Members of Parliament have warned that each parents and pastors stand to be criminalised if laws to ban so-called conversion therapy is passed into law.
The Conversion Therapy Prohibition (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity) Bill, brought by Baroness Burt of Solihull, had its second reading within the House of Lords on Friday.
Peers warned that the present draft of the bill is just too broad and can undermine free speech, religious freedom and parental rights.
Lord Morrow, chairman of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), said the bill because it currently stands would damage legitimate free speech and personal family life.
“I don’t think the general public would forgive us if we passed a law which exposed parents to large fines just because they are not looking for their kids to get caught up within the social contagion that undoubtedly exists around trans issues, and the prospect of church ministers being fined for harmlessly upholding their beliefs inside their churches is just not one which any democrat, Liberal or otherwise, should welcome,” he said.
He also disagreed with claims that the bill was not about stopping harm, abuse or coercion, but about targeting opinions.
“None of those words appears within the Bill. It is about punishing what some people regard as incorrect opinions, and that is just not the form of law any of us needs to be willing to go together with,” he said.
The Bishop of Bristol, Vivienne Faull, said she was not convinced that the present text and its “lack of agreed definition” would give a “protected space” to Christians and others who need to seek counselling to assist them live celibate lives or marry someone of the alternative sex.
She added that any definition in search of to guard from harm must also proceed “to preserve our current liberties”.
Lord Strathcarron warned that silent free speech in the shape of silent prayers would also fall under the proposed ban, and that each one religious leaders can be vulnerable to prosecution.
“Thus, we have now a recent crime: prayer crime,” he said.
“Ban Conversion Therapy’s founders say that a ban must cover ‘gentle, non-coercive prayer’, before occurring to verify that prayer has a ‘pernicious power’, after which linking prayer and corrective rape. Humanists UK says that the ban must cover repentances, wilfully ignoring that repentance is a core belief of the Christian faith.
“As it’s drafted, will our own right reverend Prelates also face prosecution, if, for instance, at Sunday school they were to read from any of St Paul’s Epistles to the Romans, Galatians or Corinthians or from the Hebrews or the Epistle of James?”
He said the Bill would criminalise parents simply for discussing gender issues with their children and questioned why the present wording “assumes there is simply harmful intent” when parents have only their child’s best interests at heart.
“Surely it can’t be right, as a matter of principle, that free speech becomes criminalised when there isn’t a harm intended, let alone caused,” he said.
“How are these private family conversations discovered anyway? It is possibly because a toddler tells a classmate or teacher.
“What then of the teacher? Is she or he committing against the law by not reporting the parents to the police? If he or she does report the parents to the police and the police arrest the parents—who now have a criminal record—what does that do to future family relationships?”
Baroness Fox agreed that religious freedom is threatened by the Bill and questioned whether Christians can be free to hope the Lord’s Prayer under the proposed ban.
She said, “Every day, on this Chamber, noble Lords recite the Lord’s prayer: ‘Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.’
“With this in mind, take the scenario of a young Christian who desires to be delivered from evil and to follow the Church’s teaching, and so asks the vicar to hope to assist him avoid sexual temptation.
“Surely the Bill will turn that priest right into a criminal, or could do; in any case, the Bill makes no distinction between consensual and non-consensual behaviour.
“What is at stake here should concern atheists, agnostics and everybody, since the Bill jeopardises fundamental principles of secular democracy.”
Several peers identified that abusive practices are already covered by existing laws.
Lord Farmer said, “When we transcend the prevailing law, we in a short time infringe free speech and spiritual liberty.
“I even have yet to listen to a transparent articulation of the gap within the law that the Bill intends to fill. Hence, I’m left wondering to what extent it is required in any respect. I don’t consider I’m alone in that.”
He urged Parliament to not go down the identical route because the state of Victoria in Australia where official guidance on its conversion therapy ban only allows prayers that affirm an individual’s sexuality or gender identity.
“Victoria’s approach is lauded by those calling for this Bill, yet its law and official guidance are extraordinarily intolerant,” he said.
These fears were shared by Baroness Foster who said that the implications free of charge speech, freedom of faith and parenting are “quite chilling”.
She said there was a risk that the Bill would “create a recent orthodoxy” and a “recent category of opinions that must not be uttered, at the danger of criminal conviction”.
“One of the central tenets of Christianity is the necessity to repent. That is universal; it applies to us all. Is that now going to be challenged or prone to be illegal, because the Victoria commission said? I find that very chilling indeed,” she said.
