If only the LGBTQ+ political activist movement would leave their agenda in the bedroom, as Peter Dutton wistfully muses.

Asked about US President Donald Trump’s declaration that there are only two genders, the Opposition Leader bizarrely took the conversation into the bedroom.

‘I’m in the (John) Howard mould of not being interested in what’s happening in people’s bedrooms … I’ve got no interest in people’s relationships.’

But the current debate is not about bedrooms.

It is about girls’ and women’s sports, male access to their private spaces, and about child gender clinics which administer puberty blockers with the potential to sterilise kids.

The Opposition Leader’s comments on Sunday in an interview with Sky News Australia’s political editor Andrew Clennell reveal that he is either incredibly naïve and misunderstanding of Howard’s position on protecting children, or he is trying to placate a small but powerful LGBTQ+ political lobby and its backers within the Liberal Party.

In my view, it can only be the latter.

For the record, John Howard did more than any Liberal politician to stand up to activists when it comes to protecting gender norms in law. In 2004 he legislated to protect the definition of marriage in law, something Malcolm Turnbull worked to undo in 2017.

Unlike Howard, Dutton is running from a fight.

Like everyone fighting for man-woman marriage and the truth about gender, Howard’s motive in the same-sex marriage debate had nothing to do with prying into people’s bedrooms.

It was about keeping what people did in their bedrooms in the bedroom. Recently, gender activism has left the bedroom and gained a hold in schools and the health system.

In trying to place himself above the ‘culture wars’ and keep the election focus on cost of living, Dutton badly misreads Howard and continues to dance around one of the greatest medical scandals in our history.

The Coalition is essentially playing Russian Roulette with the lives of children at the hands of Australia’s gender clinics.

When pressed by Clennell on whether he would follow Trump and restore two genders to Australian passports, Dutton said: ‘We’re not changing, I’ve been clear about that. Our policies aren’t going to change.’

So much for keeping LGBTQ+ politics in the bedroom. A Dutton government will keep gender fluidity in public on government documents where government sanction of it continues to send confusing messages about biology to vulnerable children.

‘I’ve been clear in relation to there being two sexes and a group of people, obviously, outside of male and female, a small group … who are intersex or indeterminate,’ Dutton told Clennell.

It is my view that the suffering of the tiny number of people who are intersex or of indeterminate gender has long been disingenuously used by activists to deconstruct biological norms and advance the false idea that every child’s gender is fluid.

Three weeks ago, when Donald Trump declared there were only two genders and de-funded clinics which inject children with powerful puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, Dutton squibbed when asked about his approach and said he would not be following suit.

Pressed days later by Sky News Australia host Peta Credlin, who understands with crystal clarity what is at stake in the gender debate, he conceded there were only two.

He said girls’ and women’s sports should be protected and reiterated that again with Clennell.

‘I think there is a real live debate in our country about what happens in women’s sport. I think girls and women should be protected,’ he said.

‘I do think that a young girl who wants to compete in the 2032 Olympics, but can’t place at the moment because she’s got biological males competing against her, I think that’s a real problem. And I think there is a debate in our country in that regard.’

Tick for that, although he’s made no policy commitment.

Moderate Liberal Senator Dave Sharma, again on Sky News Australia, said the Coalition would not be restoring the true definition of woman, if elected, in the Sex Discrimination Act.

Then last week, Senator Pauline Hanson moved yet another motion for an inquiry into the practices of Australia’s child gender clinics.

When asked about 18 of his Senators voting with Hanson and the motion failing because of other Liberals working with Labor and the radical Greens to protect the gender clinics, Dutton said the issue was a ‘conscience vote’ for the Coalition.

Seriously?

On the red-hot gender debate, Dutton can’t work out whether he’s Arthur or Martha.

Conscience votes in the Coalition have historically been for matters of life and death – the killing of unborn babies in abortion and the killing of the aged and infirm through euthanasia.

Because of the potential for Australian children to be harmed by gender activism, Dutton can’t keep dodging it.

The Queensland Crisafulli government has halted the prescription of puberty blockers and hormones while it conducts an investigation following revelations a Cairns clinic allegedly administering puberty blockers to a 12-year-old.

Days later, Labor’s Federal Health Minister Mark Butler announced a review of puberty blockers, saying that fresh guidelines for administering them to children would be informed by ‘public consultation’ and ‘driven by evidence’. ‘I have asked the NHMRC to undertake a comprehensive review of the Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines for trans and gender diverse children…’

Thankfully the Crisafulli government held the line, and the blocker ban remains in place in one state.

But the reality is no more inquiries are needed. The UK’s Cass Review strongly suggested child gender treatments had been conducted with poor evidence of efficacy and lots of evidence of child harm.

The Tavistock clinic in London was closed two years ago as a result. Many of the Nordic countries have moved to stop the child gender clinics along with Donald Trump.

Australia is an outlier and Dutton, as a conservative leader, should be clear but he’s not.

If there was one so-called culture war issue that would be a winner for Dutton with mainstream Australians, it would be protecting children from the child gender clinics.

That he doesn’t have the courage to commit in the face of incontrovertible evidence of the harm related to activism and gender fluid ideology is, I believe, testament to the power of this political lobby and its grip on the Liberal Party.

Lyle Shelton is National Director of the Family First Party.