Mick Hartley

The bandwagon against the disastrous Conversion Practice Bill rolls on. From the Telegraph:

A new law that risks criminalising parents who question whether their children are trans must be scrapped, MPs, peers and experts have demanded.

Ministers have introduced controversial legislation threatening people with five years in prison for trying to suppress or change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity.

The proposed bill would cover parents, meaning mothers and fathers risk arrest for asking their child whether they really want to change gender.

Campaigners say parents could find themselves in the dock for restricting their child’s online access, or even for refusing to go along with a child who identifies as a cat….

Mrs Badenoch, the Conservative leader, said: “We already have laws to protect people from abuse and discrimination. I looked at this in government, and concluded that the bill was unworkable.

“Parents should be able to talk to their children without worrying that an ordinary conversation will land them in court.

“If the Government thinks there’s a gap in the law, it needs to spell out exactly what it is. The country needs a government with common sense focused on growing the economy, getting people into work and strengthening our national security. That’s not Labour, that’s us.”

Lady Falkner has warned that the Bill could criminalise people for trying to persuade someone that they were not a cat. Some people claim to be “catgender”, a non-binary gender identity that can include people who have delusions of being a feline.

She called on Andy Burnham to “quietly abandon” the Bill, even though it was a Labour manifesto commitment.

Writing for The Telegraph, she said: “It is an unprecedented and unwarranted intrusion into family life that could jail parents for up to five years for ‘crimes’ such as refusing to use a child’s preferred name, refusing to fund gender reassignment or for seeking, with the best of intentions, to dissuade a child from embarking upon a course of medical intervention that leads to permanent sterility.”

Here’s Kishwer Falkner’s piece:

Should a parent be jailed for a good-faith conversation with their child?

Few would say yes. But if the Government’s euphemistically named Conversion Practices Bill is passed, that is precisely the threat that will face not just parents, but teachers, social workers and others seeking to support children who feel distressed about the fact that they are a boy or a girl, or whether they may be gay, lesbian or bisexual.

The term “conversion practices”, sometimes referred to as “conversion therapy”, is a shocking one. It conjures up horrific practices that were once used to attempt to “cure” gay people of same-sex attraction – practices such as electroshock therapy, exorcisms and even rape. Such practices are rightly considered abhorrent. They are already illegal in the UK. The Government would have you believe that the latest draft Bill is simply intended to tidy up any loopholes that might remain in the existing law.

But they’re lying. It’s an ideological bill through and through, designed by trans actiivists to set in law their old discredited “no debate” mantra about pushing children towards medical mutilation.

It is an unprecedented and unwarranted intrusion into family life, that could jail parents for up to five years for “crimes” such as refusing to use a child’s preferred name, refusing to fund gender reassignment or for seeking, with the best of intentions, to dissuade a child from embarking upon a course of medical intervention that leads to permanent sterility.