’s glad Charlie Kirk will no longer spread his extremist messaging (aka she’s glad he’s dead),

• she believes he empowered the violence that ended his life (his assassination is his fault),

• he caused more harm than good,

• violence is sometimes necessary, and

• though this act of violence isn’t an act of progress she understands lots of her progressive buddies will disagree with her and think this was all good (and she’s not condemning them for that).

Well she rightly coped a bit of flack and a week later claimed she was just “inviting nuance to the party”. Last time I checked murder being wrong didn’t need a lot of nuance. Let alone murdering someone for ‘wrong’ opinions. I could go on with other examples of the shocking response to Kirk’s death, things like the ludicrous decision of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s to platform Hasan Piker (who’s called for violence and justified it like Ferguson) and tried to present him as the voice of reason, but you’d be here all day if I kept going.

Ferguson’s disgusting take, and the ABC’s platforming of Piker, are bad enough, but they are the respectable Australian version of a much more vile and widespread response to Kirk’s assassination. Already traumatised by the video of Kirk being shot, our feeds then filled up with video after video of people being happy he’s dead, glorifying in his murder, and rejoicing in evil. Having just spent a week on a conference learning about how the Western church has lost sight of the spiritual battle we’re in, and how it fails to account for the demonic work in our life, and with a sermon to preach last weekend on 1 Timothy 4, the spiritual aspect of the horrific response to Kirk’s death seemed palpable. 1 Timothy 4 opens with these words,

“The Spirit clearly says that in later times some will abandon the faith and follow deceiving spirits and things taught by demons. Such teachings come through hypocritical liars, whose consciences have been seared as with a hot iron.”

- NIV2011

This all made it hard not to see Satan at work as these sick people rejoiced in Kirk’s death. And of course the spiritual aspect of all this mustn’t be discounted. For though much of the talk is of Kirk as a political operator, for those of us who’ve watched him, and as we’ve listened to his own words, we know that he was first and foremost concerned with changing lives through sharing the gospel. And he did this a lot. In fact some are saying he was this generations most significant evangelist since Billy Graham (in the USA).

It’s this evil response, sometimes wrapped in respectability (oh he was in favour of the right to bear arms so he deserved to die, oh he was trans-phobic so he deserved to die, oh he was a bigot so he deserved to die) that has impacted me more perhaps than his death. Yes I enjoyed listening to him debate. Yes he followed me on X. But I didn’t know him and I’d never met him. But what suddenly became apparent as the masks fell off and people rejoiced in his death is just how many people want me and my family dead too.

For, like Kirk, I too believe that Jesus is the only way by which someone can be saved. I too believe that abortion is murder. I believe that men can’t be women. That marriage is between a man and a woman. That children have a right to their biological mother and father. Like Charlie Kirk I don’t hate people who disagree with me about these things, Christ calls us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us. But he also calls us to speak the truth in love. Having watched hours and hours of what Charlie Kirk did I am confident he spoke the truth in love as well as any sinner could. Being a sinner myself I’m confident I’m doing my best, with God’s help to speak the truth in love too. And yet if many in our western world have decided Kirk deserves to die for his views, if they’ve decided his children deserve to be robbed of their father, and that his wife deserves to mourn the love of her life, then I too in their view deserve to be murdered, and my children deserve unimaginable trauma, and so too does my wife deserve grief.

Over the course of the last week, my wife and I have pointed this out to a few of our acquaintances (I would’ve used the words friends 8 days ago). “Hey buddy, you do realise I agree with Charlie Kirk about this or that thing and to be justifying his death over it feels like an attack on me”. Horrifyingly one acquaintance essentially agreed my wife and I were hateful and harmful like Kirk but didn’t want to talk to us in person about it. Sadly for us, it’s more than one story of real loss of relationship in the wake of the loss of Charlie Kirk.

I shouldn’t be as surprised as I am. My battle with the school and the Government and the lack of sympathy I got from many people ought to have prepared me. Yes I had people tell me to chill out, not to worry so much when things were happening with the school, yet the shocking realisation of this past week is that if I was shot in the neck on my church’s livestream in front of my children some of my so called friends, and a fair few others would say, ‘oh well he did kinda care too much about trans issues’ and ‘he was a little bit too forthright in his opinions’, he didn’t deserve it but we need to bring some nuance.

That is nothing but pure evil.

And evil is what we’ve seen an endless stream off since last Thursday morning (Australian time) when that evil man pulled the trigger and thousands upon thousands rejoiced.

As Tucker Carlson said at one of Kirk’s TPUSA events, “The people doing evil do not win in the end — they are destroyed by the evil that flows through them.” Evil never wins in the end.

And as Charlie would want let me finish with Jesus who in the face of the evilest act ever perpetrated on this earth, when the only innocent man ever to live was hung on that Roman cross for us his response was love, “Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.’ ”

Evil like we’ve seen this past week, from the murder itself to the rejoicing of many requires a response. As Kirk would want, our response should be informed by our Christian faith which tells us not to repay evil with evil. Instead we need to pray and work hard to defeat the evil that permeates our western world with good. We must do it by boldly speaking the truth in love as Charlie Kirk has inspired us to do. And we must remember to hold fast to the gospel and earnestly pray that everyone who has rejoiced in evil this past week finds forgiveness through repentance and faith in Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Our 8-year-old daughter innocently piped up as we were driving home from ballet last week. My wife had already been filling me in on the sight that was a man in a blonde wig, parading around our local capital city swimming pool whilst my wife, in her role as a sports teacher, was seeking to help kids learn how to be safe in the water, and even better swim!

I wonder how you’d answer if your child asked you this question? I decided to go theological and began to explain to her that sin isn’t just something that impacts our behaviour but it can also impact our thinking. I carried on to try and explain to her that without Jesus many people in our world get so deceived by sin they don’t even know that men aren’t women. As I was halfway through explaining the noetic effect of sin to my 8-year-old daughter she interrupted me.

