• Introduction, who is Vincent?

• Why this seat, why now?

• What makes you fit for the job?

• Party & policy

• Rapid fire questions

• Final words

Read New Zealand First’s policies.

Support Penny Marie

Watch and share on YouTube

‘People In Politics’ series

I invite politicians from all parties to help voters get to know them - their background, their party priorities and their own passion areas.

Elections bring with it amplified media distractions, salacious drama and op-eds that promote their own political bias.

If you are a candidate and want to join my PEOPLE IN POLITICS series, please get in touch.

Vincent Andersen

• New Zealand First Candidate for COROMANDEL

• Email: vincent.andersen@nzfirst.nz

• Vincent on Facebook

• Vincent on X

• Vincent on Instagram

Share

Penny Marie NZ

I am a New Zealand-based independent researcher and podcaster. If you would like to support me, I’d really appreciate it, thank you!

Support Penny Marie

One of the best ways you can help is to comment, like, share and subscribe or follow me online. You’ll find links to all my social media channels here.

Check out my previous post…

On July 16, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio convened a ministerial in Washington DC - the “Ministerial on the Resurgence of Political Terrorism” - with representatives from over 60 countries, to confront what he called a resurgence of organised, violent far-left extremism. His core charge: legacy institutions - media, academia, government - have spent years treating organised left-wing violence “as a right-wing fever dream, or worse, as a dangerous fascist conspiracy,” while giving it cover. (Read more on Daily Wire).

New Zealand was there. Barely.

Subscribe now

A quiet RSVP

MFAT confirmed to the NZ Herald that New Zealand would be represented by Daniel Mellsop, deputy head of mission at the country's embassy in Washington DC - not a minister, not our ambassador, and not Winston Peters, our actual Foreign Minister, who has met Rubio in person multiple times this year (NZ Herald). (Mr Peters’ New Zealand First party convention is being held in Auckland this weekend).

Mellsop is a career diplomat, not an elected official - meaning New Zealand's presence at a summit directly relevant to domestic policy debates here carried zero decision-making weight in our Parliament. This was diplomatic attendance, not political engagement.

There’s no Beehive press release on this at all. A search of the Beehive site turns up nothing. The only original NZ coverage I could find is a single NZ Herald article. No RNZ, no Stuff, no 1News, no Newsroom. For a summit this significant to a country that just lived through the Christchurch mosque attacks and built an entire national counter-extremism strategy in response, that silence is itself a story.

I posted an article about the ‘Preventing And Countering Violent Extremism Fund’ earlier this week, and spoke with Sean Plunket on The Platform NZ earlier this morning…

Share

The New Zealand mirror

Because here’s what I see: New Zealand already has its own version of exactly the pattern Rubio described - just running in the opposite direction.

In 2024, Gender Minorities Aotearoa published “Anti-Transgender Extremism,” a guide which is available on the NZ Police website, produced with support from the government’s own Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) Fund - a fund set up in 2022 under the Ardern government specifically as a counter-terrorism response to the Royal Commission’s recommendations following the Christchurch mosque attacks. I covered the funding trail in detail last year.

The booklet itself places “gender critical” women’s groups on the same page as white supremacists and “political parties supporting fascism.” It cites the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention’s claim that the gender-critical movement “seeks to eradicate [transgender identity] completely from society,” and invokes the Nazi deportation of trans people to concentration camps as historical context for where this “spectrum” leads. A counter-terrorism fund, built to stop the next Christchurch, ended up bankrolling language that places concerned mothers on a continuum with genocide.

And now it’s in NZ classrooms

The same inversion is showing up in schools. PPTA president Chris Abercrombie has told media the union is developing guidance for teachers dealing with students holding “extreme far-right” views - while Rangitoto College’s Paul Stevens told the PPTA’s own conference that students calling themselves “Trump boys” or writing “trad-wife” assignments represent a rising extremism threat (The Press, reported via multiple outlets). I was sent a Social Studies activity from a NZ high school asking students to “interpret” a cartoon of Donald Trump as a Ku Klux Klan leader (read about it here).

The irony writes itself: the US Department of Justice has indicted the Southern Poverty Law Center - the organisation whose “hate group” designations effectively wrote the vocabulary being used here - for allegedly funnelling more than $3 million to actual KKK, Aryan Nations and neo-Nazi figures between 2010 and 2023, while simultaneously branding mainstream conservative groups as hate groups (US DOJ). SPLC has pleaded not guilty; trial is set for October. But the case is real, and it lands squarely on Rubio’s point: institutions built to fight extremism have, in specific and now legally alleged instances, been funding it - while calling ordinary dissent “extreme.”

I’ve had my own small taste of where this leads. A NZ teacher recently replied to my recent article about the inversion of our education system (that featured the Trump as KKK) on social media to “f*#king die already”. My investigation into this teacher is underway.

Share Penny Marie NZ

A year ago I received this email, also from a NZ teacher, after I published a video about an event in a NZ high school called ‘Lil Gay Out’. She said:

“Well done you poisonous human.

You have created enough fear and loathing in people you don’t even know, for this year’s Lil Gay Out to be cancelled. You kicked off a social media fracas and doxxed professionals, the result of which meant your supporters made innocent people feel unsafe.

This is not your victory. This is yet more evidence of your wish to cause harm to others who have done NOTHING to affect your miserable life.

The sad thing is, that this will make you feel good.

Happy for you to hold your beliefs about what schools agendas supposedly are, but don’t spread your hate. It is hate. Pure and simple. It’s what you thrive on.

What goes around comes around and someday I hope your hatred and anger come back and visit you.

You sad, poisonous woman.”

Nga mihi

Raewyn Donnell

Read the full story here.

I mention these examples not to make this about me, but because they are a specific, current examples of the tone that circulates freely in these spaces while parents and students who ask ordinary questions get labelled the threat.

Why this matters

None of this made the news here. Not Rubio’s summit, not the extremism guide sitting on the Police website, not the PPTA’s own framing of who counts as “extreme.” New Zealanders deserve to know that while our government sent a mid-level diplomat to a summit on the resurgence of far-left political violence, it has spent years funding literature that calls people like the parents I work with genocidal fascists - and that our media, so far, hasn’t asked a single question about either.

Penny Marie

Penny Marie is an independent researcher and investigative reporter, and the Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.

• About Penny Marie

• Follow me on X, YouTube, Facebook

• Let Kids Be Kids NZ

Support Penny Marie

This Is About Our Children

Not their children. Not their fetishes, and not their beliefs.

Every time the debates flare up in New Zealand - over puberty blockers, over school policies, over who gets to compete in girls’ sport - it gets deliberately dragged away from the one group of people it’s actually about: children who are going through the ordinary, often challenging phases of growing up, and who deserve protection, not politics, while they do it.

