Once conversion therapy is criminalised, the pulpit will be next
by Julian Mann, Christian Today:
The government clearly thinks banning ‘gay conversion therapy’ is a vote winner and at present they may be right.
Asked by a pollster in the street if they think ‘conversion therapy’ should be banned, most British people would agree because they would associate it with coercive abuse. The image of a 1950s gay man strapped to a chair and being given electric shocks by a man in a white coat would tend to spring to mind.
But public perceptions may change if opponents of the ban make a persuasive case that, in a democratic country, adult individuals who choose responsible professional counselling to help them reorient their unwanted same-sex attraction should be free to do so.
In that case, the government may not find this the vote-winner they think it is. Besides, if raging inflation hits the UK in the economic fall-out from the lockdown, voters’ minds will be a long way from the culture war.
This issue, however, is much more significant for British Christianity than for secular society. In British churches, the issue presents the clear dividing line between Christians who want to uphold the traditional, biblical ethic that the expression of sexual love should be confined to heterosexual marriage, and prominent church leaders who want to ditch it.
[…] What about other sorts of counselling that can harm people, such as advising them to divorce their spouse or to have an abortion or to have a sex change? Criminalising that kind of counselling does not seem to be on the government’s agenda. Why not? Because abortion, divorce, and ‘gender transition’ are protected practices according to politically correct doctrine.
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