by Kathleen Stock, UnHerd
Today’s asexual could be tomorrow’s lothario
Like Aristotle, our Labour overlords take a firm line on the question of essence versus accident in the human soul. A desire to stuff your face with cake is fixable with injections. Ardent petrolheads can be bribed into buying electric cars. Reform voters can be shamed out of their political attraction to Nigel Farage. But a sexual orientation or gender identity is for life.
Such is the unstated implication of the Conversion Practices draft bill, published last week. Two supposedly core, immutable elements of the human person are identified, for which corrective drugs, bribes, or shaming are all presumed diabolical — though these are completely fine to use for more flexible attitudes elsewhere. To try to alter the pattern of someone’s sexual desires, by exerting psychological or emotional pressure or worse, risks becoming a “conversion practice”. The same goes for trying to dissuade someone from a heartfelt profession of gender identity. Past a certain threshold, the police and courts must get involved.
This bill is already receiving much hostile comment, both for its performative aspect — violent and abusive acts are already punishable — and its absurd overreach into understandably heated family discussions about life-changing hormones and surgery. Accompanying notes to the draft try to make a virtue of the chillingly authoritarian focus upon “verbal or non-violent physical acts”. Offences include practices causing “serious alarm and distress” and “serious harm to mental health”, both of which are too vaguely specified to protect loving parents from police investigation for speaking their mind. The wording is also unlikely to induce religious clergy to express honest and well-meant thoughts about the wisdom of homosexuality or medical transition. Thankfully, at least, there is a carveout for healthcare professionals, but it remains unclear why conversations perfectly acceptable in the doctor’s surgery or therapy space must be harmful at home or in church.