Subscribe now

Parents are the ones who sit with a child at 2am when they’re distressed. Parents are the ones who will live with the consequences - for decades - of decisions made about their child’s body. And yet, parents in New Zealand are told to be quiet. Told that questioning a medical pathway for their own child is “hateful.” Told that raising concerns about what their child is being taught at school is “extremist.” Told, in effect, that their instinct to protect is the problem.

It isn’t. And it’s time more of us said so, loudly, online and in person, without flinching at the label that gets thrown at anyone who does.

Because here is what is urgent for New Zealand families to know… none of this ‘rainbow/LGBTQ’ activism is grassroots. The pressure campaign that frames ordinary parental caution as “extremism,” and the legal fight currently under way in the Wellington High Court over puberty blockers, both sit on top of a highly organised, heavily funded, internationally coordinated apparatus - funded in part by our own government, and backed by an international body that a United States regulator is now suing for allegedly deceiving parents and children.

This article follows that money and that architecture, piece by piece, with primary sources. Read it, and then ask yourself who benefits from you staying silent.

Support Penny Marie

Part One: The Government-Funded “Extremism” Label

In 2024, Wellington-based advocacy group Gender Minorities Aotearoa (GMA) published a booklet titled Anti-Transgender Extremism. Its copyright page states plainly that it was “made with support from” the Community Matters Preventing and Countering Violent Extremism (PCVE) Fund - a New Zealand government fund administered through the Department of Internal Affairs and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet.

Read that again.

A taxpayer-funded counter-extremism programme, set up in the aftermath of the Christchurch mosque attacks to counter genuine violent extremism, has instead helped fund a booklet that labels gender-critical views - the ordinary belief that biological sex is real and matters - as a form of extremism connected to genocide.

The booklet cites the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention’s claim that the “gender critical movement” is genocidal, and offers guidance on identifying, trespassing, and removing people from events based on their views.

This is not a fringe, grassroots-funded pamphlet. It is one thread in a much larger funding web:

• Community Matters/Lottery Grants Board: $40,000 to GMA in the 2023/24 round, and $70,000 in the 2024/25 round, on top of multiple smaller Community Organisations Grants Scheme (COGS) grants across regions (Community Matters).

• The PCVE Fund itself: set up in 2022, distributing $3.85–5 million across 42 projects over three years, with individual grants typically running $50,000–$80,000 (DPMC).

• The Rule Foundation / Rainbow Wellbeing Legacy Fund: The Rainbow Wellbeing Legacy Fund was seeded with a $1 million government endowment in 2019 under then-PM Jacinda Ardern, topped up by significant annual pots of money - part of a broader $4.6 million government “Rainbow wellbeing” package since 2021 (Beehive.govt.nz; Beehive.govt.nz). In FY23/24 alone, the Rule Foundation distributed over $500,000 in grants across the “rainbow advocacy” sector. Watch my podcast “How Ardern & Robertson Funded The Rainbow Industry” for more details.

• InternetNZ: InternetNZ funded a project specifically on “transphobia and counter speech” content, and separate research framing “anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric”.

• International money flowing in: the International Trans Fund - financed by US mega-donors including the Arcus Foundation and the Ford Foundation - has itself funded GMA in past years. Watch my podcast “Exposé: Who is Behind the Anti-Transgender Extremism Book?”

None of this is conspiracy. It’s public record, sitting in government grant registers and charity filings. What it shows is a coordinated architecture: government funding, channelled through intermediary foundations, into advocacy groups that then produce material recasting mainstream parental and public concern as dangerous extremism - material that ends up shaping how police, schools and public institutions are trained to think about this issue.

This is not a grassroots trans-rights movement responding to organic hostility. This is a funded lobbying and messaging operation, and New Zealanders are paying for both sides of a fight we were never told we were funding.

Part Two: “Trumpian” - Or Just Inconvenient?

In November 2025, Health Minister Simeon Brown announced that New Zealand would stop new prescriptions of puberty blockers for children and adolescents with gender dysphoria, citing the UK’s independent Cass Review and a Ministry of Health evidence review. The regulation was due to take effect on 19 December 2025.

The Professional Association for Transgender Health Aotearoa (PATHA) immediately went to court. An urgent High Court injunction paused enforcement in December, the Court of Appeal upheld that pause in February 2026, and this week - 15 July 2026 - the substantive judicial review is being heard in the Wellington High Court over three days.

PATHA’s counsel, Victoria Casey KC, told the court the ban was “shocking in its irresponsibility.” A Daily Telegraph NZ report on the case quoted PATHA describing the government’s move as a:

Did she insert this phrase solely for a media ‘gotcha’ effect? If so, it was also picked up by Law News’ coverage of the review.

Most people watching this fight think it’s simply “PATHA versus the government.” It isn’t. PATHA is not standing alone - its entire legal and clinical position rests on the guidelines of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), and specifically WPATH’s Standards of Care, Version 8.

A coalition of a dozen-plus New Zealand professional bodies - including RANZCP, the NZ Paediatric Society, social workers, psychologists and others - publicly opposed the restrictions on the same WPATH-derived basis. Read PATHA’s press statement on Scoop.

So when PATHA calls the New Zealand government’s caution “Trumpian,” it is worth asking: what, exactly, is so threatening about the word “Trump” here that it needs to be used as a slur that distracts from the evidence?

The answer is straightforward - because in the United States, on this exact question, the tide has been turning hard against WPATH, and PATHA knows it.

Share

Part Three: What WPATH & PATHA Don’t Want New Zealanders To See

1. The leak

In March 2024, the US think tank Environmental Progress published “The WPATH Files” - leaked internal communications from WPATH’s own members-only forum. In them, WPATH’s own clinicians discuss, in their own words, performing life-altering hormonal and surgical interventions on minors - including patients with schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder and developmental delay - while acknowledging that children cannot fully comprehend the lifelong consequences.

2. The independent review

The UK’s Cass Review, an independent NHS-commissioned inquiry led by paediatrician Dr Hilary Cass, concluded in 2024 that WPATH’s guidelines “lack developmental rigour and transparency” and found the overall evidence base for puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones in minors to be of very low certainty. Read The Guardian UK’s 2024 story.

3. The US government’s own review

On 19 November 2025 (the same day as NZ Health Minister Simeon Brown’s announcement on Puberty Blockers - but hours later due to the time zone), the US Department of Health and Human Services released a 410-page peer-reviewed report, “Treatment for Pediatric Gender Dysphoria: Review of Evidence and Best Practices”, commissioned under Executive Order 14187 (see my story on it, including interview).

The HHS report findings, independently confirming Cass, include:

• The overall quality of evidence for benefits of puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgery on minors - for gender dysphoria, mental health, quality of life, or long-term outcomes - is very low.

• The risks are real and significant: infertility and sterility, sexual dysfunction, impaired bone density, adverse cognitive effects, cardiovascular and metabolic disorders, psychiatric complications, surgical complications, and regret.

• WPATH, in developing its Standards of Care Version 8, suppressed systematic reviews its own leaders believed would undermine its preferred treatment approach, violated its own conflict-of-interest rules, and removed nearly all recommended age minimums for medical and surgical interventions - not because the science changed, but in response to political pressure.

