Rishi Sunak will press ahead with plans to ban ‘conversion therapy’, including for transgender people, after a backlash from Conservative MPs and warnings that ministers could quit. The Times has the story.
The Prime Minister will include a draft bill in the King’s Speech which will ban attempts to change someone’s sexuality and gender identity in England and Wales. It will make doing so a criminal offence.
Sunak had been considering dropping the bill amid claims of “unintended consequences” for teachers, parents and therapists helping children who are struggling with their gender identity. Some Tory MPs have warned that they could effectively be criminalised.
However, Simon Hart, the Chief Whip, warned that the Government could face a revolt if it failed to go ahead with the ban.
There were concerns that Tory MPs could join Labour in backing amendments to the Crime and Justice Bill to introduce a conversion therapy ban. This would put a flagship part of Sunak’s legislative agenda at risk.
Stuart Andrew, the Equalities Minister, was also said to be prepared to consider his position if the Government failed to go ahead with the ban.
More than a dozen Tory MPs, including two ministers, complained to the Chief Whip last month after Suella Braverman, the Home Secretary, said that homosexuality should not by itself allow people to claim asylum.
One MP who has campaigned for the change said: “Simon has been brilliant on this. He’s listened to our concerns and been a real champion for us. He gets it.”
It is an issue that polarises Conservative MPs, with those on the right expected to oppose the ban amid claims that teachers and parents could face criminal sanctions if they advise children against changing their gender.
The Government has previously said that it would ensure that the bill did not have such “unintended consequences” and would protect “legitimate conversations” between parents, clinicians and children.
Kemi Badenoch, the Women and Equalities Minister, has expressed reservations about the plans but is not expected to oppose them.
Sir Peter Bottomley, a Tory MP, said: “Over the last three years I and others have asked a succession of ministers and their officials to name one or more of the practices they intend to criminalise which are not already criminal. There is no specific answer.
“The government is facing a choice of splitting the Tory party on this or leaving this on one side until it’s clear that there’s a need for precise legislation which will stop things that should be criminal happening. Without being specific about what you are criminalising you are putting parents at risk, you are putting other advisers and supporters of children at risk.”
Worth reading in full.
Yet another opportunity to stand up for personal freedom and common sense surrendered to the woke activists. Why is a Conservative Government criminalising help for gender-confused children and adults? How is that good politics, quite apart from the ethical considerations of abandoning people – children and adults – to the delusions of activists? How does it make sense to close down the NHS Tavistock clinic for being too keen on pushing children towards transition, and then to ban helping children to accept their biological sex?
And why would a Conservative Government risk criminalising religious groups who abide by traditional norms? Note that a ‘conversion therapy’ ban is likely to include a ban on any effort to discourage people from acting on feelings of gender confusion or same-sex attraction, meaning traditional religious groups encouraging abstinence from homosexuality (such as the Church of England and Roman Catholic Church) are caught in it.
Anything which should be banned in this area is already banned, as Sir Peter Bottomley points out. Do the Conservatives really want to criminalise their own supporters?
This could easily blow up in the Government’s face, as public opinion is now much more critical of trans activism, while religious traditionalists will be very unhappy with the restrictions on their freedom. It’s also part of an unwelcome streak from the Government of banning things – smoking, therapy, boilers, cars – which is draining support among those who still love freedom.
Stop Press: Ella Whelan in the Telegraph writes that “a conversion therapy ban would be a disaster for free speech“.
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Why would it blow up in the Government’s face? If opposition exists at all, it is in disarray.
That’s a really good question because when Tories simply adopt everything Labour would want to implement as well, voting becomes an obvious farce. “Don’t want to be buried alive? Sorry, that’s not on the ballot paper. But you may chose your own undertaker!”
Is there something except mask mandates, covaxx coercion and Christmas lockdowns Rishi hasn’t yet back-pedalled on? If not, when can we expect these last three crowning achievements of his career as Mr Open Hands, “Want to see policies implemented? Remember to include the cheque in the envelope, otherwise, they won’t be considered!”
Kid:
Mum, Dad ‘Surrogate Parents – I want to talk to you, I don’t know if I’m a boy or a girl’SP – Sorry, person, it would be illegal for us to advise you. Just note that currently, caucasian boys are accused of inherent white privilege and all boys are emblematic of patriarchal control, while the whole concept of girls is being systematically erased from the English language. Unless they’re 4th gen Disney-esque girlbosses who don’t need love, children or a sense of community to get them through the day, that is. In the meantime, the concept of transgender is based on biologyphobic ideology and primary colour hair dye, combined with sterilising drugs and mutiliating surgery. Take your pick.’
“the whole concept of girls is being systematically erased from the English language”
Also very confusing. Isn’t that misgendering 99.9% of girls?
Is that going to be a crime too?
Or not?
Likewise, isn’t affirmative genitital mutilation an attempt to change someone’s sex and gender? And what about Stonewall adepts proselytizing in schools?
I saw this on a BTL somewhere a while ago –
i find the logic confusing. if gender is a social construct, how is transgender in and of itself not also a social construct? what I mean is, would I have to be trans to be trans? how can trans be any more legitimate than either the male and female that they’re grown from? can you claim to have a gender when gender isn’t real? if woman has no definition how can you even know you’re trans? aren’t you really just a topographically redesigned person?
