The Labour government’s draft bill to ban so-called ‘conversion therapy’ is rightly being denounced by commentators.
The definition is put in such arcane and vague language that it could apply to all sorts of things.
Pray for someone to be faithful to their wife? Conversion therapy.
Tell someone to stop watching porn? Conversion therapy.
Say to your 14-year-old daughter that she isn’t really a non-binary transmasc genderqueer demiboy? Believe it or not, conversion therapy.
Meanwhile, under the proposed law, NHS professionals can continue handing out body-altering, irreversible puberty blockers to children who are confused about their identity. ‘That’s just healthcare.’
When critics like me point out the real effects of this ban, people might think we’re over-egging it. But the definition is so vague and broad it invites this kind of speculation.
It covers anything someone does towards another person, with either the intention of their orientation or identity changing, or the intention that they believe a change has happened.
That explicitly means that if you deny someone else’s gender identity and try to persuade them that it isn’t true, you’re conversion-practising them. Even if they’re unsure about their identity, if you do anything to prompt them in one direction or another, you’re conversion-practising them.
The same goes for behaviour. So, if you think that a married man who’s watching gay porn might do a better job of being faithful to his wife if he stops watching gay porn, and tell him to stop and to save his marriage, you are conversion-practising.
The draft bill then applies a second test to determine whether that conversion practice is abusive or not. This is itself an admission that plenty of ‘conversion practices’ are not abusive. It is completely at odds with the Stonewall-inspired rhetoric used by politicians like Theresa May and Boris Johnson during Peak Trans.
So if you have been ‘conversion-practising’ by making any suggestion to them about their sexuality or gender, you have to hope that it won’t be declared to be abusive. The draft bill is maddeningly vague on this point too, merely listing some broad factors which are to be considered. Would “stop watching gay porn” be words of a sexual nature (point A)? Would it be ‘controlling or coercive’ to say “cut it out or I will have to tell your wife”? Would it be ‘psychological or emotional pressure’ to say that God isn’t pleased with this kind of thing?
How many of these boxes have to be checked for it to be ‘abusive’? Isn’t a parent inherently in a position of authority over a child that will be labelled as pressure and control?
Then comes the final test. Even if you’ve engaged in ‘abusive conversion practices, you’re only guilty of an offence if you’ve caused “serious harm to the individual’s physical or mental health” or “serious alarm or distress to the individual which has a substantial adverse effect on their usual day-to-day activities.”
How exactly is this causal link ever going to be established?
The classic ‘abusive conversion practice’ story being used in the media at the moment goes like this: A young man in a conservative church has same-sex attractions. Acting on those feelings is out of line with the church’s teaching. A church leader gives him ordinary pastoral care, like prayer and counselling. The young man is grateful at the time but later turns his back on that teaching. He embraces a gay lifestyle. He has depressive thoughts or anxiety which he blames on the ‘conversion therapy’ he received.
How could those feelings now be legitimately blamed on the church leader, years ago? Why should they be blamed on a pastor and not on the man’s decision to abandon his church? How do we know it’s not his sleep, his work, his diet or any other current life circumstance that has really caused any struggles? Simply because he now has regrets about something he once appreciated cannot be enough to demonstrate that the church leader caused the harm.
Scientific studies have utterly failed to demonstrate that ‘sexual orientation change efforts’ like prayer, small groups or counselling cause harm.
There are already laws to address physical and mental abuse that genuinely causes harm. Grievous bodily harm includes psychiatric injury that requires no physical act. Harassment laws exist. You can be found guilty of coercive and controlling behaviour.
If and when something happens, these are more than adequate to prosecute someone. How would any reasonably minded jury be able to convict anyone, beyond reasonable doubt, of carrying out an ‘abusive conversion practice’ that is not already covered under existing laws? Perhaps that’s why the equivalent law being pushed in Northern Ireland doesn’t allow jury trials.
Is a jury going to convict a vicar if he prays for a congregant to stay faithful to his wife rather than succumb to same-sex temptations?
Those who want these laws need to explain to us all how any words or actions could be an offence in this bill that could not also be prosecuted under existing laws.
Until then, everyone needs to assume that this bill is simply a charter for harassing people who do not hold to any part of LGBTQ+ ideology. Under the bill, even if you’re not guilty of the offence itself, someone can slap a conversion practice protection order on you if they think something bad might happen.
You may be tempted to say, “this is Britain – common sense will prevail.”
Try telling that to our client Rev Dr Bernard Randall. As a school chaplain he preached a sermon which upheld the rights of pupils not to feel compelled to believe in trans ideology – or any other ideology for that matter.
He lost his job and was blacklisted from Church of England ministry for years under absurd safeguarding claims.
Imagine if they’d also been able to accuse him of conversion-practising. After all, he was in a position of spiritual authority. It’s not unreasonable to think they would have claimed that his traditional, Christian views on marriage were the kind of heteronormativity that leads vulnerable LGBTQ people into mental health crises. That by upholding man-woman marriage he was abusing his spiritual leadership and pushing pupils to live as ‘straight’.
It simply wouldn’t matter that this is a gross and false mischaracterisation of what had happened.
All you need is a jobsworth, who has been through ideologically warped safeguarding training, and your livelihood and reputation will be dragged through the mud.
Conversion therapy laws around the world are failing to convict anyone. In Malta, Matthew Grech was found not guilty of ‘advertising conversion practices’ after years of hearings. Colorado’s ban on talk therapy was knocked down by the Supreme Court. These laws are failing to stop any genuine harm being done because that was never their purpose.
They are a tool to enforce submission to LGBTQ+ ideology and nothing more.
Andrea Williams is chief executive of Christian Concern and the Christian Legal Centre.