• No independent link between gender dysphoria and suicidality has been established, and there is no evidence that medical transition reduces suicide risk in this population.

The HHS report was commissioned by the Trump administration. That is precisely why it is dismissed by its critics as “Trumpian” rather than argued with on the substance - it is far easier to attack the source than to engage with 410 pages of methodical evidence review.

But dismissing a report because of who ordered it doesn’t make its findings disappear. It just means nobody has to answer them out loud.

4. The regulator

In June 2026, the US Federal Trade Commission - joined by the Attorneys-General of Texas, Alaska, Iowa and Nebraska - filed a lawsuit against WPATH, alleging the organisation deceived parents and children by claiming its treatment guidelines were based on strong scientific evidence when they were not (Read my article here). The FTC’s complaint explicitly cites both the Cass Review and the HHS report as its evidentiary basis. On 11 July 2026, a US federal judge declined to block that lawsuit from proceeding.

5. The real-world consequences

This isn’t abstract. In February 2026, a US jury awarded $2 million in the first successful detransitioner malpractice verdict, (New York Times, Daily Wire) finding a psychologist and surgeon liable for approving a double mastectomy on a 16-year-old autistic girl based on a referral “riddled with errors”. And in May 2026, Texas Children’s Hospital agreed to pay over $10 million and to stop providing paediatric medical transition services entirely, settling a US Department of Justice investigation into false billing for these procedures (read my article here).

This is the international body - under active federal investigation, exposed by its own leaked internal files, rejected by an independent UK clinical review, and formally found by the US government’s own health department to have suppressed evidence and buckled to political pressure - whose guidelines PATHA is relying on to try to overturn New Zealand’s puberty blocker pause, while calling the New Zealand government’s caution “Trumpian” and baseless.

It is not baseless. It is, if anything, catching up to where the evidence already stood.

Why This Matters for Every New Zealand Parent

Put the two threads together and the picture is unmistakable.

On one side

Government grants, offshore foundation money, and an international clinical body facing fraud allegations from a national regulator - all coordinated to produce the appearance of a grassroots, embattled community defending itself against hate.

On the other side

Parents, unfunded, unresourced, often working alone, trying to ask reasonable questions about their own children’s medical care and social environment - and being told that doing so makes them extremists.

This isn’t about denying that gender dysphoria is real, or that “trans” New Zealanders deserve to be treated with basic dignity. It is about refusing to let a well-funded lobbying and messaging apparatus dictate, by intimidation, who is allowed to ask questions about children’s bodies, children’s education, and children’s futures.

If you have felt afraid to post a comment, afraid to speak up at a school meeting, afraid to say something at the dinner table because you worry about being called a bigot - understand what you are actually up against. It isn’t an army of angry individuals. It’s a funded campaign, and campaigns rely on silence to work.

Every parent who stays quiet is doing exactly what that funding was designed to achieve.

You don’t need a law degree or a medical degree to say: “children deserve evidence-based care, not ideology”.

You don’t need permission to protect your own child.

And you are not alone - you are simply louder than the apparatus wants you to be.

Speak up. Online, in your community, at your child’s school, in your own home. The truth doesn’t need to shout to be heard - but right now, silence is the only thing standing between the funded, coordinated narrative and the parents who actually have to live with the consequences.

This is about children. Ours. All of them. And they are worth being brave for.

Addendum: The Same Fight, Different Field

While the puberty blocker case has been working its way through the courts, the same battle over evidence versus ideology has been playing out on the sports field - and it shows how deep the pattern runs once you start looking for it.

On 1 July 2026, the New Zealand Government issued a legally binding Ministerial Direction to Sport and Recreation New Zealand (Sport NZ) under section 103 of the Crown Entities Act 2004, ordering it to prioritise fair, sex-based competition in publicly funded sport. In effect, Sport NZ can no longer use its funding power to push guidelines that allow biological males to compete in female categories - decision-making on transgender participation has been handed back to individual sporting organisations (read on Daily Telegraph NZ).

Ro Edge, spokeswoman for Save Women’s Sport Australasia, called it “a clear and long-overdue victory for female athletes,” adding: “Sport NZ can no longer use its funding power and influence to push guidelines that allow biological males to compete in female categories. This direction sends a strong message across Australasia and internationally that women’s sport is not up for negotiation.”

Notice the pattern. Just as with puberty blockers, this wasn’t really a fight between “trans athletes” and “mean girls,” as it’s so often framed. It was a fight over whether a well-funded ideological lobby gets to override a publicly funded institution’s basic obligation - fairness for the female athletes it exists to serve - without female athletes, coaches or parents ever being properly consulted.

And just as with the puberty blocker case, once a government body finally drew a line based on fairness and evidence rather than activist pressure, it took a legal or ministerial intervention to get there - not because the public didn’t already feel it, but because for years speaking up risked being branded a bigot.

Two fronts, one apparatus, one lesson

When the evidence and public sentiment are both on the side of protecting children and fairness, the only thing standing in the way is fear of being shouted down. That fear was manufactured. It can be un-manufactured too - one parent, one comment, one conversation at a time.

If you appreciate my work please share this article, and please consider supporting my work.

My previous post…

Penny Marie

Penny Marie is an independent researcher and investigative reporter, and the Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.

• About Penny Marie

• Follow me on X, YouTube, Facebook

• Let Kids Be Kids NZ

Support Penny Marie

Pattern recognition.

The issues we are facing presently, are all part of a pattern, a complicated, dark web. Events that are so anti-human, anti-family, and anti-common sense - and nothing is done in isolation. It’s not because some rogue politician with an agenda is playing out their terrible idea.

No. It’s far bigger than that. The tentacles are long, thick and difficult to find the beginning and end of.

Subscribe now

International Child Protection Taskforce

For the past 18 months, I have been part of a group of incredible people across seven nations, who call ourselves the INTERNATIONAL CHILD PROTECTION TASKFORCE (ICPT).

ICPT specialises in researching in the educational, philosophical, legal and financial histories of how we ended up here - with children throughout western nations being subjected to sexualised education material and contested ideologies.

We won’t apologise for not having much an online footprint yet. We’re all flat-out, underfunded and under resourced. But we’re tenacious. We’re courageous, and we’re hard working. And our workload keeps growing. (ICPT is on Facebook and X).

Support Let Kids Be Kids

While more families realise the issues are real, politicians seem, largely to be unable to do much. Even if they genuinely want to.

Meanwhile the activists, authors, politicians, ‘experts’ and educators who promote sexualised and identity-warping material for our kids… well, they continue on.

On April 18 2026, Public Child Protection Wales hosted their annual conference.

The founding members of the International Child Protection Taskforce (ICPT) were the guest speakers and it was my privilege to share some of my research.

April conference - my speech

It was an awesome opportunity to join ICPT counterparts, bringing my latest findings including a timeline of how the Conversion Practices Prohibition Act 2022 was strategically curated into NZ legislation.

