I was wondering if anyone heard this and felt frustrated as I did that the discussion fell so far short of showing what problems might arise in practice if therapy intended to stop people from being gay is conflated with therapy intended to explore and possibly delay a decision to become trans in a young person.
Nikki da Costa, who would like the government to slow down and take stock before proceeding, spoke first and was given 30 seconds.
Dame Angela Eagle, who would like the bill to go through as soon as possible, spoke second and had 3 minutes 40 seconds.
She spent a great deal of time emphasising the evil of conversion therapy for gay people- even though this was never under dispute from the very outset of the programme.
“Well, firstly, conversion therapy which is trying to persuade people that it is either evil or wrong to be gay, and that they can be changed, is actually, it still goes on in the U.K. now. It is harmful, it is abhorrent” etc - all still about gay people.
She then went from speaking specifically about gay people for quite a while to suddenly changing the terms to LGBT without explanation, so conflating the categories being affected by conversion therapy. I think many listeners might have been lulled into a non-questioning state by this elision.
She later said, “And there’s a perfectly reasonable reason for including trans people. We want there to be no loopholes. We want it as soon as possible. It’s been three years since the government said they were going to do this, and people like Nicki da Costa who are saying, “Oh, we are going to have to slow down, we have to have loopholes for trans people are just watering down a long overdue bill and leaving people potentially to be harmed. Now that is not an appropriate way to behave and I suspect it’s an argument she’s making because she doesn’t actually believe that trans people ought to be recognised.”
At one point when the presenter asked if she could accept if there might be, as Nikki da Costa had said, a potential problem with therapists or parents finding themselves on the wrong side of the law if they tried to talk things through with muddled trans teenagers, she answered,
“No, I think, hum, we haven’t seen..the bill doesn’t actually exist yet, so we’ll have to look at the way that it’s actually expressed but conversion therapy is trying to change people from what they are into believing that’s wrong and trying to get them to deny and suppress their own natural feelings. Any therapist that’s trying to change people from what they are into believing that’s wrong and trying to get them to deny and suppress their own natural feelings.
Any therapist that’s helping an LGBT+ person, any non- binary person, deal with society and their own feelings has to do it without trying to push on them a view of what they are. So long as you don’t do that it’s not conversion therapy.
Then she said, “There’s a perfectly reasonable reason for including trans people.” Though she did not say exactly what this was. She continued, “We want this bill to have no loopholes ….” ( As I quoted before.)
When the presenter pressed her again, asking,
“Your not denying some teenagers may be muddled, or are you? You’re just saying the law protects the therapist. The law is not going to endanger reasonable therapists talking that through?
She answered, “Of course not. I mean if you actually are… let’s look at what conversion therapy is. It’s, fifty percent of it is done from religious belief, for religious reasons, and what it does is try to persuade a person whose got feelings for the same sex, or whatever their situation is, that it’s somehow wrong and disordered and evil. And if only they take various therapeutic responses that somehow they can be cured. Well, it’s offensive to LGBT people to be told that, that they’ve got a disease or that they’re sick and that they can be cured.
What they’ve got to do is be given access to help if they’ve got feelings of self-hatred that help them accept themselves for who they are and to have confidence to move forward in life.
It Conversion therapy is not that. You can see the differences between therapies that are trying to help people help themselves and those that are trying to push them a particular way. And ..it’s chalk and cheese.