“Dad, that’s silly. You don’t need to be a Christian to know boys aren’t girls. That’s crazy it’s so simple.”

I paused… You know, darling, you're right—it’s pretty basic, isn’t it? But our world is so confused, and people are so lost, that somehow—what makes no sense to you or me is actually happening—a man can wear a wig and women’s bathers and call himself a woman.

She sort of laughed. It was so ridiculously and obviously wrong, from the most basic of 8-year-old levels of understanding about what it means to be human and male and female, that she couldn’t make sense of what she had seen and what I’d tried to explain. It was too stupid to be explained. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t happening and for the remainder of the week and a half of swimming lessons, I got more updates from my daughter (and wife) about our creepy man friend.

“Dad, today he was wearing a black wig. I wonder if he went to the hairdresser to get it cut and dyed haha”.

Of course, it might’ve stayed a funny story about how from the mouth of babes comes forth wisdom (Psalm 8:2) but our wigged man in female bathers was at the pool almost every day my daughters were there swimming. Not only that, some friends of mine who were free went down to watch the swimming lessons and keep an eye out for this bloke and saw him on multiple occasions, on multiple days, and he was seen several times availing himself of the members’ female change rooms.

When the issue was raised with staff, there was nothing that could be done after all the bloke with a wig was a woman, and to suggest otherwise well… that’s bigotry. Worse to attempt to stop this mentally unwell man undress near women is against the law here in Tasmania. For all I know pointing it out on this substack might make me guilty of discrimination or hate speech because we live in the most crazy of worlds.

Shame on every single politician who’s let it come to this. Shame on every person who thinks ‘kindness’ somehow means we must jeopardise safe public spaces. It wasn’t just in the changing rooms that this man’s cross-dressing parade at the pool caused issues. Many people were forced to politely avoid him, moving out of the spa when he entered, out of the lane, and guiding children to another location to avoid him looking at them. This is not transphobia it’s an appropriate risk calculation.

If my 8-year-old daughter knows the truth about what’s going on here why don’t our political leaders? Why won’t they do anything about making our public spaces safe? At this point they and their ‘kindness’ enablers are complicit in the erasure of safe female spaces and in fact, safe public spaces more generally!

I think I’m with my daughter. It’s obvious how wrong this is. What makes no sense is why nobody is doing anything about it??

To those who govern Australia,

I'm greatly distressed to read of the Government's plan to take almost 2 years to review the disastrous current practice of blocking the puberty of healthy children, giving them cross-sex hormones, and then cutting their healthy breasts or penises off because they have gender dysphoria.

I think when you spell it out like that, it becomes obvious to anyone who's not captured by trans ideologies that this is not good medicine. I would suggest that it's quite obvious how bad the current approach is in Australia and that no review is required to stop it however, given we a beholden to experts on what is fundamentally basic I suppose a review may help.

But the experts have already spoken. Though it seems that it's not obvious on a basic level to our government that cutting healthy breasts of mentally distressed children is a bad idea there is enough evidence out there that tells us Australia's "gender-affirming care" (gender-affirming harm would be more appropriate) is already well known to be based on flawed assumptions and bad medical practice.

In recent times WPATH the parent organisaiton of AUSPATH was found to be a complete and total sham. The "WPATH Files" which I'd encourage you to read outlines the complete lack of good medical practice our guidelines are built on.

Public

The WPATH Files

Advocates of gender-affirming care say it’s evidence-based…

Listen now

2 years ago · 781 likes · 110 comments · Michael Shellenberger

We already know how bad things are TODAY. We already know we are harming children TODAY.

Not only that but the UK which until recently was doing the same kind of "gender-affirming care" we do in Australia has already done a review. The results of that review are they've stopped the medicalisaiton of their children. In the Cass Review, they looked briefly at Australia and found us wanting in our approach.

So I would put it to you that it is clear both from the research, the evidence, and basic logic that what we do to children with gender dysphoria in Australia is a horrific crime against those children.

Given that, though I thought it unnecessary, I was still momentarily overjoyed to hear that our government had decided to do a review. Yes, it was going to take way too long, but it was a review of this horrific medical scandal. But to my horror one of your colleagues, who after watching the video I can only describe as evil, published a short video on X (formerly Twitter). There she said that the review was actually about standardising the malpractice of AUSPATH and making sure we had uniform mutilation and medicalisation of kids in every state in Australia. You can watch her video here (https://x.com/gedkearney/status/1885196970018418929).

This is a great tragedy. A chance to stop harm has been squandered and our government seems intent to double down on this evil. Presuming you support it, one can only say every child who has their breasts cut off, who loses their ability for future sexual intimacy, who suffers the irreversible effects of these medications and is subject to medical practices they couldn't possibly give informed consent to is a person mutilated and harmed that you bear responsibility for.

Let it be known that as a representative in our parliament who is meant to help and protect Australia, I find this most reprehensible. We're not talking about a disagreement over tax rates, housing policy, or sheep farming, these are rightly contested spaces. But to harm children and to set up a review designed to keep on harming them. That is a grave mistake and a failure at a basic moral level.

So please if you're not on board with these horrific practices, resign from cabinet, quit the party, do whatever it takes to bring on a vote to ban these practices, and do what is right for the sake of these suffering children. Nothing matters more and history will not be kind in the end to those who have enabled these abuses long past their used by date.

Sincerely a worried Australian who just wants the abuse to stop.

Now of course I’m still an ordained Anglican Minister at this point, but no longer working in the role. But because I still believe that being a reformed, evangelical Anglican is the best and truest way to be all God made us to be I decide that now I’m Principal and have responsibility for all these young kids I’m going to go about making good Anglicans out of them, or at least making them Anglican allies. Now I know there are Anglican Schools and Christian schools out there, but I want to go and make a difference in the State Education system.