This bill was NEVER NEEDED. The UK doesn’t need it now, despite the pressure and noise from activists.

Share

It’s not my first ‘conversion therapy’ exposé

In 2025 I compared the conversion therapy ‘coordinated strategy’ in detail, comparing the New Zealand and Canadian situations… recognising the patterns.

Report on Conversion Practices

Watch my testimony at the Canadian NATIONAL CITIZENS INQUIRY here…

MP’s were pushed to vote for this bill in NZ

In October 2025 I interviewed former MP Simon O’Connor on what was happening within parliament when the Conversion Practices Prohibition Act 2022 was ushered in… he doesn’t hold back…

Subscribe now

No ‘conversion therapy crisis’ exists.

We were NOT having a ‘conversion therapy’ crisis in New Zealand. And we’re not having it anywhere in the west. This is a coordinated and funded strategy to bring legislation into our nations that we do not need. Legislation that has had a chilling effect on therapists, counsellors, pastors AND parents.

So we must ask why we have it. And how we get rid of it.

If you appreciate my work please share this article and the YouTube videos far and wide, and please consider supporting the work of Let Kids Be Kids.

Penny Marie

Penny Marie is an independent researcher and investigative reporter, and the Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• Let Kids Be Kids NZ

Watch and share on YouTube

Share

Read my previous post…

Penny Marie

Penny Marie is an independent researcher and investigative reporter, and the Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• Let Kids Be Kids NZ

Last week secondary school teacher’s union PPTA’s President Chris Abercrombie launched into the media stating his concern about students accessing social media ‘misinformation’ has led the union to plan on developing guidelines for teachers to help them deal with students who have ‘wrong think’ (my words, not theirs).

Education as a mechanism for social change and censorship

This article was published by The Press on June 26.

• Accusatory language being used to describe students who have a view that’s different to their teachers’. Described as ‘extreme far-right’. Not only are the cohort of teachers quoted displaying alarm at students who have different points or view, they are calling those differences extreme. But are they really? And are political views in students the REAL reason kids are misbehaving?

• Who let teachers unions and schools be our censorship agency? What they call ‘misinformation’ is literally… information people independently seek, outside of their ‘single source of truth’ government/media/education apparatus. They appear to be getting very concerned about students who think outside of their box.

Here is the full article:

Extreme examples are used to illustrate their point. The problem is, when political ideology has become such a big part of the education system that it promotes toxic feminism and anti-maleness, kids are going to push back. Does resistance to a far-left ideology deserve the term ‘far-right extremism’? Let’s unpack the descriptors used in this story…

Manosphere

The UN Women (no surprises) definition of manosphere is “a loose network of communities that claim to address men’s struggles – dating, fitness or fatherhood, for example – but often promote harmful advice and attitudes.”

In short, it appears to be a hit on men who behave as, well, men. It’s a hit on boys being boys, on the masculine, and a hit on husbands. Birthed out of the feminist movement because men being men are exactly what hard-core feminists can’t abide.

I’ve never been a feminist. Some assume I am because I am a woman who has a voice. But a woman with a voices does not necessarily = feminism. In my case it certainly doesn’t. My son even called me a feminist once, because I disagreed with him about something. I corrected him then, and I’ll correct people now. I’m a woman with something to say. That’s not the same thing as being a feminist. Perhaps listen to what I am saying before casting that name on me.

'Trad-wife’ culture

AUT says trad wives are “women who choose to take up traditional gendered roles within the home, centred around serving their husband and children. This version of wifehood is underpinned by a deference to one’s husband. Because of this, tradwives tend to be financially dependent on their husbands and many also give over decision-making rights to their husbands. In essence, the tradwife lifestyle rejects the past seven decades of feminism.”

In short, it’s a hit on women who stay home, raise children, and God-forbid, wives who love and honour their husbands. It seems that radfems (radical feminists) are threatened by women who aren’t feminists. They are threatened by women like me. Who, no matter how much we might acknowledge that men in our lives have perhaps failed us (because women like me will also admit our failures)… we will still say that we love, value and appreciate men.

Homophobia

First, what is a phobia? It is “…an exaggerated usually inexplicable and illogical fear of a particular object, class of objects, or situation” - Merriam Webster Dictionary

What is homophobia? “Discrimination against, aversion to, or fear of homosexuality (sexual or romantic attraction to others of one's same sex) or gay people.” - Merriam Webster Dictionary

I haven’t met anyone who has an “exaggerated fear” of homosexuals. It’s simply not a thing. So why do we hear it used, again and again. Because in order to shut down dialogue they first have to silence the opposition. Call us names. Shame us. Make us feel guilty, mean, uncertain.

Who were the main critics of the homosexual lifestyle? Christians. Why? Because it’s in the Bible. Even so, very very few people raise an eyebrow now if someone says they are homosexual. Like with the ‘trans’ narrative, it is THEY who are saying we’re all so mean to them. It’s not the actual truth. The same-sex attracted people I know, do not want to be associated with this oppressed/oppressor whinge session.

So far, we’ve read that ‘manosphere’ is anti-husband, ‘trad-wife’ is anti-wife, and ‘homophobia’ is anti-biblical principles. They are trying to kill conservativism, and when conservatives push back, the liberal left scream like banshees. Educators, media, politicians, activists. THIS IS WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING.

I never considered myself particularly ‘conservative’. But the more the liberal left show themselves, the more I understand that a society bereft of conservative values and biblical principles - the worse it becomes. Bar none.

Transphobia

Refer to the definition of a ‘phobia’ above. Now it’s been attached to ‘trans’. So what is ‘trans’? The UN (again) defines ‘trans’ as “Being trans or transgender describes people with a gender identity that does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.”

Trans people say they need special protections and categories. They don’t. They have the same protections as men and women do. Why? Because - they are either men or women. There is no third category and all people (even ‘trans-identifying people’) are either men or women. It’s not ‘phobic’ to say this. I don’t have a ‘phobia’ of them. And they simply don’t actually exist in law.

The media propagates the message

In the days following The Posts’ article on the PPTA panicking over the ‘far-right extremist’ students, the NZ Herald and RNZ (and likely others) dutifully picked up and propagated the message. It has a chilling, shaming and social engineering impact on our nation and the kickback then amplifies the noisiest of both camps - further dividing us.

Yes, children are becoming unmanageable in school. Yes, it’s a massive problem. But from the many people I speak to… ‘manosphere’ and ‘trad wife’ thoughts aren’t the cause of the issue. Far from it. What we need is an honest inquiry into why our students are behaving worse, and the current strategies to help this, that appear to not be helping at all. I hear reports of teachers being threatened and disrespected throughout NZ… and it’s generally not ‘far right extremist’ students leading the charge.

Antisemitism and Anti-maori racism

Two important inclusions in the PPTA’s list of ‘far right extremism’ - but I won’t dive into in this article, I’ll save these for another day.

