Billboard Chris, child protection activist, takes on censorship Down Under

Chris Elston placed his phone on a tripod in an outdoor area of the Queen Street Mall in Australia’s Queensland state in March. He planned to record his interactions with passersby while wearing a sandwich board that said, “Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.” He nearly recorded his own arrest. A municipal officer accused him of obstructing foot traffic and fined him about $800. When Elston refused to leave, police officers forcibly removed him from the public space but did not formally charge or arrest him. This time.

Elston, a Canadian also known as Billboard Chris, calls gender ideology “the greatest child abuse scandal in the history of modern medicine.” He estimates about 90% of those he talks to around the Western world agree with him. But some of the people Elston speaks to attack him. He’s had his arm broken three times. Police have arrested him on multiple occasions.

Unlike the United States, Australia has no Bill of Rights. The Australian Human Rights Commission says the government protects freedom of speech by not interfering in people’s right to hold opinions. But state governments keep expanding hate speech and vilification laws to include gender identity, interfering with individuals’ rights to hold traditional views on sex and gender.

In February 2024, Elston posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, about Teddy Cook, an Australian woman who takes male hormones. “This woman (yes, she’s female) is part of a panel of 20 ‘experts’ hired by the @WHO to draft their policy on caring for ‘trans people,’” Elston wrote. “People who belong in psychiatric wards are writing the guidelines for people who belong in psychiatric wards.” He linked to a Daily Mail article about Cook, who makes a show of deviant sexual behaviour while also advocating for taxpayer-funded surgery to change the sex characteristics of children of any age.

Cook complained about the post to Australian eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, a former Twitter employee, saying Elston’s words distressed her family and friends. But the commissioner went further than Cook, saying the entire post, including photos from the linked article, mocked Cook’s chosen identity and constituted cyberabuse by intending serious harm to Cook, which Elston denies.

Inman Grant told X to block the post for users in Australia or face fines of more than $500,000. X agreed but vowed to appeal the decision. Lawyers for X and a team from Australia’s Human Rights Law Alliance and Alliance Defending Freedom International, representing Elston, sued the commissioner. The trial started March 31 in Melbourne.

Jasmine Sussex, a former volunteer with the Australian Breastfeeding Association, attended the trial. For 15 years, Sussex helped teach mothers to breastfeed their newborns. In 2021, the organization fired her and canceled her membership after she refused to use gender neutral language about who breastfeeds.

But Sussex kept talking about the issue online. “They were very nicely put, very mumsy, very breastfeeding counselor-like,” she said of her posts. “Things like, ‘The ABA was established by mothers for mothers only. Mothers breastfeed, which is why we need maternity leave to birth and then breastfeed the baby.”

Her posts drew the attention of a Queensland man who identifies as a woman. He often contributed to online chats about pregnancy and breastfeeding because he claimed he took domperidone, an anti-nausea medication, to induce lactation to try to nurse his and his wife’s newborn child. In a tweet, Sussex called the man’s action a cruel and medically dangerous experiment on a newborn baby and repeated the fact that men cannot breastfeed.

In 2023, the man complained to the commissioner. In response, X blocked Sussex’s tweet in Australia and said she had broken the law.

Sussex said she thought the man hoped the attack would silence her, “and I’d hang my head in shame and stop talking about it.” But she hasn’t. She went on to describe male attempts to breastfeed as a “dangerous fetish.” He then complained to the Queensland Human Rights Commission, accusing Sussex of vilification. HRLA will represent her at her next trial later this year.

Judith Hobson flew from New Zealand to support Elston. Two years ago, when protesters became violent at a New Zealand women’s rally featuring a speaker who upholds a traditional view of sexuality, a 20-year-old transgender activist punched 71-year-old Hobson in the face. Authorities told Hobson’s attacker to pay her a little over $600 and then discharged him without conviction. “I actually suffered quite a lot of trauma and don’t get involved in a lot of things. I only talk online,” she said.

Hobson said free speech is the basis of democracy, “but the authorities basically have said you are not allowed to say these things.”

Elston is concerned about how gender ideology affects his own teenage daughters, but he also worries about children whose parents don’t protect them from it. A few years ago, one of his daughters went to diving practice, where she saw a teenager bearing double mastectomy scars walking along the side of the pool. “The poor girl that was done to—she’s been damaged for life,” he told me. “We don’t live in silos. We live in a society, and we can’t live in a society that’s doing this to kids.”

But sometimes the lines get blurred about who is helping and who is hurting. “It’s concerning to see the way that the eSafety commissioner has used powers that were supposed to protect children to go after those who are trying to protect children,” said HRLA lawyer John Steenhof during a hearing break.

Elston said more people need to speak up. “People think they can’t talk about it, and it’s not true. Doctors, faith leaders, urologists. They might need to figure out how to speak, but it’s not true that we’re all silenced,” said Elston. “This is a war for the safety of our kids. It’s psychological warfare, but we have to fight it, and sacrifices have to be made, because if someone doesn’t fight back, we lose.”