Criminalising Christians
by Simon Calvert, The Critic:
Activists demand the most religiously repressive law the UK has seen in centuries.
The idea of inflicting electro-shock treatment on gay people to try to change their sexuality is so repugnant that no rational or decent person would defend it.
That’s what most of us think of when people talk about banning “conversion therapy”. It means outlawing abusive practices that have long since been discredited and almost certainly no longer take place here in the UK
But when some people talk about conversion therapy, they have a vastly more expansive — and oppressive — definition in mind. Jayne Ozanne, the leading activist on this issue, says conversion therapy includes “prayer that focuses on ensuring someone conforms to a ‘norm’”.
When asked, “What does conversion therapy actually look like today in the UK…?” she states:
“…there are many churches on a Sunday, if you went forward and asked for prayer, because you were struggling with same-sex attraction, that people would come alongside and start praying…”
She clarifies that this means prayer that has a “one way directional outcome” that “you have to be heterosexual or chaste”. This all sounds an awful lot like she wants to ban prayer that upholds mainstream Christian teaching on sexual ethics.
And she wants it to be a criminal offence:
“We have to learn to ban conversion therapy so that …we give a very clear message to perpetrators, that this will not be tolerated and they will have a criminal record.”
Just to be absolutely clear about how far she’s prepared to go, here’s what she said when one of her backers, the Bishop of Manchester, said he did not think the ban should go so far as to include “gentle non-coercive prayer”:
Watch: LGB Alliance’s Malcolm Clark tells Talk Radio’s Julia Hartley-Brewer “Gay conversion therapy is rare in the UK, what’s not rare is huge numbers of young people convinced they are trans. This will soar if you criminalise normal exploratory therapy.”
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