BY JOHN CARPAY, The Interim

If Trudeau’s Bill C-8 becomes law, parents could spend up to five years in jail for trying to help their son accept himself as a boy, or for helping their daughter to accept herself as a girl. C-8 would also impose prison terms up to five years for doctors, counsellors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other paid professionals whose treatment for gender confusion departs from the new gender orthodoxy. If MPs vote to make C-8 the law, parents and professionals wanting to help gender-dysphoric children will effectively have only one legal option: to encourage a confused child to “transition” to the opposite gender.

“Transitioning” means taking puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and even undergoing permanent sterilization and physical surgeries: healthy organs such as breasts and testicles are removed.

The Liberal government’s new ban on “conversion therapy” defines it as “a 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 behaviour.” The term “cis-gender” (pronounced “sis-gender”) is a term used by transgender activists to refer to a woman who also feels like (or identifies as) a woman, or a man who feels like (or identifies as) a man. Under C-8, trying to change “gender identity” to “cisgender” means trying to help a male feel comfortable as a male, or likewise helping a female to feel comfortable as a woman.

If C-8 becomes law, it will become criminal in Canada to help boys and girls who struggle with gender identity to find peace in accepting biological reality.
Bill C-8 ignores the fact that the vast majority of children experiencing gender identity disorder will outgrow it by the time they reach the age of 18, provided that they are allowed to go through puberty. Over the course of many years, doctors Kenneth J. Zucker and Susan Bradley helped hundreds of children at the Gender Identity Service of Toronto’s Centre for Addiction and Mental Health feel comfortable in the body they were born in.

Bill C-8 creates a one-way street. Helping a confused boy to accept his gender becomes criminal. But causing a boy to feel uncomfortable about being a boy, and suggesting to youngsters that “there is no such thing as boys and girls,” and convincing a girl that she is actually a boy trapped in a girl’s body, all remain perfectly legal. Activists who have so shrewdly infiltrated our public (and religious) schools have nothing to fear from C-8; they can continue sexualizing our children and promoting transgender ideology to vulnerable youth.

Bill C-8 also imposes this hypocrisy with regard to sexual orientation. C-8 ignores the reality of people who testify publicly about having personally experienced changes in their sexual orientation, for which they are grateful. Trudeau Senior said “there’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation,” but Trudeau Junior is now inviting the state into the offices of all doctors, counsellors and clergy.

Bill C-8 makes it illegal to “cause” a person under the age of 18 to undergo “conversion therapy,” which includes trying to reduce non-heterosexual sexual behaviour. Religious counselling is certainly both a “practice” and a “service” that falls under C-8.  Religious adherents voluntarily discuss their sexual attractions and sexual behaviour with trusted and respected clergy. C-8 creates a double-standard for people who seek to reduce – or eliminate – their sexually promiscuous behaviour. C-8 allows pastors, rabbis, imams, and priests to counsel straight people (of all ages) to refrain from sexual promiscuity. But C-8 makes it a crime for those same religious leaders to counsel gay teens to refrain from sexual promiscuity. C-8 also makes it a crime for clergy to help children and teens to accept their birth-gender.

It would be possible to challenge C-8 in court for violating Charter rights and freedoms, like the right of parents to raise and educate their own children as parents deem best, and the freedoms of religion, expression and association. But it would be far, far better to defeat this anti-Charter bill, and prevent it from becoming law in the first place.
Canadians who care about children and who cherish our Charter freedoms need to contact their MP immediately.

Lawyer John Carpay is president of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF.ca)