So being new to the Government School I start off my mission subtly. I walk around the school with a Bible under my arm. I add a range of books from Mathias Media to the school library. I put up kitsch Christian cat posters with bible verses all over my office walls. I slowly extend these out into more public spaces in the school. No one objects because cats are cute, just like how rainbows are pretty.

As time progresses I begin to get even more bold. The local Anglican Minister has started an organisation he runs with two of his mates called Together Tasmania. It’s completely unprofessional but it gets government funding because it’s about the right sort of things that good people care about. Its aims are to help us live together well in Tasmania. They are the experts in this so they say, and they get money from the government so no one can argue. Actually though, it’s a completely biased pro-Anglican group and everyone knows it, but no one seems to notice. At my invitation, they come to my state government school to run a professional development course for staff on welcoming people of faith and encouraging teachers to think about how they can become not only allies but perhaps even some might like to consider whether they’ve actually really been Anglicans themselves all along. At this meeting, we hand out cross badges and liturgically coloured lanyards so everyone will know the teachers are Anglican allies. Most teachers want to be good people so they wear them because until this meeting they hadn’t realised their unconscious bias and the way not explicitly wearing the liturgical colours and crosses had made Anglicans feel unsafe and unwelcome in the school up to this point.

After this insightful session with the inclusion “expert” from Together Tasmania, I decide to start every staff meeting with a sermon, after all I’m quite good at them and I’ve got a good amount in reserve. This will help the Anglicans in the staff feel heard and safe. I figure we might as well start working through the book of Romans together. I can tell some staff feel uncomfortable about this quasi-religious practice in a government school, but I know that says more about them than me. It is after all uncomfortable to be faced with your biases. And, as I remind them constantly when they disagree with me about anything at all, how can they really claim to be good educators if they’re not prepared to deal with their own unrealised bigotry and biases?

Now it turns out there are a few parents at the school who feel uncomfortable with the amount of Anglican stuff I’m bringing into the school. I smile at them and remind them that people of faith have had it tough lately and it’s time we make sure they feel welcome. Plus I remember to tell them we are a welcoming and inclusive school, so if they have issues with what I’m doing when I’m a welcoming and inclusive person just trying to help the marginalised then it’s likely the problem is actually that they are feeling uncomfortable because my actions are revealing their inner Christian bigotry. I smile though and say it’s going to be great to work through this together with them.

However, I’m disturbed by these meetings. They reveal that clearly there are some bigoted parents who hate Anglicans in my school community, I mean it’s not that I’m being totally inappropriate with my own personal ideologies, so I decide that every school assembly will now have a reading of the 39 Articles. I figure this should flush the bigots out and help make my school more inclusive by excluding people who are filled with hate.

I’m right. This new measure does cause more outrage from these bigoted parents and they even write letters to the Education Minister. Thankfully she’s a good person. She writes back and reminds them that we’re an inclusive community in Tasmania and there’s nothing wrong with putting up cute cat posters and teaching people about how different people do life. In fact, she tells the parents the organisation Together Tasmania says this is vital for us to be an inclusive state. She suggests that the parents need to be more accepting and inclusive.

A few of the really experienced teachers in the school start to get unhappy. They think I’m focussing too heavily on indoctrination and not education. Thankfully I’m the Principal and they’re just silly old teachers stuck in old fashioned ways of thinking and operating. Most of them transfer to different schools and I only keep young teachers who I can shape into inclusive educators of the future on my staff. This is a good outcome as it makes the school safer.

Now the really good thing about this mission to Anglicanise my school is most parents don’t notice. Yes a few have reacted, but I’ve dealt with them and most have left. The rest, well they don’t care, or they don’t have time to notice. Every now and again one of the kids comes home and says something about being a sinner or loving Jesus, but the parents don’t really have time to talk about that with their kids and talking about religion is awkward. So they briefly discuss it, hoping the conversation goes away. Sometimes the parents try and explain why that’s not what they believe. But thankfully none of this impacts on my work in the school. I think it’s because I’m spending so much more time with their kids than they are that they can’t compete with me anyway. Every now and then after talking with their parents one of the kids might dare question the basics of Anglicanism but thankfully most kids call them bigots at lunchtime (we don’t discipline that behaviour after all, you reap what you sow), and when a child speaks in a manner that is unsafe like that, I make sure the teachers of these non-conformist kids get them to think about how their words have power, and how disagreeing with someone about what they believe and how they identify is real violence towards Anglican people.

When I get home and put my head on the pillow I smile thinking about the wonderful inclusive and kind State Government school I’m creating. Thankfully I know the current Government has my back because they too want to be known for being inclusive of people of Anglican faith and it clearly states in their policy documents and in practice that it doesn’t matter what you do so long as it’s inclusive and includes cute cate posters. My school might not be doing that well at NAPLAN anymore, a number of our best students may have left, and I’m at war with my Parents and Friends Association but these are no longer key metrics for our inclusive modern-day government. As I drift off to sleep I rest easy knowing my indoctrination into the Anglican faith is vital because at the end of the day, what’s the point of learning to read if you only read bigoted non-Anglican books anyway? The Government certainly agrees!

Sadly we know all too well in Australia about the horrors of child sexual abuse and the damage it has done to countless children, many of whom are now adults. We also know of the horrific ways many different institutions, including the church to its shame, sought to protect the abuser and not the victim in its response to this crisis. It is a stain on many institutions in Australia and the impacts are far-reaching and incalculable.

To help our country learn from this horrible past and the institutional failures to respond in a way that helped victims and sought to protect children from further abuse we had a Royal Commission. The Royal Commission handed down its final report in December 2017 and along the way made some really important recommendations. Of particular note were the recommendations made about creating child-safe institutions. I’m familiar with these as they have informed our practice in my work for how we interact with children and how we try to never again make the mistakes our organisation made in the past.