I highly recommend this deep dive by Rick the Anglo Saxon about this story, where you’ll see the claims by PPTA Union President Chris Abercrombie are not based on facts.

Subscribe now

‘Trump Boys’ and ‘student extremism’

Remember when Paul Stevens, head of the Art Department at Rangitoto College and PPTA Auckland regional chairperson, got media attention for this…

Stevens “presented a report on rising online extremism in classrooms at the PPTA’s annual conference in Christchurch. Secondary school teachers in New Zealand are witnessing an alarming rise in extremism among students, with young men particularly susceptible to misogynistic ideologies promoted by figures like Andrew Tate. Whether it’s young students strutting around as the “Trump boys”, or submitting social science assignments with ‘trad-wife’ (traditional wife) ideologies, secondary school teacher Paul Stevens said the issue has reached “a tipping point” in the past two years.” - says The Press.

It’s the same playbook as the story with Abercrombie. A continuation of the same narrative. Stevens takes an extreme public figure, Tate, and attaches students who aren’t left-wing liberals to it, calling them Trump Boys. hoping that the smear sticks, because we’ve had over a decade of anti-Trump rhetoric.

How this inversion looks in the classroom

I received this troubling school activity…

This is in a NZ high school Social Studies activity. Students were asked to interpret the cartoons. US President Donald Trump is here depicted as a member of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK). The KKK is an American white supremacist hate group known for its history of violence and intimidation against minority groups, particularly African Americans. - source Wikipedia

And the White House, is depicted as the head of the KKK with a white triangle over it.

The irony is, the far-left liberal US Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was recently found to have been funding the KKK. SPLC had put conservative group Turning Point on their ‘hate group’ watch.

International influence on NZ education sector

The World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Risks Report 2025 lists ‘misinformation and disinformation’ as its fourth most worrisome threat. The WEF (not the people) are concerned about freedom of speech and expression via social media. This is why we are seeing a rush on social media age verification laws. And why liberal teachers are imposing their political opinions on our children as if it is fact. They don’t want our children to see beyond their ideology. (I guess most teachers would have no idea where their extreme views are coming from - they think they are having their own thoughts…).

Are educators building a wedge between parents and children?

Consider this scenario… you send your daughter to school and expect her to listen to the teacher, follow the school rules. She attends a class where the teacher presents, for example, climate alarmism or anti-Trump rhetoric.

Your daughter comes home and repeats what she has learnt in class. You question or disagree with her - perhaps you don’t believe in climate alarmism, or have a different viewpoint on geopolitics.

What happens? She will likely argue with you, because it conflicts with what she just learnt. This causes tension at home. Look at this through your daughter's eyes. Who should she believe? Their teacher or you? Does she see mum and dad as her most primary educator, or does she see you as a provider of food, shelter and taxi service, and her teacher as the expert? It can get even worse when mum and dad have conflicting ideas about these topics. Who does your daughter ‘side’ with? Invariably with the majority (teacher plus one parent).

This contributes to tension in the home. Whether you’re liberal or conservative… or don’t class yourself as either, should education include contested political ideology? Or should education focus on the main pillars of education? Do we even know what they are anymore?

For further reading on the philosophy of education, and it’s concerning absence in our education system, I recommend reading this post by Elisabeth Cave…

Exposing and Healing from Identity Disruption

I've been banned from PESA's Facebook page for raising questions about the aims of philosophers of education

PESA stands for the Philosophy of Education Society of Australasia. About 2 years ago, I joined and was a member for a year, and was very excited to join and anticipated discovering other people who could see and discuss the obvious horrendous indoctrination that’s happening in schools, and perhaps even do something about it…

Read more

2 years ago · 14 likes · 25 comments · Elisabeth Cave

Share Penny Marie NZ

What can you do?

At Let Kids Be Kids we hear from families about a range of issues stemming from education sector pressures. The disparity between classroom teaching and what is being discussed at home is, for many, widening. We see the education sector’s response. What strategies will help you? We don’t have all the answers but we encourage you to ask the questions. Some tips:

• Tune in to your children. Prioritise spending time with your sons and daughters and grandchildren - this gives them a break from the pressures of the world, and it helps you tune in to what’s going on in their world.

• Ask to see their school work.

• If you see anything that concerns you, get in touch with the teacher and ask questions.

• Watch the patterns in the media relating to education. Keep your antennae up. Keep engaging critical thinking.

• Share this article, talk to your friends, be courageous. If you don’t have let-liberal views, you need to find your voice, now.

• Do you want to share your story? Please contact us.

Read my previous post

Penny Marie

Penny Marie is an independent researcher and investigative reporter, and the Founder of Let Kids Be Kids NZ.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• Let Kids Be Kids NZ

Share

NZ First’s Legislation (Definitions of Woman and Man) Amendment Bill has triggered a loud and coordinated backlash from rainbow non-governmental organisations (NGOs), activist hubs, political parties and allied professional bodies.

But when you strip away the slogans, two things stand out:

• Many of the loudest opponents sit inside taxpayer-funded advocacy…

Read more

“The US Federal Trade Commission, along with Alaska, Iowa, Nebraska and Texas, today filed a lawsuit against the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), alleging the organization has provided the means for medical providers to make false and unsubstantiated claims to parents in order to sell pediatric medical transition services.”…

Read more

Did you notice what just happened?

It appears to me that the US Administration has firmly and publicly announced that it will no longer be at the behest of the World Health Organization - an unelected non-governmental organisation, to provide its ‘scientific expertise’. The health of the American people has been on a downward spiral for decades. The only…

Read more

Something significant just happened in New Zealand law

• Before 3 June 2026: All NZ Public Service agencies were required by law to run DEI programmes.

• After 3 June 2026: These agencies are no longer required to run DEI programmes - but running them voluntarily is not prohibited.

The Public Service Amendment Act 2026 received Royal Assent on 2 June 2026. It …

Read more

Written by Richard Shelford-Woodcock on May 26, 2026 and reposted with permission

Parents, caregivers and former students have spoken out about long‑standing concerns around safety, communication and school culture, emphasising that this moment must lead to meaningful engagement rather than defensiveness.

Recent events at Me…

Read more

We’re entering the month where the trans lobby scrapes even more money from us, the (majority of the population) people who don’t buy into their lifestyle or ideology. I recently wrote about SWEAT WITH PRIDE, an annual month-long fundraiser for THE BURNETT FOUNDATION, who receives millions of $$$ from the NZ Govt.

This is a strategy that takes money from New Zealanders who may NOT subscribe to a lifestyle that includes:

• Multiple partner promiscuous sex

• Same sex relationships (The Burnett Foundation was the AIDS Foundation - specifically for the homosexual community, but has morphed into promoting rampant promiscuity and ‘trans’ ideology)

• Men dressing up as garish parodies of women

• Women dressing up as garish parodies of men

• Adults who flaunt their sexual fetishes and false identities in the faces of families and children.

…And spends it on themselves.

