An upcoming ban on LGBT “conversion therapy” in England will not cover transgenderism after multiple U-turns by Boris Johnson’s government on the issue.
The Conservative Party government has long been planning to impose a ban on conversion therapy, sought voluntarily or otherwise, in an attempt to curry favour with left-liberals, but started to get cold feet after concerns were raised that it might lead to the criminalisation of parents, social workers, and health professionals who did anything other than affirm the identity of supposedly transgender children.
LGBT activist Jayne Ozanne, chairwoman of the Ban Conversion Therapy Coalition and a former member of the government’s LGBT advisory panel, had even pushed for the ban to include “gentle non-coercive prayer” by Bible-believing Christians, which she branded “hate prayer”.
On Thursday evening — less than a day after Equalities Minister Mike Freer had told Parliament that the government “remain[ed] wholly committed to bringing forward proposals to ban conversion therapy practices” — the Prime Minister’s spokeswoman said that, actually, the ban was being dropped, and that the government had “decided to proceed by reviewing how existing law can be deployed more effectively to prevent this in the quickest way possible and explore the use of other non-legislative measures.”
This earned a predictable backlash from the LGBT lobby, left-wing MPs, and left-liberal-leaning MPs from Johnson’s own party, and the Prime Minister, as is often his wont, quickly caved — but in a characteristically half-baked manner, with a conversion therapy ban now reportedly to go ahead but only covering sexual orientation, not gender identity.
Former government LGBT advisor Jayne Ozanne has insisted that “gentle non-coercive prayer” should be included in UK legislation banning "conversion therapy" https://t.co/vzRUVKdfRN
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) June 18, 2021
This seems to have achieved the effect of riling both sides of the debate and pleasing no one, with Ozanne, described as a “conversion therapy survivor” by the notionally impartial BBC, suggesting that Johnson had thrown LGBT people under the bus.
“Why should quacks and charlatans be allowed to continue to cause life-long harm to them?” complained Alicia Kearns, a liberal Tory MP.
Nikki Da Costa, former director of legislative affairs at Downing Street, warned that including transgenderism in a conversion therapy ban would have “create[d] a situation where doctors, therapists, even parents, would be deterred from exploring with a child any feelings of what else may be going on for fear that they will be told they are trying to change a child’s identity,” however,
“In the desire to bring forward something very symbolic and important [the ban’s supporters] glossed over a lot of these issues with profound consequences for children,” she added.
Internal documents leaked to ITV News acknowledged that the now-ditched plan to drop the ban altogether would lead to “noisy backlash from LGBT groups and some parliamentarians when we announce we do not intend to proceed” — but with the government having rolled over to this backlash regardless of having anticipated it, it remains to be seen whether further U-turns on the issue will be forthcoming.
Kids Being ‘Groomed’ into Copycat Sex Swaps, Warns Whistleblower at School with 17 ‘Trans Pupils’ https://t.co/76ywRrEzVF
— Breitbart London (@BreitbartLondon) November 19, 2018
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