What’s of particular interest to me, as it relates to the LGBTI+ issue, is element number three of a child-safe institution. Element three states, “Families and communities are informed and involved”. And it lists some ways this is supposed to work:

1. families have the primary responsibility for the upbringing and development of their child and participate in decisions affecting their child

2. the institution engages in open, two- way communication with families and communities about its child safety approach and relevant information is accessible

3. families and communities have a say in the institution’s policies and practices

4. families and communities are informed about the institution’s operations and governance.

Essentially families are primarily responsible for their own children and institutions that engage with and work with children need to keep families informed. A further factsheet on this, which was signed off by all the Premiers and the Prime Minister in 2018 talks about how organisations need to be responsive to families and seek their feedback.

Gender-Affirming Failures

Whether you are a church, a school, or a LGBTI+ organisation you need to take the recommendations of the Royal Commission into Child Sexual Abuse very seriously. I would argue if your organisation is all about sex or sexuality then it’s even more important you’re engaging with the family as per the recommendations. This is why it’s concerning that there are LGBTI+ organisations, and schools that use and support those organisations, which seem to not bring children and their parents together, but rather drive a wedge between children and their families.

Take for example TransFolk of WA which is a registered charity. As the Feminist News site, 4W outlines so clearly in their post this organsation runs a program to help young girls bind their chests even if they are only 14. They run this program which is knowingly delivering this device to minors in homes where the family may not wish the child to undertake this practice. They also send these binders to children without checking what sort of health or psychological care they might be receiving. Doesn’t sound a lot like a child-safe organisation to me. Certainly, not one that seeks to have “families and communities informed and involved,” as per the Royal Commission recommendations.

But they are not alone.

The Victorian Government has a completely unsafe LGBTIQ Student Support Policy which you can read here. It says, “Schools must work with students affirming their gender identity to prepare and implement a student support plan. The plan should be developed in consultation with the student and their parents or carers, where possible”. The implication is that perhaps parents should be cut out of the process if they won’t get on board with the social and potentially later medical transition of their child. But it gets much worse. Later on, under a heading called Parental Consent, it reads:

There may be circumstances in which students wish or need to undertake gender transition without the consent of their parent/s (or carer/s), and/or without consulting medical practitioners.

If no agreement can be reached between the student and the parent/s regarding the student’s gender identity, or if the parent/s will not consent to the contents of a student support plan, it will be necessary for the school to consider whether the student is a mature minor.

If a student is considered a mature minor they can make decisions for themselves without parental consent and should be affirmed in their gender identity at school without a family representative/carer participating in formulating the school management plan.

Basically, if you are a parent and you won’t get with the program of subjecting your child to a gender transformation, they’ll cut you off from the process. Once again undermining this key principle of child-safe organisations from the Royal Commission.

My Own Concerns in Tasmania

My experience as a parent has led me to be deeply concerned about Tasmanian programs too, and specifically what our future will look like if the Rockcliff Government pursues the Conversion Therapy Ban as per the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute report here. That report is contradictary and poorly written, obviously standards at Univeristy have dropped since I went there, but in a few places (eg. 5.5.28) it quite clearly indicates that if as a parent you want to help your child experiencing gender dysphoria or incongruence to adhere to their biological sex you have done conversion therapy and should be punished by law. It seeks to drive a wedge between parent and child and legislate what is a highly questionable model of gender-affirming care.

But even without those laws, my experiences already as a parent have been concerning. Take “The Growing Up Program” run by Family Planning Tasmania. This program is a series of educational programs around sex, consent, and gender for children all throughout their school life. My experience of this program has been that they deliberately make it hard for parents to find out what is being taught. Often parents are only notified on the day, or night before this program is run in their child’s school. Then they will commonly only offer a parent information session the morning of the session, thus deliberately excluding most parents from being able to come and engage with the presenter. This is more worrying when, based on conversations I’ve had with parents of older kids than mine, this program seems to teach gender confusion to kids as they are hitting puberty. Now of course it’s very hard to get good hard evidence of this because once again they are hiding what they are teaching kids. They provide only vague details on their parental information sheets. How is any of that fulfilling the Royal Commission’s recommendation that “families and communities are informed and involved”? To do that all that they teach should be freely and easily available for parents to review to enable parents to have conversations with their kids. Not only that, but the Growing Up Program facilitators should run multiple parental information sessions prior to speaking to children in school so every parent has the chance to engage and ask questions and be informed completely about what is taught to their kids about sex, gender, consent, and puberty.

My experience has also led me to be deeply concerned about Working It Out Tasmania, another government-funded organisation. This organsiation came to my child’s Primary School and flooded my child’s school with a gender-affirming ideology. The end result of the school’s “professional development” session with them was I had to unenroll my child from my State Government school because the Principal held fast to Working It Out’s anti-parent pro-LGBTI+ INC. agenda. You can read all about that here. Working It Out also promoted and used Minus18, whose posters were all over my child’s school after their session. Minus18 is also a gender-affirming, pro-trans organisation and even has articles to help kids to bind their chests (with their doctor’s advice, not their parents).

Parents MUST NEVER be excluded

As soon as these organisations and the governments that fund and support them start excluding parents they have fallen short of the Royal Commission's recommendations for how to be child-safe organisations. We must call this out and as parents and families we must fight back.

Thankfully there is some hope. Just today The Australian newspaper in its editorial sounded the alarm about gender-affirming care and the wedge being driven between children and parents stating,

“In one instance, school authorities had encouraged a young girl to use a boy’s name in the classroom and transition, without having any contact with parents about what was going on. This is clearly unacceptable.”

They are right. It is completely unacceptable. I suspect given the Victorian Government policy outlined earlier, there’s more than one instance of this occurring.

For now let’s hope the fact that this is starting to gain traction in the mainstream media is a sign the tide is turning against these unsafe practices, organisations, and terrible government policies. Let’s hope all organisations can recommit themselves to being ones where “families and communities are informed and involved.” Where the relationship between parent and child is held above all others. And if you’re the praying type let’s pray for our children to be protected from this dangerous ideology.