They say ‘they’ are discriminated against. But here is the cold hard truth. Are you sitting down? Because it’s really important. In undoes everything for ‘them’.

Who is ‘they’?
It’s the ‘trans’ or TQ part of LGBTQ.
However…

Not in NZ law.
Not in international law.
If it isn’t defined in law it cannot be protected in law.
All people are protected under human rights laws and international treaties as MALES and FEMALES.
If you don’t like being called a male or a female then you need HELP, not a special category.
There are two sexes.
Everything else is political propaganda.

Even Australia (who is currently falling apart over the TICKLE VS GIGGLE CASE…) knows this:

What is a woman?

I, like all of us, are TIRED of having this conversation. I want to move on. I don’t want to have to talk about the ‘definition of a woman’. Because we all know what it is. It’s not up for debate.

(For those overseas who don’t know - this is Chris Hipkins, leader of the Labour Party. He took up the NZ Prime Minister’s role following Jacinda Ardern’s resignation in 2023).

PS: THEY know what a woman is too.

But it’s clear that they are NOT ALLOWED TO SAY IT. Who is telling them that they can’t? That’s the million dollar question, isn’t it?

Denying stating the obvious on this most basic of topics should be cause for criminal negligence and a mental health assessment. Not to mention perhaps assessing one’s suitability for senior roles and large salary, perks and pension packages, courtesy of the taxpayer.

But then, the ‘mental health’ industry is compromised too, given that the NZ Govt created a ‘Ministry of Mental Health’, and appointed MP Matt Doocey, who was in the past at UK’s Tavistock Institute, as minister. Here is Doocey, saying he “looks forward to the day his son and daughter tell him their gender identity”.

Share

The emperor has no clothes

And so, in a small act of defiance, I sent a letter to FMG insurance... my insurance company.

My advice? SPEAK UP WHILE IT’S STILL LEGAL.
I sent this letter to FMG. Feel free to let it give you ideas if you want to send a letter to a contributor to Sweat With Pride too.

Read my previous post, explaining the manifesto that is exactly playing out, with Sweat With Pride.

About Penny Marie

Penny Marie is a New Zealand-based investigative reporter, and founder of Let Kids Be Kids. Please follow, comment, share and support my work. Subscribe to my Substack, X (I also post these articles on X) and YouTube - and turn notifications on.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• YouTube

• Let Kids Be Kids

Share Penny Marie NZ

At Let Kids Be Kids we just received an email asking about the garish “Sweat With Pride” fundraiser currently being promoted around New Zealand. At the same time, I had just started to read a book. The timing was no coincidence…the book provided me with answers I wasn’t entirely prepared for - not because the information was new to me, but because seeing it all laid out, made something very clear, and I want to explain it to you.

This is not an accident. This is a plan. And you are paying for it

June is here. That means it’s apparently ‘pride’ month. And with it comes Sweat With Pride.

If you haven’t heard of it, Sweat With Pride is a month-long fitness fundraiser run by the Burnett Foundation Aotearoa - (formerly the New Zealand AIDS Foundation). The premise is simple: get your workplace to sign up as a team, do exercise during June, and raise money. Friendly. Healthy. Harmless.

Subscribe now

Except it isn’t harmless. And once you understand what is actually being funded - and who is actually paying - you will never look at your workplace’s SWP team the same way again. We have known this for a while of course. Last June, LKBK teamed up with Lesbian Resistance and made two short videos to explain. Check them out here or below.

Let’s start with the money

The Burnett Foundation is not a struggling charity rattling a tin on a street corner. According to their own publicly filed financial statements, in the year ended 30 June 2025 they received:

• $5,689,049 from Te Whatu Ora Health New Zealand - your taxes

• $111,793 from Pharmac - more of your taxes, in the form of donated condoms recorded as income

• $786,202 raised through Sweat With Pride - from your workmates, your employer, and possibly you

Their total revenue was $8.24 million. They hold $4 million in accumulated reserves. They own property worth $2.35 million. In December 2025 they secured a new multi-year government contract running until June 2028.

They do not need your $50 donation. So why do they want it?

Their own annual report answers this directly. Funds raised through Sweat With Pride, they write, “help sustain and expand the services we provide beyond government funding - including counselling, access to at-home STI testing, community outreach, and advocacy for queer health equity.”

This is not a health campaign. It is a behaviour-change campaign

The Burnett Foundation’s annual report does not describe Sweat With Pride as a health promotion activity. It is a digital and marketing operation under a heading called “Behaviour-Change Marketing.” And they haven’t even changed the SWP graphics since last year.

Their stated goal is behaviour change - in the broadest sense. What behaviour do they want to change?

In FY2025 alone, their marketing generated 86.28 million ad impressions across Meta, Google, TikTok, Grindr (Gay Dating App), LinkedIn, and a pornographic advertising network called Traffic Junky. LinkedIn is a corporate workplace platform.

The inclusion of workplace-targeted advertising alongside adult content platforms in the same campaign architecture tells you everything you need to know about who the real audience is: not just gay men at risk of HIV.

Everyone. Including you. Including your employer. It might even include the school your child attends - because Schools is a named category on the SWP fundraising team dashboard, sitting alongside Workplaces and Friends/Whānau.

Share

The playbook is at least 36 years old

The SWP inquiry via email came in just after I had paused to read a book that Rhonda Miller mentioned on our recent video. After the Ball, written in 1989 by Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen - a neuropsychologist and a PR specialist - is described by its own authors as “a blueprint for change” and, frankly, as propaganda. It is a strategic manual for transforming mainstream public opinion on homosexuality, written by gay men who were remarkably candid about their intentions.

They described three phases:

• Desensitisation - flood the media with gay content until people stop reacting;

• Jamming - make anyone who objects feel ashamed, isolated, and socially punished; and

• Conversion - attach gay identity to trusted, admired figures and institutions until people’s feelings change, whether they want them to or not.

Look at the SWP workplace leaderboard for 2026

On it you will find:

• Palmerston North Police

• Waka Kotahi NZTA - a Crown government agency

• Vero Insurance

• EY (Ernst & Young)

• AA Insurance

• 2degrees

• FMG.

Institutions and brands that ordinary New Zealanders trust, respect, and in some cases depend on. Their participation is not incidental.

It is the Conversion mechanism, operating exactly as designed - transferring the positive feelings you have for your bank, your insurer, your telco, and your police service onto an ideology you were never asked to endorse.

The Jamming mechanism is equally visible. I have many had people - quietly, privately - tell me that the pride and trans push in their workplaces is unbearable. That they feel they cannot speak. That they fear for their jobs. That is not a feeling that arose organically. It was engineered.

New Zealand is not special - it is actively participating in a global strategy, paid for by us

The Burnett Foundation does not operate in isolation. It sits within a global network of LGBTQ organisations connected to the United Nations system. Some of their counterparts are members of ILGA - the International Lesbian and Gay Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association, which holds UN consultative status and uses it to:

• Lobby governments via government funded LGBTQ charities

• Monitor legislation relating to their human rights activism - country by country, and

• Push policy through parliament and government agencies via UN Conventions that our government has adopted as a UN member state.

