Jo Bartosch – holding her nose, as she’s at pains to make clear – was at the Conservative conference:
I was there, at the invitation of the LGB Alliance to talk about the draft bill to ban conversion practices. What has been proposed is so disingenuous it would’ve made Jonathan Aitken blush. It sounds like a bill to stop mad homophobes from strapping electrodes to the foreheads of gay men. In fact, the Bill does something much worse — it criminalises any dissent from the opinions of trans activism.
The draft Bill’s definition of a conversion practice includes any conduct intended to influence whether someone has, or believes they have, a particular sexual orientation or gender identity. There doesn’t need to be any relationship between the person who considers themselves a victim, or the alleged perpetrator. “Abuse” is left for the courts to decide, with a list that includes economic, psychological and emotional pressure. If the practice causes serious alarm or distress that substantially affects someone’s day-to-day life, the offender faces up to five years in prison.
This means a husband who cross-dresses might demand that his wife spend household money on “gender-affirming” lingerie and insist she accept their marriage as a lesbian relationship. If she refuses, he could claim she is using economic or emotional pressure to make him abandon his transgender identity. Or a parent who refuses to buy a binder, use a new name or let a child spend hours watching trans influencers on TikTok could face the same accusation. In the latter case, the child could be made the subject of a protection order, the family drawn into court proceedings and potentially, all of those in the house who are under 18 could be taken into care.
These are not fanciful readings: the Bill expressly puts economic and emotional pressure within the court’s frame for deciding abuse, and there is no definition of a transgender identity. Already, trans activists are circling on Reddit looking for how best they might use the law to persecute gender critical therapists.
It’s impossible to overstate the dangers of this pernicious bill. We’d be living in fantasy gender land. Any gains that’ve been made against the spread of trans dogma would be wiped away. It’d be open season for anyone who might dare to suggest that people just can’t change sex.
The Bill also puts journalists and organisations on notice. An article aimed at persuading readers that gender identity is not real could be alleged to be conduct intended to make trans-identified readers reject their identity. A request that a man use the men’s loos could be presented as an attempt to make him deny his identity. That does not mean either example automatically meets the criminal threshold. It means the Bill invites complaints, investigations and costly legal battles over speech and ordinary conduct.
Trans activism has already driven a tank through family life and freedom of speech. Just last week the Mail on Sunday reported from a parents’ group where 17 members had been reported either to the police or social services for declining to affirm their children’s cross-sex identities. If passed in its current form, this bill will hand trans activists a cudgel with which to beat their opponents.
And, despite Bartosch’s squeamishness about the Tories, they’re the only serious party opposing this nonsense.
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