UK in U-turn on gay conversion therapy
LONDON - The UK government vowed Friday to persevere with plans to ban “gay conversion therapy”, after an outcry over reports that it intended to scrap the legislation.
The hurried U-turn came after the reports late Thursday provoked a backlash including from MPs in the ruling Conservative party. “There is an urgent need to rationalise our legislative programme,” an internal government document leaked to ITV News said, blaming a cost-of-living crisis in Britain and the war in Ukraine.
But within hours, Prime Minister Boris Johnson had reversed course and promised to implement a version of the draft law.
“The government has a proud record on LGBT rights, and the prime minister is committed to bringing forward legislation to ban conversion therapy,” a government spokesperson said.
“The content, scope and timing of the proposed bill will be confirmed in due course.” Campaigners say the purported therapy - mainly practised in religious settings, and designed to change sexual orientation - can create life-long psychological harm.
Butonegovernmentsource said the legislation, first promised in 2018, would now cover “only gay conversion therapy, not trans(gender)”
The government reportedly wants to limit any ban so that doctors can counsel children who believe they are suffering from gender dysphoria. The stance failed to quell the growing outcry
“I’m pleased the Prime Minister has listened to our colleagues,” Conservative MP Alicia Kearns wrote on Twitter.
“However we cannot exclude our trans friends - why should quacks and charlatans be allowed to continue to cause lifelong harm to them?
The developments come in the same week Tory lawmaker Jamie Wallis became the first British MP to openly declare they were transgender,
prompting messages of support from Johnson and others. A government bill presented in October proposed a jail term of up to five years for those who carry out conversion therapies on minors. But it did not penalise “treatment” of adults when they were deemed to have freely consented.
A UK government survey in 2017 indicated that five percent of LGBTQ people have been offered conversion therapy and two percent have undergone it.
The UK’s main associations of psychologists and psychiatrists outlawed conversion therapies in 2015, calling them “unethical and potentially harmful”. -Nampa/AFP