Banning ‘trans conversion therapy’ will criminalise parents who want what’s best for their kids.
In Scotland today, conversion therapy is a bit like the Loch Ness monster. Some are obsessed with it, despite there being no evidence for its existence. There are no news stories of electric-shock therapy. No reports of people being sent away to camps to be ‘converted’ out of their sexual orientation. No priests caught keenly ‘praying the gay away’. Conversion therapy simply isn’t a problem in 21st-century Scotland.
Yet still the SNP-led Scottish government is seeking to prohibit what it calls ‘conversion practices’. To this end, the government has this month issued a consultation detailing its proposals for new legislation and criminal penalties. Equalities minister Emma Roddick said last week that conversion practices ‘have absolutely no place in Scotland’.
It should be clear that what is driving this ban is not the nonexistent problem of gay conversion therapy. Instead, it is being fuelled by the SNP’s embrace of gender ideology. That’s why the real focus of this legislation is a ban on so-called trans conversion therapy or, as the consultation has it, ‘conversion practices related to gender identity’.