Northern Ireland’s proposed conversion therapy ban prone to goal atypical parents and Christians

Freedom of Information requests by The Christian Institute (CI) have revealed that complaints against medical practitioners or organisations for practising so-called ‘conversion therapy’ in Northern Ireland are so rare that the true impact of a proposed ban could be to focus on atypical parents and Christians for actions so simple as praying, studying the Bible, and even just having a conversation.

The CI asked Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Trust and the Belfast Trust what number of complaints they’d received “against a medical practitioner, practice, trust or other body, on the grounds of ‘conversion therapy’ or ‘conversion practice’”.

The Belfast Trust reported that there had been not more than five such cases, while the Northern Ireland Trust had no cases in any respect.

Under the proposed plan to ban “conversion therapy”, parents and church leaders could potentially face unlimited fines and as much as seven years in prison for attempting to persuade their children to desert an LGBTQ identity. The “anti-conversion therapy ban” also prevents parents from attempting to persuade their children to not convert to a special gender.

A government-funded report, which had the support of LGBTQ lobby groups, recently confirmed that acts like prayer, Bible studies and teaching, could all be construed as conversion practices.

James Kennedy, NI Policy Officer for the Institute, said that the FOI requests showed that there’s simply no need for laws on the problem because the sort of “pseudo-medical interventions” that folks are concerned about “stopped generations ago”.

Kennedy suggested that moderately than trying to unravel a real medical problem, the law appears to be an try to suppress Christians and people critical of LGBTQ ideology.

“The truth is that a recent law on conversion therapy would infringe on the freedoms of atypical, innocent individuals who reject LGBTQ+ ideology,” he said.

“It would impact especially Christians who seek to uphold biblical teaching on marriage and gender, and fogeys who caution a baby against gender transition.”