To understand the argument over conversion therapy, at least from the government’s perspective, you need to think about two children. One is growing up in a household with deeply traditional views on sexuality. Another is a teenager whose parents are far more tolerant of LGBT rights. When the first child starts to have unfamiliar feelings about the same sex, they are dragged before a pastor or another authority figure, who forces them to crush those feelings. When the second child starts to feel uncomfortable about their gender identity, their parents are supportive — but urge them to wait until they are an adult before making any irreversible medical interventions.
There’s another case to be added.
I don’t know.
This is true of any “conversion therapy” ban, restriction, outlawing. It’s true of Teh Gay, trans, whatever.
Some people do not know. Some people are unhappy with what they do know, or think they do. Therapy includes being able to talk through, with someone who does know, the implications of any decision. So, for example, some might agree that they are trans. Also that they desire to have their own biological children. This is something of a conflict – certainly it is where full surgery might be concerned. Therapy – if it were to be allowed – would include the conversation about which is the more important? That live life fully as the desired gender? Or that own biological children?
Now, a ban on conversion therapy – if Stonewall is allowed to define what that is – will have it made illegal to even raise the question of biological children. Because that will be trying to convince people not to be full on trans.
Or with Teh Gays. It’s possible to be both same sex attracted and also a devout Catholic. Which means that sure, one is as God made one – but also that the same sex attraction should never be acted out. Juggling those two would also be therapy. And if anyone ever said that the immortal soul (no, we must look at it from the viewpoint of the devout Catholic here) takes precedence then that would be illegal under a full ban on “conversion therapy”.
To ban raping someone to make them appreciate the joys of heterosexual sex is entirely fine. To ban the therapy that aids people in making sense of their lives is insane. But that is what a ban on conversion therapy would be, that second, not the first.
’ To ban raping someone to make them appreciate the joys of heterosexual sex is entirely fine.’
Also unnecessary as rape is already illegal.
Poppycock is now a “thing”.
Why aren’t people content with being able to make their own decisions about their own lives? Why do some wish to deny access to goods / services / lifestyles / whatever, that some other people may wish to avail themselves of?
Because they are mad.
Why have we never treated people with eating disorders this way…?
They also have mental health issues but we send them to a psychiatrist – we don’t tell people with Anorexia they are a bit chubby and should cut down on the calories… Or force everybody to tell them they are tubbies.
+1000% Addolff!!!!
What Christians need to do is admit that reincarnation happens (See Deuteronomy chapter 5, verses 1 to 5- what else could Moses have meant?), and that the soul chose the present body, including its’ gender, so people should conform to body-type for this life, and choose again next time.
In a smaller way, this applies to a lot of advice doled out to children. Gender advice is the most extreme; but career advice can be terrible too. “Go ahead, follow your dream of being a writer and incur £50k in debt for that degree in Creative Writing from Luton Polytech. Prove your old English teacher wrong!”
Beneath all the shouting and vitriol is a simple truth: the whole country supports trans rights
I support their right to remain silent, insha’Allah.
When the first child starts to have unfamiliar feelings about the same sex, they are dragged before a pastor or another authority figure, who forces them to crush those feelings.
This is your brain on Netflix. Where are these based pastors, who cast out genderdemons in Jesus’s name?
When the second child starts to feel uncomfortable about their gender identity, their parents are supportive — but urge them to wait until they are an adult before making any irreversible medical interventions.
Being ‘supportive’ of mental illness in your own child doesn’t make you a good person.
It rapidly became clear to No 10 that any retreat from a ban would provoke a mutiny.
Ladies, gentlemen and people who are unsure, the Conservative Party!
………a simple truth: the whole country supports trans rights
Not your grandfathers Times article heading,
the actual problem is politicians interfering where they shouldn’t. Something about the tail wagging the dog!
@TMB: actually, that polling may be correct. Note, however, that the questions ‘should have the right to force everyone else to agree that you’re the gender you chose on pain of imprisonment’ and ‘should have the right to compete in sports event as your chosen gender’ don’t appear to have been asked.
Because I suspect the answers wouldn’t be to the pollsters’ liking, and they know it.