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Well, day 1 of Term 1 began and nothing had changed. My local Primary School's main entrance and office were still full of political and affirmative posters introducing my 6-year-old daughter to concepts she has no business knowing about. I’ve attached some pictures I took on that day here:

There are probably a few things worth saying here as we reflect on the posters/flag.

1. In the first picture, the rainbow flag and posters next to it take up an entire noticeboard in the Main Entrance Foyer. This foyer and these noticeboards were once used for displaying kids’ artwork and learning. Now they have been sacrificed on the altar of inclusion. More space for adult politics, and less space for kids to shine. I find that sad for kids.

2. You can see in the third picture a poster about different types of families. In principle, I have no problem with kids learning there are different ways people live. However of course this is not what this poster is doing, and GayBy Baby who provide the sign and advertise with the sign do more than that. Likewise in the context of the whole, this poster says much more than it would if it were the only poster in the entire school.

3. In the fourth picture, you can see the Principal put up the sign I made in the school colours with the school logo stating that everyone was welcome. However, instead of using my sign to replace all the others, which was my intent, she left ALL the other LGBTI+ posters/flag in place and failed to add the word ‘faiths’ as one of the explicitly listed categories despite my repeated requests for this to occur if the other attributes were going to remain.

4. In the final picture, the man on that poster is the former Education Minister turned Tasmanian State Premier, Jeremy Rockliff. This poster had initially been only in the Principal’s office. But after I expressed my concerns he was moved to the very front of the school. It was as if I was being told to stand down and back off because I would lose as the Principal was backed all the way up to the Premier.

Well in fact as it turned out the Principal was right and I should’ve heeded the warning. The Liberal Party of Tasmania under the leadership of Jeremy Rockliff does indeed think that exposing my six-year-old daughter to all of this LGBTI+ political propaganda without regard to parental rights or concerns is a moral good. How do I know this? Well, I sent all these pictures to the Minister for Education Mr Roger Jaensch asking him if he thought it appropriate and he eventually replied:

…The Tasmanian Government is committed to an inclusive community and the Department of Education, Children and Young People (DECYP) provides a safe, supportive and inclusive learning environment for students, staff and families.

All schools are encouraged to foster a culture of openness and a celebration of diversity and the creation of this environment can be achieved through posters and information in public areas.

DECYP provides guidelines on Supporting Sexual and Gender Diversity in Schools and Colleges to its schools along with Inclusive Language Guidelines that are available on the DECYP website…

As my Principal had communicated by moving Jeremy Rockilffs face to the front of the school, I had not a leg to stand on because the Liberal Government backed her completely.

What should we make of the Minister’s response to my question regarding the suitability of the posters for a Primary School? Well, I think his response reveals the real agenda of what is happening not just in my school, but in the West more broadly.

“The Tasmanian Government is committed to an inclusive community…”

If this meant what it said then, of course, the school and the Government would be listening to my concerns, hearing them, and then working out how it could make everyone feel welcome be they LGBTI+, Christian, or just someone who thought maybe the posters and flag in a Primary School went a bit too far. But when we say inclusion in 2023 in Tasmania we don’t mean working out how to get along. Rather we mean the LGBTI+ INC. version of inclusive communities where you either submit to their agenda or you get happily excluded. For more of my thoughts on the double-speak of inclusive language and the LGBTI+ INC idea see my previous post here.

“…provides a safe, supportive, and inclusive learning environment for students, staff, and families.”

If this were true, and not just political words on paper, then of course the school and the government would listen to my concerns because my daughter is a student and I am part of a family at that school. The irony of all the back and forth between the Principal and the Government is that my family did not feel safe attending the school. The dangers of our daughters being exposed to sexually inappropriate material were far too high for us, and the odds that our children would be vilified or targeted for being from a Christian home likewise were too high. How could we think any differently given the way our concerns had been responded to? In fact, my wife and I felt ill leaving our daughter in the care of people who refused to listen to our concerns and worries. There is no desire for the department to include you if you’re the wrong kind of person. No desire for its students to be safe if they’re from the wrong kind of family. And in fact, as they surrender to the trans-ideology of medicalizing and mutilating children, there is no care for the safety of any of the children in their care.

“…All schools are encouraged to foster a culture of openness and a celebration of diversity…”

Once again another lie. Never once in the two and a bit years we were members of the school community was I invited to talk about our faith, which seems quite a reasonable thing to think might’ve occurred given I’m both a parent and the local Anglican minister. In Kindergarten one of the teachers was a Christian and at Christmas, they talked about Jesus being born, but that’s about as far as we got when it came to our open school including our faith. Now, in normal circumstances that would be enough for me in a secular school. But if we’re going to be doing life together openly and diversely and if the school entrances and foyer are going to be plastered in posters of the LGBTI+ INC. movement, then in the spirit of true openness and diversity at a minimum EVERY Easter and Christmas an explanation of the Christian belief, not merely the perversion of those Christian festivals with Western consumerism (Bunnies and Santa), would be done.

If that’s too much to ask then at the very least a culture of openness would demand that when a parent says that flooding the school entrance and office with rainbow political statements, makes people of faith feel excluded unless the word faith is also explicitly stated, then you would act on that very reasonable request.

“…DECYP provides guidelines…”

I found this the most disingenuous part of the whole response because I had previously raised with the Minister that his guidelines for inclusive language do not include any guidance on how to include people of faith (a story for another post). The guidelines have at least a page and a half on LGBTI+ inclusion but nothing on faith/religion.

So what to make of all this?

The Liberal Government, its Departments, and School Principals are playing the game of inclusion when in fact they have no desire to include those people like me and my family, regular Christians who don’t want to force their views on anyone but who do want the right to exist and practice their beliefs while seeking to be good kind loving neighbours in the community. And it’s not just Christians who aren’t included in the new world order present in Tasmanian schools. It’s anyone who rejects the LGBTI+ INC push to sexualise kids and confuse them about biology and ultimately push them towards a path of medicalisation and mutilation as we’ve seen in the UK and the USA and are starting to hear about in parts of Australia too.