Topographically redesigned. Love it.
Topography
Definition 1 of three for this word.
“daddy, I know I’m your eldest son and I know you insisted I’m not supposed to, but I *really* like my friend”
“You bigot! She’s female and you’re male. I guess you didn’t ask “insert-ideological-term-of-compliance-here” (her/him/they/fk-off-not-your-business) for consent before you enjoyed your lurid dreams and your thought-crimes.
Yes, I’m told she has a bonus hole and perhaps a few other interesting contours, but I reject your obsession, but now I have to spew.
Igor, heat-up the irons to red-hot, this supposed (soon-to-be-ex) son of mine needs an object lesson in humility and agony.
No – it doesn’t count because the DEI score says so…
I have no idea what that means.
All I do know is that denying childrens’ gender identity is misgendering and Great Ormond Street Hospital has in effect banned the use of words like ‘boy’ and ‘girl’ and issued guidance threatening staff with disciplinary action.
But that is still misgendering 99.9% of the patients.
So it is OK to misgender children who are boys and girls but it is not OK to misgender children who are boys and girls who don’t want to be boys and girls.
I am really very confused by all of this.
Just what the public want and need – more laws telling them new things they can’t do.
My life still feels too free, there are still areas of my day to day existence that I get to decide for myself. Can parliament please step it up a bit and hurry up making some more laws. I want every little nook and cranny of my life to be legislated and regulated. So I don’t have to think at all.
Or, actually, better still, just shoot me in the back of the head now and get the same result quicker.
Why do they always look like they stink of fish and old meat?
This is unbelievably confusing and precisely because all of the woke trans ideology has turned our world upsides down.
What exactly is the controversy about?
Is it to be criminal to help a child decide to transition or not to transition? Which is it? Or is it both or none of the above.
The answer is this is another crap feelgood law with no intelligible meaning which lawyers and judges can interpret in whichever way they want to interpret it.
So, you’re liable for up to a 7 year prison sentence for counselling in support of FGM under the 2003 FGM Act.
But, you’ll be liable for a prison sentence if you counsel someone to not move towards genital mutilation if it’s for trans reasons?
Mmmm, someone smarter than me needs to explain that one to me.
(not aimed at NickR, healthy sarcasm involved)
Comrade, you nailed the double-think, you must either have MANY extra vodka rations (as your only salary) or be punished for your precocity because, while your your vote-for-me is absolutely mandatory, your positive-opinion of me is also mandatory, whether expressed in public or private..
Did I just hear a peep of dissent from you? I’m told Siberia is lovely in June, but I couldn’t care less as my Dacha is in Odessa. It’s only my winter-house. Saying that, there’s a wonderful job opportunity coming-up but it’s far, far, far to the east of us.
Comrade Orwell tried to warn us before, but it was only in a novel and so very easily disregarded (what a-wheezy-‘karen’ non-entity he turned out to be, lol)
I get that you’re just holding-up the hypocrisy for scrutiny, I’d truly wonder if you really believed this stuff. Mr Orwell would be proud of you.
The ambiguity will get me caught soon – just one unguarded opinion and I’ll be on the trains…
</sarc>
We are being taken into Hell.
Dark untold truth of transgenderism
Once again our enemies have hijacked the language and sadly even the headline here sort of falls for it. “Conversion therapy” is actually the opposite of what it appears to mean. The people who are attempting to “convert” the confused are the “trans” activists. You are either conceived as a man or a woman, and that’s it. You cannot be “converted” to what you already are – that is nonsense.
Perhaps one-day gassing will be referred to as a ‘zyklon-b-hug’
They are utterly insane and EVIL.
Guy Fawkes had a very good point me thinks.
But sadly he was betrayed by the conscience of a still unidentified supporter who wrote an anonymous letter in late October 1605 to Lord Monteagle, a Catholic.
Monteagle intended to attend the opening of Parliament a few days later, on November 5.
The unsigned letter stated: “My lord, out of the love I bear to some of your friends, I have a care of your preservation, therefore I would advise you as you tender your life to devise some excuse to shift of your attendance at this parliament . . . for though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they shall receive a terrible blow.”
Monteagle he forwarded the letter to Robert Cecil, chief minister of King James I and the rest, as they say, is history.
I write ‘sadly’ but do not condone the purpose of the plotters who would have succeeded in an act of terrorism with terrible consequences had it not been for the conscience of the writer of that anonymous letter.
It was a remarkable plan which anticipated and predates modern terrorism by four centuries.
Notice these words from that letter “out of the love I bear to some of your friends“.
So the writer was known not to Monteagle but to ‘some of his friends’. And of course must have been known to Fawkes or someone close to him or his plotters.
That means potentially Cecil could have identified the writer but presumably Cecil got the information he wanted of the identities of Fawkes’ co-conspirators from torture inflicted on Fawkes.
Of course, Monteagle was given little choice but to pass on the letter.
Had he not done so and excused himself from attending Parliament on 5th November that would cast suspicion upon him.
And so we can also see how this 400 year old precursor to modern counter-terrorism worked then but based on luck and intelligence from an unwitting informant instead of by design.
Sadly, those who love freedom in the UK these days are very few. And virtually non-existent in Parliament.