The Burnett Foundation isn’t an ILGA member (‘Sweat with Pride’ partners InsideOut and RainbowYouth are, as seen in the YouTube videos above), rather it draws its UN blueprint from UNAIDS. ILGA and UNAIDS push their ‘behaviour change’ operations onto entire populations like two wings of the same bird. Only, it’s more like an 8-armed octopus than a two-winged bird. And we funded it.

The global trans activist network

I just published a video with Rhonda Miller from Texas - The Global Trans Activist Network - which maps important threads in this network. Understanding the global architecture makes what is happening locally - including Sweat With Pride - make complete sense - if not wholly disturbing that it continues unchecked.

The Burnett Foundation’s own Trust Deed, signed in 2023, embeds this global architecture directly into its legal foundation - committing the organisation to the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion (a WHO declaration) and the GIPA Principle established by UNAIDS at the 1994 Paris AIDS Summit.

These UN charters and principals are NOT BINDING INTERNATIONAL LAWS. New Zealand’s Parliament never voted on them. But they are now the governing principles of an organisation receiving $5.7 million a year of health department money that we all would agree would be better used elsewhere.

What this means for your family

If you’re working, paying a mortgage, school fees, insurance, rates, a phone bill - you may be supporting this campaign - through taxpayer dollars you are funding the Burnett Foundation. Not by choice. Not with your consent. Through every institutional channel that has been quietly captured over the past three decades by a strategy written down in a book in 1989.

Your child’s school may be on a SWP fundraising leaderboard (thankfully there aren’t many). Your workplace may have a team participating. Your insurer, your bank, and the government agency that manages your roads all have active participation. You may have friends or family participating in the event. They may even have asked you for money to help them fundraise.

What you can do

I have long since stopped expecting people to be brave in public. I am merely asking you to be informed - and then decide for yourself what to do with that information.

If you work somewhere that participates in Sweat With Pride and you have a story about workplace pressure, real or implied - I want to hear from you. Confidentially.

Stay in touch as we continue to follow the money into the government agencies and organisations that fund this - follow me on your preferred channel, and Let Kids Be Kids on our socials and subscribe here on Substack.

Subscribe now

And if you want to be part of a growing network of parents, grandparents, and ordinary New Zealanders who are done being silent - join us.

You are not alone.
You are not extreme.
You are the majority.

Our children’s innocence is worth protecting. And the truth, once it is known, cannot be unknown.

About Penny Marie

Penny Marie is a New Zealand-based investigative reporter, and founder of Let Kids Be Kids. Please follow, comment, share and support my work. Subscribe to my Substack, X (I also post these articles on X) and YouTube - and turn notifications on.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• YouTube

• Let Kids Be Kids

My previous article:

What did I witness?

Ordinary people, across four generations, standing up in the public square and speaking with conviction about faith, history, and the soul of a nation.

I didn’t grow up in church. I joined a church in my teenage years and was baptised. I walked away from faith in my mid-twenties. Since 2020 I have been revisiting my moral foundations, …

Read more

In tonight’s YouTube interview, I sit down with New York filmmaker and parent advocate Natalya Murakhver, the producer behind the powerful documentary 15 Days, which forensically examines the school closures of 2020 and the forces that kept classrooms shut long after the science said they could safely reopen.

Natalya and I first met at the Genspect conference in Portugal in 2024, and we’ve stayed in contact since. The story she has uncovered in 15 Days is something every parent, teacher, and concerned citizen in New Zealand - and around the world - needs to hear. You will find your story in here somewhere, if you were a parent in 2020.

This story needed to be told

15 Days began with a simple but urgent question: if the evidence was clear that schools were safe, why did they stay closed for so long? Natalya, a self-described former progressive New York City Democrat, went looking for answers - and what she found was a web of union collusion, political manipulation, and coordinated propaganda.

“I knew that if we didn’t present the actual story, she [head of American Federation of Teachers] would be rewriting it.” - Natalya Murakhver, on why she made the film

The film reveals how teachers’ unions - particularly the American Federation of Teachers under Randy Weingarten - were not simply representing teachers. They were writing CDC guidance, pressuring the American Academy of Pediatrics to reverse its recommendation to reopen schools, and weaponising fear within communities. All while controlling $4 trillion in pension funds and receiving virtually no challenge from mainstream media.

The agenda hidden inside the lockdowns

What Natalya uncovered goes far deeper than just closed classrooms. When schools did reopen, parents were locked out. In their place came a flood of Social Emotional Learning (SEL) counsellors - hired with $189.5 billion in federal education funds - with no verified credentials, pushing children into climate activism, racial ideology, and collectivist thinking.

As Natalya reveals in the film, the head of the Los Angeles teachers’ union said plainly: “It doesn’t matter if our babies don’t know their times tables. They know the difference between a riot and a coup.” The goal, as Natalya concludes, was never education. It was ideological capture.

Marxist playbook - recognised by those who had seen it before

Born in the Soviet Union, Natalya draws sobering parallels between what she witnessed during COVID and life under totalitarianism - the illusion of consensus, the silencing of dissent, the separation of parent from child. And in our conversation, I share my own experience as a New Zealander grappling with the same psychological warfare.

“They weaponised us against each other - because what they were trying to say was your friend, your family member, could be a ball of something that could kill you. So you then saw each other differently.” - Penny Marie

What parents can do right now

Despite the weight of the subject matter, this conversation ends with hope. Natalya’s message to parents is practical and grounding: be an authoritative presence, bring your family back to the dinner table, protect your children from screen dependency, and build community - one small act at a time. As she says, “small actions are very, very meaningful, because while we can’t make a huge impact at the United Nations, we can make a huge impact in our own home.”

Watch our chat tonight - and share the film

Tune in tonight at 7pm NZ time on the Penny Marie NZ YouTube channel. Drop your thoughts in the comments - I’d love to know what resonates with you, especially as New Zealanders and Australians reflecting on your own lockdown experience.

🎬 15 Days is available to stream on Amazon, Google Play, YouTube, and iTunes, and DVDs and screening licences can be purchased at 15daysfilm.com. If you’re a community group, church, school network, or advocacy organisation - this is a film worth screening.

Share this with a parent who needs to hear it.

Check out my previous post…

Subscribe to Natalya’s Substack Restore Childhood

Restore Childhood

No one is coming to save our kids but us-- a newsletter of stories, reporting, and tools for parents reclaiming the ground institutions gave away.

By Natalya Murakhver

About Penny Marie

Penny Marie is a New Zealand-based investigative reporter, and founder of Let Kids Be Kids. Please follow, comment, share and support my work. Subscribe to my Substack, X (I also post these articles on X) and YouTube - and turn notifications on.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• YouTube

• Let Kids Be Kids

I’m writing this from Texas, where I’m spending time with mothers who have been exposing the irreversible harm of “gender-transitioning” children.

