The Government’s consultation on banning conversion therapy closes this Friday 10th December at 11.45pm.
This is a guide to some of the groups and organisations which can help with your response to the consultation.
We urge you to consider contributing personally to this important Government consultation.
You can read about the Government’s proposals here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/banning-conversion-therapy/banning-conversion-therapy
Please submit your responses to the consultation online here:
https://equalityhub.citizenspace.com/government-equalities-office/banning-conversion-therapy/
SEX MATTERS
Sex Matters has set up two ways to help you to respond easily to the consultation.
Please click the Sex Matters link below:
https://sex-matters.org/take-action/conversion-therapy-consultation/
Anyone aged 16 or over can respond to the consultation, and it is important that you do. You can share your personal perspective, as a parent, as someone who works with children and vulnerable people or from your own life experience. You might be an expert, or an ordinary citizen.
You can read Sex Matters’ own response here: https://sex-matters.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Sex-Matters-conversion-therapy-response.docx-1.pdf
LGB ALLIANCE
You can read LGB Alliance’s answers to the Government’s consultation for a Bill to ban conversion therapy here:
The LGB Alliance encourage all their supporters to read their guidance and respond to the consultation. They recommend you respond in your own words.
LESBIAN LABOUR
Lesbian Labour has written “Conversion Therapy Consultation – A Lesbian Perspective”, just click the link below:
Lesbian Labour have also written a guide to help you write your own response to the consultation, click below:
TRANSGENDER TREND
Transgender Trend has a helpful “Guide to responding to the Government Conversion Therapy Consultation” on their website. Just click the link below:
Guide to responding to the government Conversion Therapy consultation
In their guide to responding to the Government Conversion Therapy consultation they have highlighted the main important points to make for each section. They suggest that you put these points into your own words where possible, and elaborate on them with your own examples. They say you may want to specify in what capacity you are responding, eg. ‘as a parent’ or ‘as a teacher’ and then go on to state what your concerns are.
RESPONSE BY A GRASSROOTS GROUP OF GAY MEN AND THEIR SUPPORTERS
One recent response which is being contributed to the Government’s consultation on banning gay conversion therapy has been written by a grassroots group of gay men. Dennis Kavanagh, LGN’s legal commentator, helped devise the response.
Here’s an extract from the response to the consultation by grassroots gay men:
“Our primary objective is to provide the perspective of gay males on a debate which is often framed as the conflict between women’s and trans rights. Young gay males are also adversely affected where conversion therapy practices take place, and our aim is to give those males a voice in this response – we have among our number males who have actually experienced conversion therapy so we can speak with authority on this issue.
While we commend any and all efforts to eradicate gay conversion therapy from our society, we are alarmed that criminalising talking therapies and other non-affirming treatments for young people presenting with gender dysphoria, would lead to the conversion of many hundreds or thousands of people who would otherwise grow up to be happy and well-adjusted homosexuals. We believe that gender identity ideology, which encourages young people to transition based on a belief that they are “born in the wrong body” is a new and particularly insidious form of gay conversion therapy, made all the worse for its enthusiastic embrace by mainstream gay rights charities.
As members of a wider gay community, we are concerned that gender identity ideology is harmful to young gay, lesbian and bisexual people; perpetuates regressive stereotypes about men, women and homosexuals; notably and in our view it:
• encourages self-loathing among young homosexual people;
• drives people to make profound, irreversible and often regretted changes to their bodies;
• and perhaps most cruelly, contributes to a culture in which young people are no longer glad to be gay.
We also note that while conversion therapy practices seriously harm gay people generally; lesbians are disproportionately affected by conversion based on gender dysphoria as their overrepresentation in patient cohort data from the Tavistock GIDS service shows. While gay conversion therapy has a history based in religious practices, the principal cause of modern gay conversion practices is the embrace of gender identity ideology which medicalises gender non-conforming young people. Gender non-conforming children who are often same-sex attracted live in an age where they are likely to be told they are born in the wrong body. While some youth transition without incident and go onto live happy lives (which we support), the existence of detransitioners shows that homophobically informed transition is a problem (which the Government recognises) and we offer our support and suggestions on that basis.
Gay people in the United Kingdom face a political climate that is more homophobic than many of us can remember. Most alarmingly, our opponents today often come from the least expected direction. Earlier this year, for example, the CEO of Stonewall compared the same-sex attraction of lesbians to racism. She has similarly compared dissent from gender identity ideology to antisemitism. We are not lone voices in lamenting the embrace of gender identity by the mainstream gay rights movement, or the fact that former charities have turned, in just a few years, from good causes to extremist organisations, a phenomenon evidenced by increasing numbers of bodies leaving schemes associated with these organisations. Our view is shared by several of Stonewall’s founders such as Matthew Parris, who said that the organisation has become “tangled up in the trans issue” and “cornered into an extremist stance”. This context is essential for the Government to fully understand why so many gay people in the United Kingdom now fear the extraordinarily wide influence of the organisations which once represented us, and which many people assume still speak for us.“
More details about the grassroots gay men’s response to the Banning Conversion Therapy consultation on Dennis Kavanagh’s Twitter at https://twitter.com/Jebadoo2
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