This article was originally published by the Star Observer. You can find the original article here.
National Party MP Dr David Gillespie has referred to gender-affirming care for minors as “voodoo gender theory”, deeming it a “blot on the medical profession.”
Speaking at Parliament House in Canberra yesterday for the launch of the book Devastated: How gender ideology is tearing Australian families apart, Gillespie was reported to say he was “flabbergasted” to see “sensible people” and “eminent doctors and professors” in Parliament express their support for gender-affirming care.
“It is really a societal nightmare, and we’ve got to keep fighting back.”
He contrasted medical procedures of the past such as “leeches and cupping” with the rise of modern, evidence-based medicine “…all of a sudden… it’s all thrown out the window.”
David Gillespie has over 30 years of medical experience as a gastroenterologist, consultant physician, and as the Director of Physician Training at Port Macquarie Base Hospital. Although he acknowledged his lack of qualifications in psychiatry and psychology, he attributed young peoples’ confusion with gender to the “turbulent rise of hormones” that comes with puberty.
“It’s a normal part of our evolution that some kids identify [as a gender they weren’t assigned at birth] in this dysphoric period, or just because they’re going through working out who they are,” he said.
“Dysphoria fades. There’s a period of denial, then anger—it’s like death and dying in the stages that have been described. But they come to terms with what nature gave them: their biological sex.”
Gillespie also claimed that he had first hand accounts of people who had their children “basically groomed, taken off into a little sect.”
“They’ve been given all the information of what to say to a doctor, where you go, who’s a friendly person, who’ll sign you over [for treatment].
“They’re actively recruiting confused kids, as well as kids [with] untreated depression and unrecognised autism spectrum disorder.”
Star Observer reached out to Dr Gillespie for a comment, but did not receive one by the time of publication.
Rebrand of anti-marriage equality group
Devestated, edited by Binary’s Kirralie Smith, documents the experiences of nine Australian families with their transgender children.
During promotion for the book, Smith has said that many of the families no longer have a relationship with their children.
Binary was previously known as Marriage Alliance, a right-wing, Christian, anti-marriage equality group that was active between 2015-2017. Shortly after marriage equality was passed into law, the group rebranded and began to campaign against “harmful gender theory and the aggressive ideological agenda that comes with it.”
During their time as Marriage Alliance, the group came under fire for their advertisements depicting a rainbow noose around the neck of an office worker, and created advertisements against marriage equality that were so conservative, Channels Seven and Ten to declined to air them.