These moms and dads (and our friends and allies) are modern-day warriors and heroes. We fight against doctors, therapists, hospitals, schools, and an ideology that tells them their kids’ confusion was something to “affirm” with puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries.

It’s exhausting, isolating, financially crippling, and dangerous

One mother I met, who has been outspoken in the fight for childhood innocence and parental authority, recently survived a drive-by shooting aimed at her home while she and her young children were outside.

Share

But today, Texas delivered a massive, history-making win that changes the landscape

Attorney General Ken Paxton today announced a landmark healthcare fraud settlement with Texas Children’s Hospital - the largest children’s hospital in the United States. Under the agreement, the hospital must:

• Create the nation’s first-ever multidisciplinary Detransition Clinic to provide medical care and reversal support for patients harmed by “gender-transition” procedures. For the first five years, Texas Children’s will fully fund it - free of charge to patients.

• Pay $10 million to the state for illegally billing Texas Medicaid for unallowable and fraudulent “gender-transition” interventions, including the use of false diagnosis codes.

• Permanently terminate and revoke privileges of multiple physicians who performed these harmful procedures - five “woke doctors” who will never again practice at the hospital.

• Stop providing “gender-transition” services entirely and implement strict compliance and ethics measures, including bylaw changes that automatically strip privileges from any doctor who violates Texas law protecting kids.

This isn’t just a slap on the wrist. It’s accountability. It’s restitution.

It’s the first institutional acknowledgment that the radical transgender experiment on children was medically fraudulent, ideologically driven, and devastatingly harmful.

In Paxton’s own words:

He added:

The courage of parents and whistleblowers pays off

The investigation that led to this settlement began years ago. Texas Children’s kept performing these interventions even after the state banned them. Whistleblowers exposed it. Parents fought it. And now, Paxton - working in coordination with President Trump’s Department of Justice - has delivered real consequences.

Meanwhile, back home in New Zealand, the contrast could not be starker

While Texas leads the world with real accountability and the first dedicated Detransition Clinic, trans activist groups like PATHA and their allies continue to heavily influence our government on “gender affirming care” and puberty blockers.

Last November I spoke about the US HHS report on Gender Dysphoria that was published within hours of the the sudden NZ government announcement on halting the prescription of puberty blockers and following UK NHS processes and research - not the US.

Compounding the problem is the role of legacy media in New Zealand and internationally

Media outlets overwhelmingly push a one-sided pro-trans narrative, often framing concerned parents as “anti-trans,” or ignorant, while downplaying or ignoring the Cass Review, exploding evidence of harm, detransitioner testimonies, and the risks of puberty blockers and irreversible interventions.

This has left most members of the public without a full picture of the issues - unaware of the safeguarding failures and the very real dangers facing children, and leaving small underfunded public interest groups such as Let Kids Be Kids and others, relying on word of mouth, independent media platforms (thank you to The Platform, RCR, Daily Telegraph and Good Oil who help share my work) and social media to encourage the conversation and speak up on behalf of people concerned with this ideology and the negative impacts for children, and themselves.

Here’s a short video on why the media is one-sided on this issue….

Subscribe now

Why are activists driving their social change while parents are ignored?

Activists affiliated with PATHA, Waikato University’s Transgender Research Lab, and WPATH are still shaping policy and media narratives. The Ministry of Health’s evidence brief and the government’s own safeguards have faced relentless pushback.

And just yesterday, NGOs were once again waving trans flags at Parliament for IDAHOBIT Day - right as Pink Shirt Day was rolled out in workplaces and schools across the country, pushing the trans narrative straight into our children’s lives through events, assemblies, surveys and “diversity” programmes. NOT JUST in the sexuality education classroom lessons.

Why is the New Zealand Government and Ministry of Health apparently not looking to these landmark US decisions? Why ignore the mounting international evidence?

For the parents I’ve been meeting with here in Texas, this news may be the lifeline they need. Finally, someone in power is saying what we’ve known all along - this was never healthcare. It was child abuse dressed up in a white coat.

This settlement doesn’t erase the pain already inflicted. It doesn’t magically heal the detransitioners left sterilized, in chronic pain, or battling regret. But it forces the system to start cleaning up its own mess. It creates a dedicated clinic for reversal care. It claws back taxpayer dollars. And it sends a crystal-clear message to every hospital in Texas (and beyond): the era of experimenting on confused kids is over.

I’ve been documenting this fight for the last three years on pennymarie.nz and Let Kids Be Kids - from New Zealand to the frontlines in America, Canada and the United Kingdom. What I’m seeing here in Texas is a turning point. Parents are no longer alone. The law is catching up. The hospitals that profited from this ideology are being held to account.

Keep going, for our kids sakes

• To every parent and advocate for children in the trenches: Hold the line. Your fight matters. Today’s announcement proves it.

• To New Zealand mums and dads: How many more kids will be put on the social and medical pathway before our leaders follow Texas’ lead? How can we work together to affect the change needed to ensure our children are safe and families strengthened?

To those clinging to a dying ideology

• Healthcare workers in NZ: Will you continue to “affirm” based on ideology, or will you follow the emerging evidence and your oath to do no harm?

• NZ politicians and Ministry of Health officials: When will you truly put children first, and get out of the way of loving mothers and fathers who say NO to this ideology and medial pathway - and demand the same accountability we’re seeing in Texas?

• Mainstream media outlets: When will you report the full story, including the harms, the detransitioners, and the growing global pushback?

This is what real leadership looks like. Thank you, Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Please share this far and wide. Texas is leading the way. New Zealand must catch up - for the sake of our kids.

Official sources and further reading

• Full Texas Attorney General Press Release

• HHS Gender Dysphoria Report

• NZ Update: Puberty Blockers, Media Bias, University ‘Experts’, vs Common Sense (Nov 2025)

• NZ High Court To Test Legality Of Puberty‑Blocker Regulations (Feb 2026)

Stay strong, Penny Marie
On the ground in Texas

About Penny Marie

Penny Marie is a New Zealand-based investigative reporter, and founder of Let Kids Be Kids. Please follow, comment, share and support my work. Subscribe to my Substack, X (I also post these articles on X) and YouTube - and turn notifications on.

• About Penny Marie

• Social media links & recent work

• YouTube

• Let Kids Be Kids

Read more

When the New Zealand Herald published a story on May 2 2026 about a University of Canterbury student being asked to remove a Palestinian keffiyeh at graduation, it presented the incident as a civil liberties outrage worthy of national attention. The Press - Stuff’s Christchurch masthead, the city where this took place - ran the same story with identical…

Read more

I stand alongside the brave men and women who speak up about ‘gender ideology’ and the increasingly ludicrous trans propaganda. We experience relentless attacks by people who are either the foot soldiers of this strategy, the beneficiaries of it, or are brainwashed by the propaganda it spits out.

Their goal? To silence us.

Why? Because their lies don’t st…

Read more