Sonia Sodha in the Times on the toxic Conversion Practices Bill. We’ve made so much progress recently, pushing back the trans agenda, but if this ridiculous bill is passed it will all have been for nothing. It’s a last-ditch effort by trans activists – but dopey Labour MPs and ministers seem all too keen:
Ministers seem yet to realise this, but the campaign for the Conversion Practices Bill is not motivated by banning something obviously bad, but by trying to force compliance with the controversial belief system that someone’s sex is a matter of their gendered soul, rather than material reality. And this time, gender campaigners want resistance to be on pain of criminal sanction.
The bill is a menace to a pluralistic, democratic society in three ways. First, it seeks to enshrine a meaningless definition of transgender identity into criminal law that is itself non-exhaustive, and would include people who identify as neither male nor female but as animals or inanimate objects. Yes, it really would create a criminal offence encompassing attempts to change someone’s identity from a fox or a spoon.
Second, the bill takes an unbelievably wide approach to what constitutes an abusive conversion practice. It simply says such practices might span a range of behaviours including economic, emotional or psychological pressure. It only has to cause an individual serious alarm or distress to constitute a serious criminal offence.
So the bill risks paving the way for any conduct by person A that denies person B their (undefined) “gender identity”, involves behaviour that person B believes constitutes psychological, emotional or economic pressure, and causes what B regards as “serious alarm or distress” to become the basis for criminal allegations, reports to the police, charging decisions and, ultimately, criminal trials.
There are none of the usual safeguards: no requirement for intent to harm or recklessness on A’s part, and zero statutory defences, such as a parent acting in a child’s best interest. Neither is there a requirement for a pre-existing relationship between A and B.
It’s easy to see how this would be weaponised. Parents have already been reported by child professionals to social services for failing to buy children breast binders or puberty-blocking drugs, or even simply for limiting their access to the internet.
Children could now be coached online to accuse parents of criminal offences for any of these things. Male employees could report employers to the police for refusing to let them use female changing rooms and colleagues for misgendering them.
Though there is a higher threshold to convict medical professionals, it will certainly not prevent campaigners from reporting psychotherapists who take an exploratory approach to gender-questioning children. Criminal allegations and charges can be extremely serious for employees and parents, even if they never result in a conviction.
All of this is made even worse by the bill’s third extraordinary feature: it would allow campaigners to make their own private prosecutions without even the safety net of attorney-general approval. We could conceivably see them use these to target gender-critical charities; if that sounds far-fetched, remember the pro-child-transition charity Mermaids unsuccessfully took the gender-critical LGB Alliance to court to try to strip it of charity status.
This bill undoubtedly represents one of the most dramatic, disproportionate and illiberal incursions into our fundamental democratic rights, including the right to free expression, to private and family life, and to live in a society governed by comprehensible and predictable criminal law.
If Labour parliamentarians are idiotic enough to pass it, they will set up a toxic conflict with discrimination law, women’s rights and the established rights of parents to choose how they bring up their children that would take years and likely many unjust criminal prosecutions to work its way up to our highest courts.
Regrettably, we now seem to live in an age of lightweight MPs who view their jobs as passing laws based on vibes rather than serious analysis. Whether or not Andy Burnham has the sense to junk this dangerous bill will be a serious test of his premiership.
Far from protecting children from forced conversion, this bill actually does the opposite: it gives a green light to medical intervention that will turn potentially gay youngsters into modified Frankenstein simulacra of the oposite sex. And anyone who objects will be open to criminal proceedings. Astonishing.
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