UK Moves to Criminalize Opposition to Trans Treatment
Conversion practice bans are becoming increasingly common across Europe, casting sweeping nets that threaten fundamental rights. The UK is the latest country to put such legislation up for scrutiny, even though the need for it is anything but clear.
A British bill banning so-called conversion practices could land parents, pastors, teachers and medical professionals in jail if they attempt to talk a young person out of receiving transgender treatment, raising obvious concerns about freedom of speech and conscience.
The conversion practices draft bill was published this week, creating two new criminal offenses in the UK: engaging in an “abusive conversion practice” that causes either harm to a person’s physical or mental health or alarm that affects a person’s “usual day-to-day activities”.
Similarly, encouraging or assisting such practices to take place in another jurisdiction would be outlawed.
Both offenses carry penalties of up to five years in prison, an unlimited fine or both.
As Vague as Possible
Critics have already observed that among the proposed bill’s shortcomings is the broad net cast by the term “conversion practices”, which includes any conduct intended to make someone believe they either have or do not have a particular sexual orientation or transgender identity.
“Conduct” is not defined, meaning that everyday activities like conversing, praying or making a recommendation could be included.
Similarly, “abuse” is not defined in the bill, despite the legislation seeking to ban “abusive conversion practices”. The only guidance offered for assessing the conduct suggests that economic, psychological or emotional pressure could be viewed on a par with sexual, violent or coercive words or behavior.
All of which means that passionate disagreement with a son or daughter about their belief that they were born in the wrong body could see a concerned parent facing criminal charges.
As pointed out by ADF International Director of Advocacy Robert Clarke, “genuine abuse is already illegal”, along with the other behaviors the bill is supposedly required to address: assault, coercive control and harassment.
“This bill isn’t filling a gap in protection”, he said, adding that it’s “drawing a vast, vague new net over belief, speech, and family life, and calling it safeguarding”.
Alternative views on the bill were expressed in campaign groups’ initial reactions to the draft.
Controversial LGBT advocacy organization Stonewall said that it represented “a momentous step forward towards LGBTQ+ equality”. It also described its own role in keeping focus on conversion practices as “integral”, saying that over the course of an eight-year campaign it had worked with both the British government and civil society actors to “advocate for a fully inclusive ban”.
Meanwhile, the Free Speech Union (FSU) has launched a petition calling on the government to scrap the bill, warning that what the ban is really targeting is “converting children who think they’re trans to being ‘cisgendered’”.
“That's where the impetus for this ban has come from – well-funded pro-trans lobby groups like Stonewall and Mermaids”, the FSU said in a statement accompanying its petition.
Speech is always curtailed in the name of preventing “harm”, the FSU argued, but said that preventing parents from talking “honestly” to their children about the “risks of irreversible medical procedures” will cause actual, real-world harm.
Despite creating an impression that conversion practices are widespread, the most recent official data from the British government paints a different picture.
A 2018 UK-wide survey conducted by the state found that of the 108,000 people it engaged, just 2% of respondents had undergone conversion or “reparative” therapy, while 5% said they had been offered it.
Crucially, however, the survey acknowledged that it “did not provide a definition of conversion therapy”, meaning that any number of activities could have been included in the responses.
Europe Chases Conversion Therapists
The British bill comes as the topic of conversion practices is given greater attention in Europe, with eight countries imposing bans of varying strictness and more giving similar legislation consideration at present.
The development of the German legislation, which is primarily aimed at banning conversion practices for minors and non-consenting adults, offers the typical progression of conversion practice laws.
Germany had long been opposed to conversion therapy. In 2019, then-Health Minister Jens Spahn, who is himself a gay man, announced his intention to legally proscribe it. The focus was initially on practices targeting people with homosexual inclinations, with Spahn saying that “homosexuality is not an illness and therefore does not need therapy”.
However, when the legislation was drafted, it included not only therapy related to sexuality, but also therapy related to gender identity. The bill was ultimately adopted.
Beyond the individual member states, the issue has also been embraced by pan-European institutions.
In 2024, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe overwhelmingly passed a resolution calling on all European countries to adopt legislation banning conversion practices, adding that there should be criminal sanctions in place as a deterrent.
This continues a trend in which fundamental rights such as freedom of speech, conscience and religion lose out to measures presented as combating LGBT discrimination.
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