Stuart

There are so many reasons why the draft Conversion Practices Bill must never become law. @Jebadoo2 and @HJoyceGender explained many of them in parliament yesterday. 1. It places parents who are putting their child’s interests first in real danger of prosecution. If a girl is so furious and distressed by her parents’ refusal to buy binders or testosterone that she feels their behaviour is abusive and is ruining her life, the parents could have their child taken from them and/or be prosecuted. 2. It is an attack on gay and lesbian teens, who are most likely (along with those on the autism spectrum) to be persuaded by peers or online influencers that they need to change their bodies. That is the actual gay conversion therapy that is going on right now. This Bill would make it worse. 3. It would allow activist individuals and organizations to bring private prosecutions against gender-critical individual organizations. LGB Alliance has already had to defend its existence in court once. This Bill would make all gender-critical organizations vulnerable to vexatious litigation. This would not only be a gross infringement of freedom of expression but would likely be exacerbated by gagging orders in the many months before such malicious prosecutions come to court. 4. The Bill seeks to introduce into law the concept of “gender identity” — a subjective feeling that is not defined and that has been shown to be subject to frequent change. At present “transgender identity” only appears in the Sentencing Act as an aggravating factor in the case of an existing offence. This draft Bill is entirely different. It is transparently a renewed attempt to bring “gender self-ID” into law, earlier attempts having failed. 5. It would introduce a chilling effect into therapy, discouraging therapists from taking on teens with gender-related issues for fear of being falsely accused of “conversion therapy.” This has already happened to the well-known psychiatrist Az Hakeem, who has immense experience with these patients but has now decided with regret that he can no longer see them. Experiences with jurisdictions such as Victoria, Australia, which have such bills, demonstrate this chilling effect. 6. As a result of the chilling effect mentioned above, the Bill would effectively mandate so-called “gender-affirming care” — an unconscionable restriction on medical practitioners seeking to act in their patients’ best interests. 7. The provisions of the Bill interfere with freedom of expression and family life in ways that are likely to be judged incompatible with the European Convention on Human Rights and the Human Rights Act. 8. Detransitioners have vital information to convey on why this Bill would cause grave harm. So far, their lived experience has been ignored. I am sure I have not listed all the problems with this Bill here. It was obvious yesterday, listening to the Bill’s supporters, that it was shoddily drafted without any thought of the many damaging consequences it would have. The Bill’s supporters are ideologues who are intent on getting gender identity into legislation in any way they can. There is nothing good about this Bill. Please urge your MP to reject it.