NI Greens declare: ‘Children of any age should be allowed to switch gender’

The Queer Greens are a group within the wider Green Party, and its seven page manifesto sits alongside transgender policies contained in its existing 40-page general manifesto.

Among the demands in the “queer” manifesto are these:

l “Increase participation and representation of LGBTQ+ people in sports and leisure activities, ensuring that appropriate training and resources are available”

l “Ensure that LGBTQ+ identities, issues, and rights are included in teacher training across all settings”

l “Provide healthcare professionals with consistent, specific, and appropriate LGBTQ+ training”

l And “bring forward a Gender Recognition Bill for NI on a basis of self-declaration requiring nonmedical diagnoses or interventions, inclusive of non-binary people and those under the age of 18, with no lower age limit”.

This last one refers to people’s ability to change their gender on official documents such as birth certificates, passports, and so on.

It actually re-states an existing policy of the party going back as far as 2016. What has changed since is that transgenderism has become much more of a hot topic, with significant resistance now growing to the spread of such ideas within various professions – and in particular within schools.

A spokesman for the party indicated to the News Letter that, under the party’s vision, under-18s would need the consent of a parent or guardian before changing their gender.

Transgenderism has emerged from obscurity in the past decade to become one of the major activist causes of our time.

It rests on two main ideas:

Firstly, that sex and gender are different – someone may have male sex genes and male sex organs but their true gender is female, and such people should be helped to transition from one gender to the other;

And secondly, that instead of two genders there is a limitless spectrum of “non-binary” genders, with no fixed definition of what a man or a woman is.

Recently a group called the Women’s Rights Network has begun putting banners and billboards up in NI, challenging the spread of these ideas where they affect female-only places and activities like changing rooms and sports.

On Monday it emerged one of their billboards in north Belfast has been vandalised with graffiti saying that a woman is “whatever she says she is”, plus the terms ACAB (all cops are b******s) and F*** TERFS (terfs being feminists who reject transgender ideology).

One of the core aims of the transgender movement has been reforming the UK’s Gender Recognition Act.

This requires that people should meet some set criteria before they can change gender.

For example, they must be diagnosed with the medical condition gender dysphoria (sometimes described as a feeling that they are ‘in the wrong body’), and a declaration that they intend to live in their new gender permanently.

Activists want this scrapped so anyone can switch gender without oversight.

Green Party NI deputy leader Mal O’Hara, who is standing in North Belfast in next week’s election, said: “I’m proud to launch the Queer Greens’ manifesto, which outlines how Green MLAs will set about improving the lives of members of the LGBTQ+ community across Northern Ireland.

“Greens brought the first motion in support of marriage equality to the Assembly a decade ago. We have always been at the forefront of social justice and LGBTQ+ equality issues in Northern Ireland. And where we lead, others – eventually – follow.

“Ministers have failed to deliver a fully-funded LGBTQ+ Strategy, despite it first being promised in 2007. The traditional parties have failed to deliver for the LGBTQ+ community in Northern Ireland.

“It’s time to elect politicians who will prioritise the fight for social justice.

“It’s time to vote Green.”

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