NZ Christian school will shut down because it can’t offer ‘cures’ for homosexuality

1 News screenshot

IVY Tan, above, a spokesperson for Kaitaia Abundant Life School in New Zealand described as “horrendous” a law that prevents it from offering conversion therapy to pupils who identify as gay.

At the beginning of 2023 NZ became the latest country to outlaw cruel and discredited interventions aimed at turning gays “straight”, but rather than comply with the law the school has decided to shut down.

According to 1 News the school, which offers “quality God-honouring education” to around 200 primary and secondary students, says the new law means they can no longer operate under Christian values.

“Poison” Ivy Tan added the “horrendous” law means that it can no longer offer “prayers, support or guidance” to students that may be experiencing “unwanted feelings towards the same sex.”

Image via YouTube

On hearing of the impending closure, the Minister of Education, Jan Tinetti, above, was less than sympathetic.

She said that if schools such as Kaitaia Abundant Life choose to close because they are unable to fully care for all students, regardless of sexuality “then they’re making the best decision.”

There is an expectation, and has been from the word go with all governments, that all schools will do their best to support all their students from all backgrounds

Now that means all of our rainbow kids as well, and I make no apology.

While the school has announced its plans to close down at the end of Term 2, the ministry is yet to sign off on that.

Image via YouTube

UN expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz above, told NZ’s Human Rights Commissioner in 2020:

LGBT persons endure severe pain and long-lasting psychological and physical damage because of so-called ‘conversion therapies

Practices of conversion therapy are rooted in the belief that persons of diverse sexual orientation and gender identity are somehow inferior, either morally, spiritually or physically because of their orientation or identity, and that they must modify that orientation or identity to remedy that inferiority.

Parallels between being homosexuality and left-handedness

Image via leftyfretz.com

Madrigal-Borloz words reminded me of the attempts made by a devout Christian teacher at my primaty school in South Africa to “cure” pupils of the “sin” of left-handedness. She did so by viciously beating the hands of “lefties” with a heavy metal ruler, screaming that it was a sign of “deviancy” and “satanic”.

Her behaviour was rooted in the Catholic belief that left-handed people were servants of the Devil. This belief, on occasions, led to the execution of “lefties” in medieval Europe.

Persecution persisted in 15th and 16th century and if Leonardo Da Vinci had been punished for being a mancinoItalian slang for “lefties“—and probably gay, the ceiling of the Sistine might well have been painted avocado green.

According to this blog:

For generations, left-handers who attended Catholic schools were forced to become right-handed. They justified this belief on the basis of several Bible quotations that stigmatised left-handedness.

Even as recently as the 20th century, certain psychologists would see being left handed as a sign of deviancy, which was necessary to be “fixed” through behavioural treatments.

The blogger added:

It was fairly common until even the late 20th century for children to be forced to write with their right hand. Some teachers would go so far as to tie a lefty pupil’s left hand behind their back so that it could not be used.

And they pointed out:

In total the Bible makes 100 references alluding to the right hand, all of them positive. Whereas only 25 references to the left hand are made, and no surprises, every single one is negative!

Crazy, huh? But no less loony than attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, Abundant Life will continue to operate as a church and “help families that are looking at home-schooling.”

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If you spot any typos in this post please alert me via email: freethinkered@aol.com

9 responses to “NZ Christian school will shut down because it can’t offer ‘cures’ for homosexuality”

  1. Being gay is like winning the lottery, only better!

    Liked by 2 people

  2. ” which offers “quality God-honouring education.” Now there is a phrase, actually empty of meaning, but should sound a warning to any parent. It indicates that their child will be indoctrinated, their mind warped, in ways that will get in the way of real education.

    I didn’t know that left handed people were servants of the devil. As a child I had a tendency to be left handed. I was never punished for it but always encouraged to use my right hand. I began consistently using my right hand which has continued. My son is left handed – we never tried to change this – so perhaps it is in our genes.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. In 2020 a fella callen Allen Donald penned a marvelous tongue-in-cheek piece entitled “Why Left-Handed People Do Not Deserve Equal Rights”. Here’s an extract:

      If we want to maintain the sanctity of civil society, the sanctity of marriage, and the sanctity of scissors and other everyday objects, then we cannot allow the left-handed to have special rights. Right-thinking is correct thinking and left-thinking is something else. People make choices every day, but we don’t allow those deviant choices to force laws on the rest of us.

      Let us remember what Jesus said about left-handed people in the Gospel of Matthew:

      “When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all nations: And he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’ … Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, ‘Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.’” (Matthew 25: 31-34, 41).

      Obviously, if Jesus felt this way about left-handed people, then the continued demands of the left-handed cannot be taken seriously. Also, consider that the following people were/are left-handed: John Dillinger, Billy the Kid, the Boston Strangler, Jack the Ripper, and Justin Bieber.

      That being said, left-handed people can be helped. With the right training, the right schooling, and some prayer, they can become right-handed people, like the rest of us. And the world will be a better place for it. https://discover.hubpages.com/politics/Why-Left-Handed-People-Do-Not-Deserve-Equal-Rights

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Wonderful. I sent it to my son who is left handed. It didn’t stop him becoming a pilot. He suggested that if I had been allowed to become left handed I might have become a great artist. I think the chances of that are zero.

        Liked by 2 people

    2. But you forget “The Fall”!

      Liked by 1 person

  3. Interesting parallel: one could also note the Latin for left-handed is ‘sinister’, and the French is ‘gauche.’

    Liked by 2 people

    1. In Hebrew, as well as in other ancient Semitic and Mesopotamian languages, the term “left” was a symbol of power or custody. There were also examples of left-handed assassins in the Old Testament (Ehud killing the Moabite king). The left hand symbolized the power to shame society, and was used as a metaphor for misfortune, natural evil, or punishment from the gods. This metaphor survived ancient culture and was integrated into mainstream Christianity by early Catholic theologians, such as Ambrose of Milan, to modern Protestant theologians, such as Karl Barth, to attribute natural evil to God in explaining God’s omnipotence over the universe.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bias_against_left-handed_people

      Liked by 1 person

    2. So left handed people are damned as a fact and with no appeal as a result of some nonsense in the bible. How much misery must this have caused over the centuries? How many promising lives have been frustrated as a result?

      Liked by 1 person

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