THE Bishops of Bristol and Guildford have given qualified support to a Bill banning conversion therapy, telling the House of Lords that coercive practices needs to be banned but that any law must be rigorously drafted so as to not inadvertently infringe civil liberties.
The Bill being debated on Friday was a Private Member’s Bill sponsored by the Liberal Democrat peer Baroness Burt of Solihull. The promise of a government-backed Bill on conversion therapy has yet to materialise.
During Friday’s debate, Baroness Burran, a junior minister sitting within the House of Lords, said that it remained the Government’s intention to publish a draft Bill for scrutiny.
Since the summer, there have been reports that a promised ban was off the table (News, 19 September 2023), rumours that it was back on (News, 20 October 2023), and anger when, ultimately, it was not recommend within the King’s Speech (News, 7 November 2023).
Putting forward her Bill, Baroness Burt said that the primary challenge was to define “conversion therapy”, which is “not therapy in any respect”.
“Conversion therapy is any practice with the predetermined purpose of fixing or suppressing an individual’s expression of their sexual orientation or gender identity. These practices are based on the assumption that there’s a right strategy to behave and live your life,” she said.
She outlined 4 arguments made against adopting a ban on conversion therapy: that it infringes free speech; that objections to “LGBT practices” on religious grounds will probably be criminalised; that it can limit the work of mental-health professionals working with people questioning their sexuality or gender; and that it can prevent parents from discussing problems with sexuality and gender with their children.
Baroness Burt said that she didn’t seek to criminalise “open conversations”, only those practices with “a predetermined goal to vary that person”. She referred to a gathering with the Bishop of London, the Rt Revd Sarah Mullally, wherein Bishop Mullally reportedly said that it was necessary to place the “pastoral needs of the person first”.
On Wednesday, the Church of England published a briefing paper on conversion therapy, reflecting the Church’s response to a government consultation on banning such practices.
The Bishop of Bristol, the Rt Revd Vivienne Faull, and the Bishop of Guildford, the Rt Revd Andrew Watson, spoke in Friday’s debate.
Bishop Faull recounted “horrific practices” which she had encountered in her ministry, including “physical punishment, counselling and prayer techniques akin to interrogation, [and] supposedly ‘curative’ rape” — all practices which needs to be outlawed, she said, and the victims of which “needs to be a lot better supported”.
She said that “the cultures which pervade many faith communities render those exploring their identity very vulnerable indeed to abuse,” and that she was “relieved that the Church of England is eventually owning its homophobia and making some moves to vary its culture and practice”, while expressing her wish that change could be “much faster and further”.
Bishop Faull also, nonetheless, expressed concern that groups who encourage LGBTQ Christians to live celibate lives, and seek to assist them accomplish that, could be liable to legal motion if a law banning conversion therapy isn’t rigorously phrased.
She referred to he example of Living Out, a Christian organisation with headquarters in Bristol, which, she said, “supports LGBTQ adults who, exercising agency and autonomy and inspired by their interpretation of Christian faith, seek counselling to support celibate lives or marry someone of the alternative sex”.
Such groups needed a “protected space”, she said, and the definition of conversion therapy needed to be refined to be able to “protect from harm while it continues to preserve our current liberties”.
Bishop Watson made an analogous point regarding the necessity for precision in defining the practices that needs to be prohibited.
“The use of coercion to hunt to change the sexuality or gender identity of one other person, whether medical, psychological, spiritual, or otherwise, is clearly an abhorrent abuse of power,” he said, but he warned against “promoting a world wherein all right-minded individuals are expected to behave and even think alike — even in contested areas resembling gender identity or the usually complex world of bisexuality”.
He offered an example from his experience in parish ministry: a bisexual man got here to him who was married to a lady, and wanted the Bishop to hope that he might “resist the temptation of cheating on his wife”.
Such prayers might fall under the ambit of conversion therapy, in keeping with the present wording of the Bill, he suggested, as they could be considered being intended to “suppress an individual’s expression of sexual orientation”.
Any Bill subsequently needed to be “rigorously written to be certain that basic freedoms are usually not unwittingly undermined in the method”, he concluded.
After 4 hours of debate, wherein many similar concerns in regards to the wording of the Bill were raised, Baroness Burt conceded the the Bill was “not well drafted. It was intentionally general, however it now needs a Committee Stage to place it right.”