The Rest of the Story

As far as our story goes it’s almost too comical and too complex to recount just how the rest of Term 1 unfolded after the first day back. However, in summary, the Principal continued to dismiss my concerns regarding the sexualisation of children through the posters and again refused my request to have the word faith included explicitly on any posters.

Then, in an unexpected development, we had an incident with our daughter’s teacher which was ultimately the straw that broke the camel’s back. I raised an issue about our daughter getting bored in her class with her teacher. Following this, our daughter was told by her classroom teacher that she shouldn’t talk to her parents about being bored in class. She came home and told us this. I obviously found this outrageous and in light of the posters and the push to indoctrinate kids in the school, I found it deeply troubling that this teacher would think to start encouraging children to hide things from their parents in grade one. So I complained to the school principal about what had been said, however to this day she has never informed me if she took any action regarding this serious incident. How could this be?

Well before I answer that it’s probably worth noting that as all this was happening, we ended up having an interview in a local private school to assess our options and after finding in that school a normal approach to letting kids be kids and providing them with an education minus the LGBTI+ INC. indoctrination, we decided to finish our time in the state government school at the end of Term 1. The State School Principal somehow heard that we were leaving the school, prior to any official communication from us to the school about that, and so based on rumour, instead of reaching out to us, stopped communicating with us. That was her explanation as to why we’ve never heard from her about what steps she took to deal with our daughter’s teacher instructing her and her 27 classmates to keep secrets from their parents. We put in a formal complaint, but the Department’s complaint process is so slow and so inadequate that all that led to was getting another email from the Principal stating all the same things she had said previously. There’s apparently more complaining we can do but we’re a little exhausted by it all at the moment.

But on the upside of the many downsides, we are now in week 2 of Term 2 in the new private school and our whole family is much happier. Our daughter is thriving and loving her new school and her new friends. Strangely the school has grown by almost 10% in the last 2 weeks. I would argue simply further proof of the rot that is the State Education system under our horrible Liberal Government.

When the complexities of all that happened are boiled down I would say we were forced out of the school for three reasons.

1. As people of faith, we were not welcomed and our concerns were dismissed.

2. The posters are the first step in the State Government sponsored sexualisation of kids aimed at leading them down a path of gender dysphoria. It may be just a poster in grade one, but only a fool believes that’s all it is or that this is where it stops. But neither the government nor the leadership of the school agreed with us about this reality.

3. We felt unsafe because of issues 1 and 2, but also because of bad individual actors in the teaching/leadership class of the Education Department. The lack of professionalism by both teacher and principal made the situation untenable in the end.

Once again thanks for reading about our story. Thanks for your messages of support. Please subscribe so I can keep you up to date. A whole lot more has happened and many more doors have opened. There is much more to reflect on from our experience. Though we’ve removed our daughter from the state education system our fight to protect kids has just begun. Subscribing is just one way you can join in and I can keep you up to date with all that I’m learning as we go.

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible… Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness… the great enemy of clear language is insincerity. Where there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms…

- Orwell, George (1949). 1984. New York: Signet Books. p. 163.

There could be no better description of the doublespeak we see in our society’s talk about inclusion today.

What does inclusion mean? The Diversity Council of Australia says:

Inclusion occurs when a diversity of people (e.g. of different ages, cultural backgrounds, genders) feel valued and respected, have access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute their perspectives and talents to improve their organisation.

https://www.dca.org.au/topics/inclusion

This definition is a fascinating insight into the doublespeak in our culture when it comes to inclusion. Notice who’s excluded from their bracketed examples? Religious people. This is something we’ve experienced in our discussion at our local school too. For example, the Tasmanian Government Education Inclusive Language Guidelines which gives pages of examples of how to include all kinds of people, gives no advice on including religious people (see here).

These two examples, I believe, reveal that when people speak about inclusion, particularly in a political context or shaped by a political reality, what they really mean is reducing the role of religion in the public square to zero.

Now part of what makes all of this difficult is that by and large the role of religion, particularly the Christian religion in Australia has changed dramatically over the last 50 years. So that means there’s a natural process people of the Christian faith should expect where we become one player among many in the contest of ideas in a liberal democracy. People are not always going to agree that how we think the world should be run is how it should be run. No dramas, that’s the beauty of democracy - a contest of ideas. However, forcing a minority group (Christians) to have no say and no voice, and no right to speak or be included ceases to be a liberal democracy and becomes fascism. And when that occurs under the banner of ‘inclusion’ that is extremely disheartening for those perhaps rightly losing dominance but wrongly being excluded.

And so herein lies the problem with ‘inclusion’. Instead of enabling a contest of ideas in the public square, where all voices are heard equally and with respect, even if the ideas are in conflict and people fundamentally disagree with one another, what ‘inclusion’ now seems to mean is the removal of one voice (Christians), not just from dominance, but from the public square entirely and the replacement of that voice with another into dominance and power, and that new voice I shall term LGBTI+ INC*.

LGBTI+ INC. seems religious in nature. It has a calendar around which to shape your life. In Tasmania we have the TasPride Festival from 10-14 Feb. We have the World Pride Festival in Sydney from 17th Feb - 5th March, including the Mardi Gras on 25th February this year. There is a religious dress of a hyper-sexualised kind. Then there is Pride Month in June. It seems to have chosen Drag Queens as the priests and evangelists of the movement. You can also listen to LGBTI+ Music, read LGBTI+ books and you can see LGBTI+ INC. movies made for kids and adults. There is symbology to unite the group (flag = cross?) and every company pays homage to the gods during the religious festivals with rainbow logos, interviews and generally making sure they show the LGBTI+ INC. powers that be that they are good companies with the right morals and values. Not only that but, as seen with the FIFA World Cup late last year in Qatar, LGBTI+ INC. is also the new colonising force of the West taking its beliefs and values, and ‘inclusion’ to a majority Muslim country and chastising them for not getting with the program. LGBTI+ INC. is for the 21st century what the Christian missionary was for the West in the 19th century, a vessel for those who love power to gain more power and more control. As was the case for individual Christians and the Christian movement as a whole this is a bad space for your identity to get co-opted. If Christendom, or CHRISTIAN INC., characterised the rise of the west in the past, now we are in, or getting close to, a period of LGBTI+ INCendom. And the danger for the movement, as it was for Christianity, is that the movement and its people become subordinate to the wants and needs of bad actors who want power and money.

