Miriam Cates

I’d say that’s a fair point. Faith generally involves an attempt to ‘live better’- continuous conversion into a more spiritual, more discerning person.

What ‘better’ looks like will vary.

Mature religions don’t try and change other people, we try and change ourselves. That’s my impression anyway.

I work with religious people who have a range of views from total acceptance of same sex relationships in every possible way, to preferring same sex attracted people to be celibate, to full reproductive freedom for women, to protection of the unborn child. There are some hangers on who haven’t got over women priests in the CofE.

The ones I don’t agree with aren’t nasty people.

“This ‘conversation therapy’ thing in the UK has about as much credibility as ‘period poverty’. It’s just an entryist’s tool.”

We have to be a bit careful with this one. There will be sub cultures that abuse children under the guise of expelling demons. Victoria Climbier for example. We mustn’t say ‘it never happens’ because there will be some extreme sects and cultures that will be abusive.

We can’t say it never happens, in the same way we don’t say ‘there is no slavery here’.

Safeguarding spectacularly fails when we think we are above reproach. I am well aware of the massive work on safeguarding underway throughout the CofE yet abusive bastards still manage to groom people into blindness.

I was expecting to read of some rather stronger evidence than this.

Contributors told the report authors that while gay members of the church would be welcomed, there was a “firm belief” that these individuals would “eventually understand the need to be transformed to live in accordance with biblical revelation and orthodox church teachings”.

Isn't this quite standard for many traditional Christians? Including religious immigrants to Britain (ie Catholic Poles and West Africans), the kind of demographic that Labour assumes it owns?

I'm an atheist so find religion puzzling generally, but isn't all prayer a sort of conversion therapy?

Church conferences can have multiple sessions running concurrently. You can be in a discussion about women in leadership in one room, while next door there’s a session about supporting people with same sex attraction.

You would have no way of knowing whether the latter ‘support’ session involved prayer that people are released from their feelings of guilt and distress- meaning praying their sexuality changes- or whether the prayer is about helping people feel more at ease with their sexuality as it is.
In that room there will be people praying in hope that it’s just a phase, experimentation, and that their child will find an easier path, as well as people thinking- and possibly saying- old fashioned homophobic fire and brimstone stuff.

And if you are next door, you won’t know until later.

People who have religious faith and are same sex attraction have every right to seek support, networking, discussion opportunities about how faith fits with their sexuality. You mustn’t use ‘conversion therapy’ as an excuse to shut down those conversations.

Banning therapists from asking why a gay child wants to change sex is essentially transing the gay away.

Why do you support the conversion therapy of gay youth?

So that is a ‘no’ then?

CassieMaddox you still haven’t told us if you condemn all the SNP MP candidates for their partiy’s involvement with LBGT Youth?

Transparently so, from a supposedly impartisan national broadcaster

While I'm GC, I'm not homophobic

Neat turn of phrase attempting to equate the two. I suspect that most sex realist people aren’t homophobic (though possibly most people who object to homosexuality are sex realist).

Pre election tittle tattle from 'non partisan' BBC......

Yet they are still to mention the WPATH scandal.

Miriam Cates is very likely to lose on Thursday so I think this is more about the narrative that the evil Tories, who we are now finally free of, supported the widespread scourge of conversion therapy, and we should welcome a Labour government in banning it. (Whatever "it" ends up being in law and practice.)

The piece is quite simply a partisan hit piece on an MP just days before election.

Quite, the CEO of LGBT Youth ran the biggest paedophile ring in Scotland. So CassieMaddox I presume you condemn the Scottish Government for involving them in policy and schools?

If being part of an organisation that had dodgy dealings going on before you even joined makes you unfit well that's basically everyone who ever worked anywhere. I'd start with LGBT youth in Scotland, the Met, the Prison service, Hollywood, the BBC, a whole bunch of boarding schools, children's homes, sporting organisations,.....

They even admit the alleged incident took place 2 years before she was a trustee.

generally speaking ppl aren’t responsible for things that happened at an organisation when they weren’t part of it.

She is one of the best politicians we have.

You're seriously saying that on a feminist forum, have you seen how she's voted on abortion issues?

righttolife.org.uk/votes/Penistone-and-Stocksbridge/Miriam-Cates

Some people see people of faith as being automatically suspect and unfit for public office. Isn’t that a breach of equality legislation?

Freedom of belief and all that?

I wonder why she left? As in, a member for a while, then briefly part of the governance structure, before she left.

It reads to me as though she became aware there was an issue, so left.