Caring will be criminalised
The Conversion Practices Bill risks turning parents, teachers and counsellors into criminals for helping children understand that they may simply grow up to be same-sex attracted, writes LGB Alliance’s Campaigns Manager.
There is something deeply perverse about watching gay rights being used to make it harder for children to grow up gay. And that’s why, at LGB Alliance, we’re opposing the Draft Conversion Practices Bill.
Gay conversion therapy was built on the belief that homosexuality was something wrong which needed fixing. The “feminine” boy and “masculine” girl needed correcting. The ultimate goal was heterosexuality.
Gay liberation overturned that idea. A masculine girl is still a girl. An effeminate boy is still a boy and no fix is needed. And either might grow up to be gay. Somewhere along the way, that became bafflingly controversial.
The Draft Conversion Practices Bill creates a new criminal offence. Conduct intended to cause somebody to have, not have, or believe that they have or do not have, a particular sexual orientation or “transgender identity”. The Government says this works both ways which sounds even-handed until you consider an actual child.
Take a teenage girl who hates her developing body, feels she does not fit in with other girls and is attracted to them. After spending a lot of time online, she has come to believe this means she is really a boy.
Tell her she is a girl and are you protecting her sexual orientation but denying her trans identity? Tell her she is a boy and are you protecting her trans identity at the expense of her sexual orientation? Which is the crime?
Give her time. Challenge the sexist idea that there is a correct way to be a girl. Explore why she hates her body and let her discover her sexuality at her own pace. Above all, make sure she knows there is nothing wrong with growing up lesbian.
Yet under the Bill, this compassionate approach could be presented as evidence of a conversion practice. Parents who question her transgender identity, restrict access to influences they believe are causing harm, refuse to fund private treatment or reassure her that she is female could be accused of exerting psychological, emotional or economic pressure to change her understanding of herself.
The Government says parents have nothing to fear, but there is no general exemption for them, or for teachers, friends, charities and pastoral workers. Nor is the threat of criminal prosecution the Bill’s only means of enforcement. It also creates Conversion Practice Protection Orders (CPPOs). These are civil orders and do not require somebody first to have been prosecuted or convicted. Police and local authorities can apply for them; family courts can make them during existing proceedings; and urgent orders can initially be made without the accused even being present. Breach an order without reasonable excuse and you could land in prison.
What, then, will a social worker say to an unhappy girl who insists she is a boy? What will a counsellor advise? It would take a brave teacher with a mortgage to ask: “Do you like girls? Might you not be a boy, but a lesbian?”
This conflation of sexual orientation and transgender identity did not appear from nowhere. In 2019, a guide produced by Dentons, the Thomson Reuters Foundation and IGLYO advised activists to link legal gender recognition for children to popular measures such as same-sex marriage, providing a “veil of protection”.
The political capital accumulated by generations of gay men and lesbians was being identified as useful cover for something quite different: allowing children to have a gender identity recognised independently of their sex.
And so here we are. The attempt to introduce self-ID openly failed. This Bill could achieve something similar in practice. It does not require everyone to believe a declared transgender identity, but it could create legal risk around asking whether that identity is true.
If questioning the belief could be presented as evidence of a conversion practice, while affirming it carries far less risk, affirmation becomes the path of least resistance. This is self-ID by the back door.
That is particularly dangerous for children. The Cass Review should have moved policy firmly towards caution, curiosity and exploration of what lies behind a child’s distress, including autism, trauma, bullying, pornography and sexual orientation. Some children who identify as trans will continue to do so as adults. Others will realise that what made them feel different was that they were same-sex attracted.
Abusive attempts to change someone’s sexual orientation are wrong. Assault, sexual abuse, threats, harassment and coercive control should be prosecuted. We already have laws against those things. Show me a harm that isn’t illegal and let’s ask legislators to close that gap - rather than create a whole new law that brings dangers of its own.
A girl can hate being female. She can hate puberty. She can reject femininity. She can feel completely different from other girls. She can be attracted to girls.
None of those things makes her a boy.
If adults become frightened to tell her that, we risk taking a girl who might have grown up to understand herself as a lesbian and encouraging her instead to understand herself as a straight boy.
And that would be conversion.
If you found this article helpful and want to take action you can:
Register here for LGB Alliance mass lobby of Parliament on Tuesday 1st September.
Sign the LGB Alliance parents’ letter against the bill.