With LGBTI+ INC. in the ascendency, tolerance becomes about removing barriers to their power, rather than enabling all individuals to live freely in society. As happened to the Christian faith when it was co-opted by the state to become CHRISTIAN INC. bad actors enter the movement and put children in particular in danger.

So how do we move forward? Or more pointedly, how do we do true inclusion?

With great difficulty, I suspect, and most likely limited success, however here are a few of my thoughts:

1. Christians agree that LGBTI+ people have a right to organise their life in secular society however they please even if this means they do and say things we think are not a good idea or are harmful to human flourishing.

2. LGBTI+ people agree that Christians have a right to organise their life in secular society however they please even if it means we do and say things they think are not a good idea or are harmful to human flourishing.

3. We ALL agree to protect the innocence of children and the rights of parents to raise their kids according to their family beliefs and values (especially when those beliefs and values are different from our own). We ALL condemn any moves to sexualise children and steal their innocence and we err on the side of caution in this regard.

4. We ALL support ANY group that wishes to start a school and have it function according to its own beliefs and values be it LGBTI+ or religious or any other type.

5. We respect the right of freedom of association. LGBTI+ groups should be able to continue with their activities outlined above (Mardi Gras etc.) just as people of faith can continue with theirs.

6. We decide to allow both groups to equally participate in the public square, including schools, libraries, government grants and funding, and political advocacy, OR we decide that neither should.

7. We expect that sometimes we’re going to think that the way the other group organises their life or lives their life is harmful or dangerous however in order to live peaceably in Australia together we tolerate each other and seek opportunities for connection working hard to find common ground.

All of these are hard however I think points three (innocence of children) and six (equal participation in the public square) are particularly fraught for reasons outlined below:

Point Three (Innocence of Children and Rights of Parents).

This is fraught because it seems that we are disagreeing on a deep, almost fundamental level about what it means to be human. If collectively we can’t decide that introducing kids to sexualised topics at a young age is a bad idea and if we make sexualising kids fundamental to who we are as a group identity then the push for inclusion will never succeed. Too many people, religious or not, will not stand for it. Likewise, if we minimise biological reality and move without evidence to suppress the natural process of puberty before taking steps of intervention when caring for people experiencing gender dysphoria we will never be able to live together well. There is simply too much at stake. It seems to me that one reason the church has lost its public credibility is that tragically it messed up its responsibility to protect kids. I fear LGBTI+ INC. is headed for the same kind of reckoning if it continues along its current trajectory.

Point Six (Equal Participation in the Public Square).

Part of why this is difficult relates to the difficulties outlined in point 3 above. That is if we can’t get common ground on some fundamentals, especially around kids, we will find it very hard to work out how to live together well. Assuming we could work out what a baseline was, my suggestion is it should be built around freedom of association, the rights of parents, and the innocence of kids. Then the next step is to decide, what’s the best way to do life together in places in society where two groups who are opposed on many issues must live together (e.g. schools, state library, or the parliament)l? And here again, the issues are fraught. It’s LGBTI+ INC. on one side and CHRISTIANITY INC. on the other both demanding dominance.

Think this year of the Prime Minister marching in the Mardi Gras and then a couple of years ago the former Prime Minister attending Hillsong’s Conference. For the current PM he is praised for going to the Mardi Gras in the press, for the previous PM he was rebuked and chastised (no comment here about either of the PMs characters or Hillsong - for another day). But, the current PM is also strongly criticised for what he’s doing in many Christian circles too as was the former praised for his faith. To live together well then whoever the Prime Minister is he or she should be able to do or not do any community activity so long as he is fighting for the rights of both groups to exist and function freely in society.

Likewise, to use our experience in the State Government Primary School, if it is decided that LGBTI+ INC. signs, flags, and posters can be posted in the school, and done so in a way that doesn’t inappropriately sexualise kids, then I see no reason why schools shouldn’t also hand out bibles, teach scripture, and invite priests to school assembly to talk about Jesus at Easter or Imamns at Ramadan. Alternatively, because we think educating children, and teaching them numeracy and literacy is the purpose of school, and because we want to live together in harmony even though we disagree, then we decide that state schools should be neutral zones for all parties and their walls should be covered in posters, not about politics and religion, but about how to count and read. I suspect what we decide for schools will be different to say libraries or parliaments which by nature should help us contest ideas (so long as they commit to keeping kids safe and unsexualised in the process).

This is hard!

It’s hard trying to figure out how to live together when we disagree. It’s hard realising that to live together in peace we have to have some things in society not go the way we’d like. It’s also much easier to live together when we get off our computers and actually engage one another in person, so let me commend that to you as a good starting point for inclusion. But surely whatever we do next we can do better than we are at the moment. I’d be keen to hear your reflections on what I’ve said as I’m still very much working this out as we go.

How strange I thought. For a start kids don’t have sexualities and there are only two genders at the school and in real life (boys and girls), and the school seemed like a welcoming place, so why did we need an inappropriate sign? My daughter is quite a good reader and she could easily read this and ask me about it. I don’t want her to think about this, she’s six. She should be learning the fundamentals at school and having fun with her friends.

What to do with this sign? Let it go it’s just a sign? Or raise my concerns because if they’ve put up a sign like this what else is going on that I’m not aware of? After a week or so I finally plucked up the courage to meet with the Principal. After an email with the school admin staff, we arranged for her and me to meet on 6th December.

