Elijah Luke Michel reflects on our government’s recent changes to Relationship and Sexuality Education, the potential for President Trump to implement Project 2025, and proposes an agenda of his own.
I remember seeing a meme of the Gay Agenda some years back, showing a gay couple sitting on their sofa and listing all the sordid things they intended to do with each other. The message was clear: gay people intend to sully the world with their everyday existence.
Today, I find it equally fascinating—the intense vitriol some conservative people harbour towards those with gender dysphoria. They must feel they are experiencing a deep underlying threat to their own existence simply by sharing the planet with trans people. And that must be scary for them.
Rainbow people—in particular, trans people—seem to threaten their core identity. If you are raised in a patriarchal home where the man is the head of the household and the woman’s duty is to the homestead and children, any hint of gender roles being deconstructed sends people into a spin.
Everything becomes questionable: clothing, activities, toys, household chores, sports, careers—literally, “what is a man?”
It’s fears like these that have seen typical patriarchal figures elected into power in recent times, from Luxon here to Trump in America. And none of them are good news if you are a trans person trying to live authentically.
If you haven’t heard of Project 2025 yet, it’s high time you did. It’s a conservative agenda of goals for the next Trump presidency, put together by a lobby group that his Vice President, JD Vance, has close ties to.
While North America may be a huge distance away physically, its policies are gaining significant influence on our own. Covering vital issues like trade, immigration, and law enforcement, Project 2025 also highlights changes intended for civil rights, healthcare, and education—all of which deeply impact the transgender community.
The current coalition government of Aotearoa also espouses many right-wing views and intended amendments, including the recent reset to our educational curriculum around sex, gender, and sexual orientation.
As with Project 2025, the intention is to remove education around Rainbow communities and replace it with cisgendered heteronormativity. It is blatant erasure, and we cannot allow New Zealand to adopt these backward policies. We must lead the way in educating the masses—including those who attend Mass—and keep church separate from state.
As we evolve away from colonial views and into a kinder, wiser world, we need to help bridge the gap with those who have less understanding than we do. Hatred is unhelpful. We need to preserve our energy for the “good fight” and educate others around us by living wholesome lives and offering peace and understanding to those who want to erase our existence. That means sitting down and having difficult, brave conversations.
We need to unite with indigenous cultures across the globe, who remind us of our natural humanity prior to colonial indoctrination, and teach the world to embrace the uniqueness that every person brings into life. We need to love ourselves as well as our ‘enemies’ and remember we are worth the effort, as are the generations that follow in our footsteps.
If we are not mindful and vigilant about the repercussions agendas like Project 2025 could have on our community in Aotearoa, then we may be in for a short, sharp shock. The time to start pushing back on insidious decisions affecting our education system is now.
Love your enemies, gather your allies, and stand your ground. We’ve got this.