Barnaby Joyce Thinks Schools Should Be Able To Ban Transgender Students
Jog on.
Former Deputy Prime Minister and bastion of traditional values Barnaby Joyce has declared that same-sex schools should have the right to discriminate against transgender students.
As the government continues to drag its feet on the issue of religious discrimination and protections for LGBTIQ students, Joyce told Sky News political editor David Speers that “the right of the school, and the right of the vast majority of parents, is a right that must be respected.”
“You can’t usurp the ethos and the belief structure of the church or the synagogue or the mosque,” said Joyce. “The views of one family or one student can’t therefore prevail and force a change on the views of everyone else.”
“You cannot send a student whose genetic make up is XY … to a school established for people of XX. It is not fair on the larger school unit that they have to change and accept all because of the desires of one.”
“If I send my child to an all-girls school I don’t want the complication and the possibility that someone turns up and says ‘well I believe that I want to identify as a woman, I want to be identified as a girl, I want to go into your bathrooms, I want to go into your change rooms’,” he added. “That might be that person’s right and wish but everybody else says ‘well that’s an affront on our rights’.”
Joyce also said schools shouldn’t be “politically correct bullied” and that transgender students could always “choose a different school”.
Like everyone else, transgender students should not be subjected to the sexual fantasies of Barnaby Joyce. https://t.co/wov6k067XN
— Pauline Pantsdown (@PPantsdown) December 5, 2018
His comments came at the end of a chaotic day in Canberra in which the government blocked a Labor bill which would have closed loopholes in existing laws that allow religious schools to expel LGBTIQ students. The government has already committed to closing these loopholes, so the decision to block the bill was widely seen as a political move to avoid having to debate the legislation in the House of Representatives, where the Coalition is currently in minority. It means the discriminatory laws will remain in place until some time next year.
Basically, the government is in disarray, and queer kids are being forced to pay for it. What else is new?