On the 6th I headed into the school extremely nervous. Hoping for a good outcome. Hoping to raise the issue of sexualising our kids and to get a fair hearing. But before I was even able to meet with the Principal as I arrived for our meeting it became apparent that though I thought I’d come to speak about one poster I was dealing with something much more significant.

When I walked into the office I was met with multiple signs from the LGBTI+ movement. There was a giant rainbow flag hanging on the wall and multiple posters encouraging me to watch GAYBY BABY, telling me to be an ally amongst other things. Now I’ve got no problem with people promoting their vision of the good life, but the sexualised nature of this seemed out of place in the office of a Primary School.

So I was quite put off by what I saw in the office, but I tried not to let it worry me. Yes, we were no longer going to be talking about just one poster, but still, I was hoping we’d have a good meeting together.

Eventually, the Principal came out to meet me and we went to her office. This was probably the worst moment of my visit. As we walked in I realised I wasn’t going to be having a chat with someone open to hearing me but to what appeared to be a rainbow warrior. The Principal’s office was quite stunning really. Her desk was draped in a rainbow flag. Her noticeboard was covered in LGBTI+ pamphlets and posters and in the middle of them all was the Tasmanian State Premier proudly telling me to become an ally. Not only was the Principal drinking the cool-aid of sexualising our kids, but it seemed her office was designed to show me she did so with the backing of the government all the way up to the Premier.

At this point, I should probably point out that if this was a secular club full of adults making up their own minds about how to live their lives then in 21st-century Australia I’d expect a lot of rainbow information and LGBTI+ information. I’d also expect that as a Christian with traditional views to be in the minority. But this is not an adult social club or secular workplace, it’s a school and a Primary School at that. And values and morals are the job of parents to impart to their children. Not only that but there is something significantly different between homosexual identities and the gender fluidity/trans ideology flooding in under the rainbow flag. The two need to be separated.

But all that aside as I sat there in the Principal’s office to say I was put off by the sheer quantity of what I had seen in both offices is an understatement and I don’t think our meeting went that well. I wasn’t as prepared as I should’ve been and she outgunned me. She didn’t agree that the poster was inappropriate nor did she think it sexualised our kids. I did however leave with one small win. The poster I argued was from an organisation that Primary School Kids had no business being made aware of (Minus18 more on them another day) and in seeking to be inclusive the sign actually excluded people of faith/religion (she tried to argue “cultures” included faith but I explained quite clearly this is not the case). I left the meeting overwhelmed but with a verbal agreement from the Principal that she would take the sign down and put up a new sign that read “All Sexualities, Genders, Identities, Cultures, and FAITHS, Welcome Here.” This would be more inclusive and remove the Minus18 references from the school. Not ideal but a small win I was happy to live with.

Two weeks passed. And the sign remained though the Minus18 logo was tapped over (and it was tapped over on only one of the three copies of that sign I saw in the school). Where was the new sign? Having had more time to reflect and having seen the Principal make no moves to do what she had said she would do I sent her an email on 20th December saying I understood it was the end of the year and things were busy so I’d made a better sign that was more inclusive. The sign was designed in the school colours and read “Everyone Welcome Here”. I suggested she put this sign up as a good compromise that achieved maximum inclusion. How would she respond?

Her answer:

Rather shockingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, she had completely dismissed me and failed to inform me of her intention to do nothing. One assumes that given our meeting was on 6th of December that the conversation she referenced in her email to me on the 20th didn’t happen on 19th and was most likely to have happened sometime in the week of the 12th-16th. We had a couple of back and forths where she continued to completely dismiss my concerns.

Later that day I sent a long email to her outlining my concerns once again and my displeasure at her actions to marginalise me as a person of faith and sexualise our kids. I also noted that in spite of these disagreements, my desire was to work with her to see our school be a place where learners (students) thrive. I received no response and have not to this day.

So what happened next? School Holidays started the next day and so we’ll pick the story up towards the end of Term 1 2023 (mid-March). I’d love to connect with you if you’ve had to face a battle like this in your school, especially if you’re in Tasmania, but anywhere really. Iron sharpens iron and the only way we can protect our kids is if we work together to defeat the sexualisation of children in secular education. Subscribe to this blog to find out what happens next in my unfolding story.

Read part 2 of this story here.

Not actual real-life wrestling like some of my mates do, but wrestling with my thoughts, my emotions, my faith, and our world. Many years ago when blogging was cool I wrote a lot. 15 odd years later I return as I seek to make sense of the world and our place in it.

1. Understanding

The world is complex. I don’t understand a lot of it, but taking time to read and write helps me, and I hope helps you. I’m also a father now and that has radically changed my perspective on life and my role in our world. Things I used to ignore or let through to the keeper must be wrestled with. My kids must be protected. I have a responsibility to help them grow up well.

2. Faith

I’m an ordained minister with a Masters of Divinity (Australian College of Theology - Ridley) and a Bachelor of Arts - Sociology and Public Policy (University of Tasmania). I write and think with a Christian worldview. Though I hope regardless of your standpoint you’ll find what I write about interesting.

3. Protecting Kids

The impetuous for this has been the unwelcome discovery in my children's Primary school of radical gender/trans ideology being foisted on young children under the guise of inclusion. This comes with the blessing of the government. Having had limited success engaging with my school I turn here to document what I’m learning and how I’m thinking about raising kids so that they know the truth about biology, stay safe in a hostile school environment, and grow up to love Jesus. But this won’t be all I write about for there is more to life and raising kids than these issues. I hope you’ll journey with me and we’ll learn a thing or two together.

4. Living Well

I think the Christian faith has a unique perspective to offer when it comes to living the good life. What does it look like to live the good life? How do we take hold of the good life? What rights and responsibilities do we have when living the good life? I hope to explore some of these questions too.

5. Reflections

I’ll read a bit and offer reflections and recommendations as I go.

So if all of that sounds even vaguely interesting, why don’t you subscribe?

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