Australia stops censoring child safety activist for calling female who identifies as man a 'woman'

As Germany purges wrongthink in the name of combating "hate speech" and "digital arsonists," such as insufficiently clear Nazi satire and thumbs-up emojis in response to a teenager killing her migrant rapist, Australia has set a modest limit to its own speech policing, perhaps briefly tempering the heat the Aussies face from the Trump administration.

Australia's Administrative Review Tribunal rebuked the office of eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant, whom congressional Republicans recently accused of colluding with advertisers to mitigate the "contagion" of Donald Trump, for ordering X to block a post by Canadian activist Chris Elston that called an Australian female activist who identifies as a man a "woman."

Tribunal Deputy President Damien O'Donovan wrote Tuesday that Elston actually showed restraint by not trying to alert Teddy Cook, whom the World Health Organization had just appointed to a panel on transgender and nonbinary health, to his post calling Cook a woman.

"The decision to issue a removal notice is set aside," wrote O'Donovan, who presided over a five-day hearing this spring. "A decision to refuse to issue a removal notice is substituted," meaning the post is visible again in Australia.

“This is a victory not just for Billboard Chris, but for every Australian – and indeed every citizen who values the fundamental right to free speech," said Paul Coleman, executive director of Alliance Defending Freedom International, referring to his client by Elston's moniker.

The State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor flagged Elston's censorship in an X thread May 1 on the "troublingly numerous" attempts "by governments to coerce American tech companies into targeting individuals for censorship." 

Asked for its response to the ruling, the department provided Just the News a statement Wednesday attributed to a senior official. 

“The Department as a general practice does not comment on litigation," it said. "However, protecting freedom of speech and affirming biological truth is necessary in any free and democratic society."

'In a just world' Australian government leaders would be in prison

Elston campaigns around the world against medicalized gender transitions for children, online and in person while wearing sandwich boards with his message. He got arrested and allegedly strip-searched in Brussels with another activist last month for wearing the sign "Children are never born in the wrong body."

O'Donnell's ruling notes that Elston credits his activism to the international billboard campaign "I (heart) J.K. Rowling," referring to the Harry Potter author now known for promoting sex over gender identity. Canadian nurse Amy Hamm was found guilty of professional misconduct this spring for putting up a Rowling billboard and sharing the same views online.

"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 in a Feb. 27, 2024, post that linked to a Daily Mail article about transgender activist Cook joining the WHO panel.

The article included Cook's revealing Instagram photos and stated his "kinky" hobbies including "bondage parties" and "trans orgies." 

Elston commented: "People who belong in psychiatric wards are writing the guidelines for people who belong in psychiatric wards."

Grant's unidentified delegate issued X a "removal notice" alleging the post "misgenders" Cook, who filed complaints against both X and Elston, "and reiterates that this point is deliberate, which is likely intended to invalidate and mock" Cook's gender identity. 

The post is "deliberately degrading" because it "suggests that all transgender people – and in this case the complainant in particular – have something that is ‘wrong’ about their psychology owing to their gender identity," the delegate said. Putting "trans people" in scare quotes also suggests Cook's "gender identity is itself false."

The delegate threatened to fine X more than $500,000 if the post stayed up. Because Elston has hundreds of thousands of followers and the post was viewed and shared widely, he was "likely to have possessed insight" into the harm it would cause Cook, the delegate said.

Elston responded to the delegate's threat with his own accusations. The "cult" of gender dysphoria has captured governments including Australia's and created "the greatest child abuse scandal in the history of modern medicine," which "in a just world, would result in certain members of your government spending the rest of their days in prison," he wrote on X.

No 'personal motivator for trying to harm' Cook, just principles

O'Donovan's ruling notes that Elston has put his own safety at risk through activism, which has sometimes provoked "strong negative reactions" including more than 30 assaults and a broken arm in Montreal. "He has been punched, spat on and had property stolen or damaged."

While the "broad question" was whether Elston's post constituted "cyber-abuse material targeted at an Australian adult" under the 2021 Online Safety Act, the "more focussed [sic] question is whether I can be satisfied that the necessary intention to cause serious harm to the subject of the post has been established," O'Donovan wrote.

Looking at the evidence as a whole, "I am not satisfied that an ordinary reasonable person would conclude … Elston intended to cause Mr Cook serious harm," O'Donovan wrote, using male language for Cook throughout the ruling. There's no evidence Elston intended Cook to "receive and read the post" or had a "personal motivator for trying to harm" Cook.

"He misgendered Mr Cook because it is his universal practice to refer to people who identify as trans by pronouns and descriptors that correspond to their biological sex at birth," reflecting "his belief that doing otherwise involves an untrue statement and because doing otherwise has implications for the rights and safety of women and children," O'Donovan wrote.

While the ruling questions Elston's claim in testimony that he wasn't saying all "transgender people belong in psychiatric wards," O'Donovan repeatedly emphasized Elston's lack of effort in trying to get Cook's attention directly.

The only entity tagged by Elston in his post was the WHO even though the Daily Mail article named the Instagram handle for Cook in crediting the photos from Cook's account, which not only depicted Cook "wearing some type of harness" but also "a large black dog penetrating a man from behind," the ruling said. Elston didn't mention the article's lurid details.

The review Tuesday of the Daily Mail story did not appear to include a picture of the aforementioned dog and man. 

"There is no evidence before me that suggests that at the time Mr Elston uploaded his post to X, Mr Cook was following him on X," or "sought to distribute his post beyond people who were already following him," and he didn't post a comment on the article itself, O'Donovan wrote. 

The tribunal couldn't determine how Cook even learned about Elston's post. The Daily Mail contacted the transgender activist for comment about its pending story, which when published prompted Cook's complaint to Grant's office.

The article published "images without my consent, including a disgusting image of bestiality that I’ve never seen before in my life but has been linked to me," Cook's first complaint said.