Mick Hartley

A new report from Sex Matters looks at the draft Conversion Practices Bill based on conversations with 30 mental-health professionals. The bill would, they argue, drive away ethical exploratory therapists, expose parents to criminal sanctions for talking honestly to their children, steer young people who would otherwise grow up lesbian or gay towards medical transition, and deprive vulnerable patients of high-quality mental-health support. It will do most harm to the gay and gender-questioning people it’s supposed to protect.

It would, in other words, be an absolute disaster, and an astonishing turning-back-the-clock to the worst excesses of gender ideology – just when we thought we were leaving it all behind and returning to sanity.

The interviewees expressed fundamental concerns with the bill.

• It is based on a misconception of therapy. Good practice requires exploration and challenge, which would not be possible if the bill as drafted becomes law. Its healthcare exceptions offer little protection.
• Key terms are vague. “Transgender identity” and the threshold of falling “far below” expected standards are subjective and undefined. It would place an unevidenced belief system into law when healthcare services should be grounded in evidence. Ethical, evidence-based therapists would risk accusations of conversion practices. 
• Conversion practices, as commonly understood, are already unlawful. Interviewees reported little to no evidence of such practice in the mental-health professions. The bill would instead criminalise conversation, exploration and debate.
• Skilled professionals would leave the field. Almost half the UK interviewees said they would stop, or consider stopping, working in this area if the bill passed for fear of unfounded complaints, prosecutions and orders. This would widen an existing gap in care for a vulnerable, already under-served group. 
• Complex needs would go unaddressed. Many young trans-identifying people present with trauma, autism, anxiety or difficult family backgrounds, requiring in-depth, honest support. Restricting the therapies available to them through this bill would increase the number of people undergoing lifelong medicalisation and associated physical harms. It would also make it significantly harder for detransitioners to access high-quality, evidence-based therapy.
• Gender-distressed children and their families would be harmed. The bill treats children as adults (a safeguarding risk) and contains no exemption for parents. It would risk identity foreclosure in minors who adopt a trans identity, creating significant risks for their future well-being. It would encourage safeguarding failures across education, healthcare and social work. Interviewees said it would erode parental authority and family cohesion, and might even lead to children being separated from their parents. 
• People who are (or who would otherwise grow up to be) lesbian or gay would be steered towards medical transition by the bill’s embedding of an affirmative approach.
• The government risks developing a reputation for counterproductive, performative politics: for hindering freedom of speech and belief, prioritising political expediency over evidence-based medicine, permitting state intrusion into family life, increasing NHS waiting times for gender services, worsening an existing medical scandal and extending already substantial court backlogs. 
• Financial costs would be significant. They would arise from courts and other legal avenues, greater numbers of people seeking gender-related medical treatment in the NHS, and increased numbers of detransitioners seeking eventual financial compensation for medical harms.  

It’s all based on the fantasy of “gender identity”. And, as has been said again and again, it does exactly the opposite of what it’s supposed to do: the bill itself is the real forced conversion therapy, pushing gay children towards becoming medically mutilated simulacra of the opposite sex in the name of a mass social delusion. It’s simply obscene.

But yes, read it all.