Julia – Or “should mentally ill perverts be allowed to use the police to harass people who disagree with them online?”
But nota Benny what provoked talk of a “mutiny” among the assorted fraudsters, predators, compulsive liars, muppets, clowns, retards and habitual masturbators of the Conservative Party: it wasn’t electricity prices soaring by 75%, or rampant food price inflation, or the ongoing invasion via dinghy, or Rotherham police investigating itself and finding all those coppers were right to feed children to Moslem paedophile gangs.
No, what made them furious was the suggestion that the government might not criminalise people who discourage children from irreversible sterility and mutilation.
I tell you most solemnly: lions.
Polling on trans rights
Who did they ask?
The banners’ case is a complete misrepresentation of reality. The common case would result in ordinary church people being criminalised – someone who is not sure about which way they stand comes for voluntary counselling or prayer. Or someone who years previously had an experimental homosexual experience and finds themselves experiencing unwanted homosexual attraction now spoiling their marriage wants it dealt with and consigned to the past. The church person who doesn’t otherwise break the law and pays their taxes is not potentially a criminal. This is wrong and needs to be opposed, in the name of religious freedom – for the person seeking help and the one providing it.
*not should read “now”!
There, fixed it for the original author.
Conversion therapy *into* LGBT to be mandatory, conversion out to be forbidden.
Isn’t there a pretty glaring Motte & Bailey going on here? The first example is a young person experiencing unfamiliar feelings about the same sex, while the second is uncomfortable about their gender identity.
If my child comes out to me as gay, that’s a much different proposition than if they come to me to admit that they think they are “trapped in the wrong body.” For one thing, being gay doesn’t require irreversible surgical intervention, and likely a lifetime of hormone therapy. It’s also possible to be gay and have a happy, fulfilled life; I’m not sure that is possible as a transsexual – we certainly don’t see many (recent) examples of it. I suppose Wendy Carlos and Jan Morris did alright.
“When the second child starts to feel uncomfortable about their gender identity, their parents are supportive — but urge them to wait until they are an adult before making any irreversible medical interventions.”
At which point the parents are vilified by the medical establishment and taken to court over their horrible transphobic views. If your not a cheerleader urging on your child you are considered part of the problem, questioning anything is transphobic.
Try questioning if puberty blockers aren’t fully reversible and have no side effects or potential long term issues and see where you get.
Bring up rapid onset transgenderism (ROT) and you’ll be beyond the pale
The proffered scenarios are bait and switch.
1: child thinks they’re gay in religious household….
2: child doesn’t like their body in non-religious household….
Hold on, what happened to the comparison with a GAY child in the non-religious household?
@Julia, You’re correct and it’s all in the framing of the questions. The “live and let live” attitude used to be enshrined in the British character and was one of its strengths. My principal quibble was that folk are supposedly happy for this stuff to be force-fed to them and for these unfortunates: to choose their name, their clothing and their pronouns.
In a country in which policemen wear nail varnish to burnish their gay credentials and police horses need to be trained in diversity, inclusion and equinity, why blanche at men choosing female first names and wearing women’s clothes? But most of us would have difficulty adapting our language to suit their aberrations and choices of pronouns that defy the rules of grammar which exist, after all, to promote clarity of expression and thinking.
I see Steve’s Lions and solemnly raise him flamethrowers.
Adults doing silly things to their body… Natch.. Point of being “Adult”..
Kids/Teens wanting to do silly things to their body… There’s Rules about that..
Adults promoting doing silly things to their body bypassing the Parents… There used to be rules about that.. Pretty damn strict ones..
Lions and flamethrowers don’t even begin to cut it.
* Adults promoting kids doing… *curses*
Darren Grimes on GBNews spoke of his “coversion therapy” and how it helped him realise he was gay not trans
Today he’d be railroaded down path of puberty blockers and castration
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JGo508zfo2I
I’d rather need therapy later in life to get over intolerant parents, than need therapy to get over misdiagnosed childhood transgenderism AND corrective surgery/hormone treatment. One is a tad more difficult to deal with than the other.