Parents, teachers and doctors risk up to five years in jail if they try to talk their children out of irreversible trans treatments under a “dangerous” new law, campaigners have warned. The Telegraph has the story.
On Thursday, Olivia Bailey, the Equalities Minister, published a draft bill to ban conversion therapy, which aims to suppress or change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.
The bill states that people who use physical or psychological abuse to prevent children from saying they are gay or transgender could face up to five years in jail if convicted.
Critics warn this could put parents and teachers at risk of police investigation and possible jail time for having honest conversations with children.
Under the new law, someone found guilty of conducting abusive conversion practices could face an unlimited fine, a custodial sentence of up to five years, or both.
Bailey insisted the new law would not outlaw the expression of beliefs about LGBT identities, or ban exploratory conversations and questioning about someone’s identity.
She stressed the bill included safeguards for healthcare professionals, therapists and counsellors and a “high threshold” for criminality to protect free speech, so that only acts deemed abusive and likely to create real harm to the person would lead to prosecution.
However, critics say the definition of abuse is drawn too wide and covers “controlling or coercive words or behaviour”, “use of economic pressure” and “use of psychological or emotional pressure” – all of which could be used against parents, teachers and health professionals.
Maya Forstater, the Chief Executive of women’s rights charity Sex Matters, said: “This is a dangerous proposal that will harm the people it purports to protect.”
“Turning ‘seeking to change someone’s transgender identity’ into a crime will leave teachers and others who must recognise biological sex in order to do their job open to accusations of criminal harm,” she said.
Forstater continued: “Parents who are trying their best to help their child through a difficult period will be at risk of police investigation.
“It’s reckless for the Government to push on with this when it’s well known that many young people who adopt a transgender identity as children or teenagers grow up to be gay instead, if they are not affirmed and put on a pathway towards lifelong medicalisation and sterilisation. The real abuse is that this was ever done in the name of medicine.”
Opponents of the bill have long warned that the new law could criminalise doctors, teachers and parents for having conversations with children about whether they really wish to change gender.
The Free Speech Union has launched a petition calling on the Government to scrap the conversion therapy ban.
The campaign group wrote on X: “Any parent who ‘misgenders’ their confused adolescent daughter, or tries to talk them out of embarking on an irreversible medical pathway, could face criminal charges for trying to ‘convert’ them.
“It won’t just be parents and medical professionals who will risk imprisonment for trying to talk gender-confused children out of mutilating themselves.
“Any religious leader who shares the teachings of their faith on issues like homosexuality and gay marriage, could also face prosecution. That’s what this authoritarian Government wants to ban – any dissent from radical progressive orthodoxy when it comes to sex and gender.”
Worth reading in full and sign the FSU petition here.
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Well, that will do the relationship between child and parent a power of good!
are the government willing to pick up the pieces of fractured families whose children have dobbed them in to the thought police?
Exactly which human rights are denied to “trans” (whatever that means) people?
Say a cleric has consecutive appointments with 2 young women. The 1st has recently converted to Islam & decided she wants to undergo some FGM (it happens a lot). If the cleric encourages her he’s liable for up to a 7 yesr sentence under the 2003 FGM Act.
The 2nd young woman had decided she wants to be a boy & to this end wants to undergo surgery. Conversely, if our cleric discourages this he’s liable.
Similar surgery, different motivation, completely mad.
Dress it up anyway you like.
Scientifically you can’t change some things ……..
Like ‘xx’ and ‘xy’……
The threat of criminal charges for teaching your child the difference between fact and fiction is extremely disturbing:
Both morally and ethically.
Have those people in political control really thought this through?🤔
Have they thought it through?
Yes.
This is all being done very deliberately.
Demoralise and destroy.
Trans therapy is gender conversion. If conversion therapy is illegal, why aren’t the people practicing it, those trying to convert/transition young kids being prosecuted? All the parents want is for the leftard perverts to leave their kids alone.
It’s quite extraordinary that our rulers are so ideologically possessed that they think they have a right to decide what spiritual and psychological advice people should receive. Of course, this form of despotism is classic marxo-fascism, and is based on the notion that the state owns the people.
Ideological possession is the modern iteration of satanic possession.
Interesting essay covering how trans identities may take root and develop beginning in a child’s formative years. An excerpt;
”The interpretive leap from nonconformity to transgender identity is rarely made by the child alone. Bandura’s work on observational learning and social reinforcement demonstrates that children adopt and repeat behaviours and self descriptions that are noticed, named, and rewarded by attentive adults. A parent, teacher, or clinician who responds to early nonconformity with the explanatory frame “you might be transgender” supplies a label the child could not have generated independently. The child then learns to perform the role that elicited adult attention and approval, distinct from learning the content of an experience. This sequence inverts the order that affirmative literature typically assumes. Rather than the child arriving at adult attention with the conviction already formed, the conviction is frequently formed in collaboration with the very adults presenting themselves as neutral observers.
The identity is often co-authored by adult interpretation before it is independently held by the child.
Winnicott’s concept of the false self describes a self structure built to secure the approval of an environment rather than expressing the person’s own spontaneous development. A child who senses, correctly or not, that… Read more »
Surely true, but also pretty obvious.
How will we rid ourselves of this generation of activist left wing teachers who are determined to destroy the nation’s children?
“A parent, teacher, or clinician who responds to early nonconformity with the explanatory frame “you might be transgender”” In other words, “you might be ‘special'”. It’s attractive to a small child – most enjoy being the focus of attention.
And this is how I know we are beaten, beaten without throwing a single punch back – the kids. We won’t even fight for the children. And, no, I don’t mean pretend fighting in their theatre we call the ballot box. There are some commenters on here that think the thing to do is to do what you’ve always done before, but to expect a different result (the very definition of insanity). Well, there won’t be a different result. There is only one way to save our country, our culture, and our children, and it’s not with a pencil and a cross. And we might lose, but at least we tried to win.
It has to happen. It can’t not happen.
We’re being pushed too far, and from here, in view of the absolute intransigence of the blob, there’s only one way forward.
At least God is on our side.
If God exists he has forsaken us.
Well, the way I see it, it’s the other way round.
That is true, yes.
So basically if your kid comes home thinking they’re trans put them up for adoption ASAP.
The state of want bring up your child. And you have no say in it
If you suggest to someone that they are better off as they are and as God made them, that is “conversion therapy”, but if you chemically and physically mutilate a healthy child, irreversibly, that’s fine.
Anyone who doesn’t think our enemies are satanic either lacks a functioning brain or they are satanic themselves