A time is coming soon when, unless we are prepared to ditch the teaching of Jesus and the Bible, and follow the teaching of the new orthodoxy, we will be breaking the law. Troublemakers who want to silence biblical teaching and practice will be cheered on from the sidelines by those like Chalke and Ozanne. Read articles like this while they are still legal! I’ll send you my prison letters!
There must a be plague of conversion therapy in the UK – indeed throughout the Western world. Why else would politicians, journalists and activists be demanding government legislation immediately? At a time of Covid, climate emergency and other major global issues, surely conversion therapy must be a clear and present danger, threatening millions, in order for it to garner so much attention?
Conversion therapy is banned in four countries – Brazil, Ecuador, Germany and Malta. The state of Victoria in Australia has also banned it, and the US, Canada, and the UK seem set to follow.
According to the UK Government, it is “an abhorrent practice that this government will take action to stop”.
So, what is this conversion therapy of which they speak?
When TV news programmes go ‘undercover’ to discover conversion therapy, wanting to make ‘good’ TV and be as sensationalist as possible, they hunt for the most extreme, obscure group they can find and then ‘report’ that this is what is going on in Britain today.
And last week, the Conservative MP Angela Kearns informed Parliament that it includes things such as electric shock treatment and ‘corrective rape’ as well as therapy and prayer.
But the truth is that most politicians are largely ignorant of what conversion therapy actually is. All they know is that it is ‘bad’, and they will get hassle if they don’t join in with the mob – and virtue points if they do. And so, they will. But there will be little thought, little reality and little awareness of the consequences of passing a law that they do not understand.
What particularly interests and disturbs me is the religious people who see this law as a way to impose their liberal theology on the wider Church, by using the power of the State. You will have noticed that Angela Kearns mentioned corrective rape and prayer in the same breath – as though the one was equivalent to the other. Her ignorance and prejudice have likely been misinformed by religious figures such as Steve Chalke and Jayne Ozanne, who last week quit the Government’s LGBT+ advisory panel, claiming that there was a hostile environment for LGBT people in the administration and apparently upset that the Government would not offer a complete ban.
