The Births Deaths Marriages and Relationships Registration Act (2021), commonly called the BDMRR or the sex self-ID Act, comes into effect on 15 June 2023. It allows anyone, including children of any age, to change the sex marker on their birth certificate by a simple statutory declaration.
Under Clause 25, this Act allows guardians of a child to ‘nominate’ their sex, with the child’s consent, and a letter of support from a third party who does not have to be medically qualified.
The Department of Internal Affairs (DIA) that administers the Act says that “The third party is not assessing if the change is in the best interests of the child or young person, or if they physically conform to their gender” and therefore the third party can be a registered professional or “any person aged 18 or over that has known a child or young person for 12 months or more.”
This means that a child may arrive at a school having already had the sex marker on their birth certificate changed without any medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria and potentially without any therapeutic plan for the care of the child’s physical and mental health.
From June 15, if the parents do not disclose the birth certificate change, schools will not know the biological sex of a newly enrolled child and will have no way of finding out because all previous birth certificates are hidden from public view.
Note: The Ministry of Education does have access to original birth certificates for use in the National Student Index, but it is unclear whether principals can also use that database. Even if they can, it is likely that, under privacy laws, principals will be unable to disclose that information to any other staff, which raises very serious safeguarding concerns.
Not knowing the correct sex of a child is a safeguarding issue for the child, other students, and all teachers. The possibilities are open-ended for accusations of, or actual, sexual assaults. Keeping secrets provides a rich environment for all sorts of bullying and emotional blackmail. If teachers do not know the actual sex of the children under their care, they cannot safely provide medical attention, or plan for residential camps, or offer sex-specific advice (eg on menstruation).
This unsafe secretive behaviour is already happening:
But the backlash has affected Jay, causing him to change schools and go from being “out and proud” to keeping his transition a secret.
“It’s a bit gutting actually because he is going to be found out and he is going to be hurt. He’s now asking his friends to lie for him, which is a shame.”
All citizens have the right to hold or not to hold personal beliefs, and the freedom to express their views in public. However, when schools keep a child’s sex hidden from others, or command teachers to affirm a child’s gender identity, they are abandoning those fundamental rights.
Teachers, other students, and parents all have the right not to believe that children can change sex and the right not to participate in the rituals of someone else’s belief. No school would demand that everyone should say ‘amen’ at the end of every sentence, yet many are commanding the whole school to affirm a child’s adopted gender identity, and by so doing are disrespecting those who do not adhere to gender identity beliefs.
Ministry of Education (MOE) guidelines to schools that instruct teachers to use ‘preferred pronouns’, that tell schools they are not obliged to tell parents if a child transitions at school, and that keep the real sex of a child hidden from everyone else, are potentially also in conflict with the Care of Children Act and the Bill of Rights.
When asked about these potential conflicts in an Official Information Act request last year, the response from the MOE was brief and nonchalant:
The Ministry has not sought any legal advice in relation to the specific questions mentioned in your request therefore your request has been refused under Section 18(e) of the Act, as the document alleged to contain the information requested does not exist.
The MOE has not even considered these very serious concerns that are a direct consequence of sex self-ID. To date, the MOE has provided no advice to school boards on how they might legally and fairly navigate through the conflicting rights of parents, students, and teachers.
Across the country, principals and teachers are individually wrestling with these complex problems. No one is keeping statistics on how many teachers have been forced to resign because they disagreed with the school policies on gender and were not prepared to disregard their own values. No records are kept of how many students are changing their gender identity and how that affects everyone else in the school as well as its facilities and policies. No one knows how many parents have chosen to home school their children rather than expose them to gender theories they do not believe.
Without seeking a legal opinion and without collecting any data, Boards of Trustees and the Ministry of Education are flying blind into potentially very costly litigation from parents, teachers, or students whose human rights have been discounted.