Why Labour is not going to back down on its conversion therapy ban

Orthodox Christians should expect no compromise from the Labour government on its planned conversion therapy ban or on some other aspect of its LGBT agenda.

The Christian Institute has said that the U-turns on conversion therapy bans in Scotland, Ireland and Sweden show that it is feasible to influence politicians of the issues with such proposals. The CI had threatened to hunt a judicial review into the Scottish government’s “deeply repressive” plans.

But unfortunately the explanation why the Westminster government led by Sir Keir Starmer, wielding an enormous parliamentary majority, is not going to back down on outlawing conversion therapy, including a full trans-inclusive ban, is due to its rigid ideological commitments.

In an article for The Daily Mail in 2022, Peter Hitchens, a former Marxist, now an Anglican Christian, argued that Starmer’s “revolutionary past” gives the misinform the notion that he’s a moderate socialist. 

Hitchens wrote two years before Starmer led the Labour Party to victory after 14 years out of power in July’s General Election: “Well, long, way back within the sunny Sixties, I used to be myself a revolutionary Marxist, out on the harmful fringe of politics. Later, I used to be mixed up within the strange wild world of London’s Labour Party …There I learned the codes and symbols of the Left, which most journalists have no idea.

“That ignorance is certainly one of the various explanation why Sir Keir Starmer has risen to the highest of the Labour Party without anyone really noticing what he’s. You are about to search out out. But why don’t already?”

Hitchens showed that, despite his image as a Labour moderate, Starmer has never disowned his revolutionary past. In an interview for the left-wing New Statesman magazine in 2020, he was asked about his radicalism within the Eighties, when he was often known as ‘red-green’.

“Starmer’s replies were anything but embarrassed,” Hitchens wrote. “The ‘red-green’ label combines social radicalism and identity politics with green zealotry. It explains Sir Keir’s studied hesitancy when asked about whether a girl can have a penis.”

Starmer couldn’t have been clearer about his commitment to LGBT ideology when he said: “The big issue we were grappling with then (within the Eighties) was how the Labour Party, or the Left generally, certain together the broader movement and its strands of equality — feminist politics, green politics, LGBT — which I assumed was incredibly exciting, incredibly vital.”

Hitchens concluded: “The British public have been given little reason to doubt the official story that Sir Keir is a decent ‘moderate’ who will do nothing radical. The Tory Party think they will risk letting him into Downing Street.

“Well, you simply wait.”

The neo-Marxist ideology driving Starmer’s government can also be the explanation why Christians shouldn’t expect any real reversal of Labour’s transgender agenda, despite the Cass Review in April into NHS treatment for kids and young individuals with gender dysphoria. 

The review by Dr Hillary Cass warned of the risks of doctors prescribing puberty blockers for kids: “The rationale for early puberty suppression stays unclear, with weak evidence regarding the impact on gender dysphoria, mental or psychosocial health. The effect on cognitive and psychosexual development stays unknown.”

But the Cass Review has not stopped NHS England from continuing to roll out recent “specialist gender centres for kids and young people”. In August, it announced:

“NHS England will roll out as much as six recent specialist regional centres by 2026 to supply tailored gender services for kids and young people, based on recommendations within the Cass Review.”

Though NHS England announced in March, just before the Cass Review was published, that doctors would stop “routinely” supplying puberty blockers to children, they usually are not banned from prescribing them to under-18s as a part of “clinical research” at gender centres.

In August, Labour’s Health and Social Care Secretary Wes Streeting expressed his commitment to the transgender agenda: “As well as rolling out recent services, NHS England is organising a clinical trial to determine the evidence on puberty blockers, because kid’s healthcare should all the time be led by evidence.

“I need trans people in our country to feel protected, accepted, and capable of live with freedom and dignity.”

Pro-family campaign group CitizenGo has warned: “The Labour government is planning to experiment on vulnerable children. In January, the NHS will start puberty blockers clinical trials that may damage the health of 1000’s of kids.

“We cannot let Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting push their harmful agenda. Using vulnerable children to check and legitimise these drugs is disgraceful.”

CitizenGo has launched a petition against the federal government’s plans. But the unlucky reality is that Labour’s unassailable majority within the House of Commons means there may be nothing CitizenGo or some other campaign group can do to stop the federal government from further entrenching LGBT ideology and practices.

Julian Mann is a former Church of England vicar, now an evangelical journalist based in Lancashire.