Chris Elston, an activist known for speaking out against performing trans procedures on minors, is sharing details about his recent arrest in Belgium.
Elston, known as “Billboard Chris” for his tactic of wearing sandwich boards with bold messages, told The Christian Post that he recently traveled to Brussels to meet with European politicians and to engage in conversations with citizens about the transgender issue.
He said he and Lois McLatchie Miller, senior legal communications officer for ADF International, ended up being detained after a crowd surrounded them and began hurling insults.
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“We had several meetings with many members of the European Parliament, did a lot of media as well,” Elston said. “And, in some of our spare time, we were out on the street, and I’ve been doing what I do, having conversations wearing a sign that says, ‘Children cannot consent to puberty blockers.’ I’ve done this all over the world.”
But he said the situation in Brussels was quite different from anything else he’s experienced, as the duo faced “antagonism, continual abuse and hostility.” Elston said it started with a man who attempted to interrupt him, and then began harassing and following Miller.
“After about half an hour, I got tired of this, and we called the police, because, this is, in my view, criminal harassment of a young woman half his size,” he said. “By the time police eventually arrived, quite a crowd had gathered — all hostile.”
Rather than help Elston and Miller or curb the crowd’s behavior, Elston said the police ordered him to remove his sign and leave the area.
“[The cop] was telling us we needed a permit from the mayor to hold a demonstration,” he said, noting he explained he was simply holding conversations, not demonstrating or protesting. “The sign is just a conversation starter. That’s all it is.”
Ultimately, authorities ended up arresting Elston and Miller.
“We were told we were now being charged criminally with what translates as ‘causing a disturbance,’” he said. “We were handcuffed in that police station and transported to another police station. All of our possessions were logged. We were stripped down to our underwear, our clothes were searched, and then we were put in cells and held until 9 p.m. when we were released.”
In the end, they weren’t charged, but the entire experience was, from Elston’s purview, a “violation of [their] freedom of expression.” In fact, he said there are no laws, to his knowledge, that would have permitted authorities to seize signage and punish them in such a way.
“We are taking legal action against them,” he said.
Elston has no plans to back down from spreading his message and starting important conversations. He believes he will prevail in any legal challenge on this front, citing laws that support free speech and expression.
“My message is: ‘Children cannot consent to puberty blockers,’” he said. “It’s not hate speech. It is what the high court in England has already confirmed. It’s what every systematic review of the scientific literature done in England, Finland, Sweden, the HHS just conducted one … all of the scientific reviews have come to the same conclusion.”
Elston’s message comes amid the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark 6-3 ruling Wednesday in Skrmetti v. United States, upholding a Tennessee law banning youth with gender dysphoria from obtaining life-altering surgeries and hormone drugs.
With Elston and other activists seeing victories like these, it’s clear their campaigning is having an impact — and he explained exactly why he persists in his work.
“Tens of thousands of children are having their natural development stopped with chemical castration drugs, drugs that have never been approved for this purpose,” Elston said. “We’re stopping the development of perfectly healthy kids.”
He continued, “This is a cult that’s spread through social media and through schools, and it’s causing grave, psychological damage and physical harm to kids. So that’s what keeps me going. I don’t care what these authorities want to do to me. … We have kids losing body parts, so all of us adults, particularly us men, need to stand up because we can’t tolerate this a moment longer.”
