Paul Huxley responds to the King’s Speech about the current government’s plans to ban ‘abusive conversion practices’
The King’s Speech has opened up a new Parliamentary session mentioning plans to ban ‘conversion practices’.
The name is misleading. Rugby fly-halves will remain legally free to practise their conversions. Efforts to convert people to Christianity will remain legal, as long as you don’t go anywhere near an abortion centre or hospital.
The King only said that the draft bill would seek to ban “abusive conversion practices”.
The BBC fills in the detail, explaining that a ban would be on measures “intending to change someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity”.
Today’s statement is nothing new. It repeats Labour’s 2024 manifesto promise and the King’s Speech of that year. It was likewise mentioned in the Queen’s Speeches in 2021 and 2022, meaning only 2023’s edition (when Rishi Sunak was Prime Minister) did not state this intention.
Given that Labour has made no obvious progress in the past two years, it is hard to imagine that the current administration will find the time and willpower to force through this contentious legislation.
Nevertheless, since this promise keeps hanging around like a lethargic vampire, I would like to call any politicians listening to finally drive a stake through its heart.
What is meant by abusive?
The slippery use of language does not help. By banning ‘abusive conversion practices’, does the Government intend to only ban conversion practices that actually are abusive?
There would be significant support for a ban targeting practices that are genuinely, objectively abusive.
Politicians and campaigners have previously talked about electroshock therapy, chemical castration and ‘corrective rape’.
The trouble is that none of them can point to anyone providing such ‘treatments’ in the United Kingdom for decades.
For example, when my colleague Carys Moseley and I independently sought evidence through Freedom of Information requests on ‘corrective rape’ in the UK, no evidence was forthcoming and politicians suddenly stopped making that claim.
Or does banning ‘abusive conversion practices’ mean banning all ‘conversion practices’, pejoratively labelling any such attempt as abusive?
But there is a major problem with this too: they are not.
The research simply doesn’t back up claims that normal talking therapy, prayer, pastoral counselling and small support groups cause people harm. The papers that some people claim demonstrate harm do no such thing. Other studies, including ones that are clearly of higher quality, are illegitimately ignored when they come to other conclusions. Some forms of therapy, for example, are clearly safe and sometimes effective.
What gives a government the right to ban speech?
The various proposed bills in Westminster and Scotland in recent years have sought to ban forms of speech: not just the prayer, counselling and small groups mentioned before but also publications.
In doing so, there are major human rights hurdles.
As Roger Kiska’s legal opinion demonstrates, a ban limiting people’s article 8 rights (private and family life) and article 9 rights (thought, belief and religion) would face high hurdles to be deemed compatible with human rights. The restrictions would have to be shown to be necessary and narrowly tailored to a legitimate aim.
As the verdict in the Maltese trial of Matthew Grech shows, wide-ranging bans aren’t workable without breaching basic rights. The US Supreme Court also ruled decisively against a ‘conversion therapy’ ban at the end of March for censoring speech.
The idea of a ‘conversion therapy’ ban is not only wrong, but essentially impossible without breaching human rights commitments. Does Labour really want to commit its next three years to this unnecessary, doomed project?
What does a trans inclusive ban mean?
Labour has repeatedly promised that any ban would be ‘trans inclusive’, including in a recent Westminster Hall debate focused on single-sex spaces and the Darlington Nurses.
Up to this point, I’ve focused on the kinds of support people receive if they want to move away from same-sex behaviours and feelings. That is for two reasons: first, because people have a wildly wrong perception about what they entail, their safety and their effectiveness.
Second, it is because there has been virtually no study of gender-related ‘conversion therapy’.
LGBTQ+-affirming campaigners have pushed hard for a ‘trans inclusive’ ban based on thin air. But they may well find themselves falling into the pit that they have dug (Psalm 7:15).
They wanted a trans-inclusive ban to stop people from supporting others who were struggling with gender distress. They wanted to make it illegal for a therapist to help, say, a 14-year-old girl to accept the body God gave her instead of seeking to mutilate it by simulating masculinity.
For all the reasons already mentioned, such a ban would be disastrous and fail. Additionally, the public would hate such a ban – not a great way to revitalise a party’s electoral prospects.
A real vote-winner
However, a trans-inclusive ban on genuinely-abusive conversion practices could in fact be a vote-winner. There are indeed abusive, harmful practices being done, even paid for by taxpayers, that seek to convert boys into girls and girls into boys.
A complete end to chemically castrating young people with puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones would be a great start for a ban. We could also ban mastectomies that are carried out for the purposes of gender, along with ‘bottom’ surgeries on genitalia.
These practices are genuinely harmful and abusive, with a growing evidence base to demonstrate it.
In the time it has taken to draft this article, it has become even less clear that today’s King’s Speech will bear any resemblance to the Government’s ongoing agenda.
But if Starmer, Streeting, Burnham or any other politician wants a vote-winning policy, let them end this talk of a ‘conversion practices’ ban and stop transitioning kids.
