By David Virtue, Virtueonline.
Orthodox Christians opposed to the Labour Government’s Conversion Practices Bill should expect no support from the 26 Church of England bishops who sit in the House of Lords.
The Bishop of Manchester, David Walker, a prominent supporter of the LGBT agenda in Parliament, has fired a warning shot across the bows of any fellow bishop feeling lukewarm about the draft Bill, which the government published on June 25. He welcomed what he called the government’s long overdue move to protect a community he alleges has suffered physical and psychological abuse. Any episcopal doubter will now think twice before saying so out loud.
VOL believes this is wrong-headed policy. It violates free speech, and it violates the sincere, voluntary wish of many men and women to be free of unwanted same-sex attraction.
Many now believe “conversion therapy” has been defined so broadly as to be rendered meaningless. In its place, a new and more precise term has emerged: SAFE-T — Sexual Attraction Fluidity Exploration in Therapy. Readers can find more here: https://learning.iftcc.org/sexual-attraction-fluidity-exploration-in-therapy-safe-t/
The numbers driving this debate come from the Williams Institute at UCLA, which remains the most-cited source on the subject. Its research puts the figure at roughly 698,000 LGBT adults in the U.S. who have received conversion therapy at some point in their lives, about half of them as adolescents. A companion estimate found 20,000 youths would undergo it from a licensed professional, and 57,000 from a religious or spiritual advisor, in states without a ban. The Institute has continued to press those numbers — as recently as October 2025, in an amicus brief filed in Chiles v. Salazar, the case challenging Colorado’s ban on licensed counselors providing conversion therapy to minors.
That case has since been decided — and decisively. On March 31, 2026, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 8–1 in favor of Kaley Chiles, the Colorado counselor who challenged her state’s ban. Writing for the Court, Justice Gorsuch held that a law restricting what a licensed therapist may say to a client based on the viewpoint of that speech triggers strict scrutiny under the First Amendment — the most demanding standard in constitutional law. Even Justices Sotomayor and Kagan, no conservatives, joined the majority. Only Justice Jackson dissented. Whatever one makes of the underlying clinical debate, the nation’s highest court has now said plainly that talk therapy is speech, and the government does not get to outlaw one side of a conversation just because it dislikes where that conversation might lead.