How the Conversion Practices Bill criminalises reality, parents and free speech

THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT recently announced that, if Westminster fails to deliver a Conversion Practices Bill, it will not hesitate to bring forward Scottish legislation. The Equalities Human Rights and Civil Justice (EHRCJ) committee at Holyrood has heard evidence on the draft bill during a roundtable meeting with stakeholders this week.

The bill is an abomination and it should terrify us all. It is an authoritarian assault on free speech, truth and parental rights. The State is choosing fantasy over reality, ideology over evidence, and control over our children. It betrays gay people, vulnerable children, and every parent who dares speak the truth.

The draft bill, published for England and Wales, creates criminal offences for “abusive conversion practices”. These are defined as any conduct carried out with the intention of changing a person’s sexual orientation or transgender identity that causes serious harm to physical or mental health, or serious alarm or distress with a substantial adverse effect on day-to-day activities. Penalties reach five years in prison and unlimited fines. It also introduces Conversion Practice Protection Orders, civil powers that can restrict parents and others, with breach carrying further criminal sanctions.

Legislating for a problem that barely exists in the form alleged is the classic path of ideological capture

However, there is no credible evidence of a widespread problem of coercive “conversion therapy” that existing criminal law fails to cover. Physical violence, poisoning, electrocution or rape can already be prosecuted under existing offences including assault, grievous bodily harm or worse. Surveys cited by campaigners rely on broad, self-reported definitions that sweep in ordinary parental concern or exploratory therapy. Scotland’s own consultations have produced anecdotal claims rather than a documented epidemic requiring new offences. Legislating for a problem that barely exists in the form alleged is the classic path of ideological capture.

What this bill is really about is enshrining “transgender identity” in law, despite it being a contested ideology. The concept rests on circular definitions: a person is the sex they feel themselves to be because that is how they feel. There is no measurable biological marker, no reliable test, and no scientific grounding beyond subjective assertion.

The Cass Review laid bare the remarkably weak evidence base for medical interventions on gender-distressed children, the risks of social transition, and the fact that the majority of those referred to clinics were same-sex attracted. Affirmation is not neutral, yet the bill risks treating any challenge to a child’s sudden declaration, such as “you might be gay,” “this could be a phase,” or “let’s explore the underlying distress”, as potential criminality.

“Transing away the gay” is the real conversion practice

This bill lands in a context of systematic indoctrination. From nursery onwards, children encounter materials and guidance that present the idea they may have been “born in the wrong body” as settled fact. “Transing away the gay” is the real conversion practice

In Scotland, the government’s own trans guidance, written by activists, has pushed this framing. The result is predictable harm to the most vulnerable: same-sex attracted teenagers, autistic children, those in care, and young people with mental-health difficulties. Historical data from the Tavistock showed the overwhelming majority of referrals were same-sex attracted. “Transing away the gay” is the real conversion practice. This bill protects it while threatening those who notice.

Parents and families face the sharpest edge. Groups supporting parents of gender-questioning children report that mere concern is already labelled conversion therapy. The bill’s vague language – “abusive”, “controlling or coercive words or behaviour”, “psychological or emotional pressure”, “causing alarm or distress” – hands activists a weapon. A parent who refuses to fund a private clinic, declines new pronouns, or insists on safeguarding against irreversible medicalisation can be accused of economic pressure or coercive control. Protection orders could restrict contact while a case grinds through the system. The process itself becomes the punishment. Schools, already nervous, will prioritise legal risk over evidence-based safeguarding. Therapists will self-censor. Legitimate healthcare exceptions are narrow and leave non-medical practitioners exposed.

The gender-critical campaign group Sex Matters and others have warned that the drafting is dangerously broad. “Any conduct” can include ordinary parenting. Organisations will face duties to take “reasonable steps”, inviting Stonewall-style policies that demand affirmation on pain of liability. Non-binary identity, absent from the Equality Act, is slipped in. Private prosecutions by determined activists become possible. In jurisdictions with similar laws, such as Victoria in Australia, prosecutions are rare yet the chilling effect is total: therapists refuse to work with gender-distressed youth and parents live in fear.

This is no isolated measure. As Kate Harris of sex-based rights campaign group LGB Alliance notes, this is part of a triptych of laws that gender-identity ideologues deploy to advance their agenda: hate-crime legislation that makes criticism of the ideology hazardous; so-called anti-conversion therapy laws that make it difficult for counsellors to suggest a child with gender dysphoria might not be trans but gay or simply going through a phase; and legislation paving the way for self-identification of sex. In Scotland the lobbyists pushed for all three. The Hate Crime and Public Order Act is already in force. Gender Recognition Reform was blocked, but the conversion practices drive continues. The pattern is clear.

the bill enshrines a fantasy into criminal law while the evidence of harm to children mounts

This bill does not target genuine abuse. It targets the speech and parental instincts that challenge the ideology. Saying “sex is real”, “a girl cannot become a boy”, or “I want my daughter to grow up as a healthy lesbian rather than a medical patient” risks being reframed as causing distress. Free speech, parental rights under Article 8 of the European Convention, and the right to family life are subordinated to a contested belief system.

The Human Rights Act implications are profound. The law is overbroad, lacks clear defences for ordinary parental and professional conduct, and places family life under state surveillance. Impact assessments wave these concerns away. Courts will be left to draw boundaries that legislators refused to define – a recipe for inconsistency, lawfare and injustice. Parallel family proceedings, social-work involvement and potential removal of children for “non-affirmation” are real risks.

Genuine conversion practices against gay people – the electroshock of the past, corrective rape, religious coercion – deserve condemnation and are already illegal. This bill weaponises that history to shield an experimental medical pathway and silence dissent. It enshrines a fantasy into criminal law while the evidence of harm to children mounts. Parents trying to protect their sons and daughters from irreversible decisions will be treated as suspects. Gay young people will be told, in effect, that same-sex attraction is less acceptable than medicalisation.

This is not safeguarding. It is the state choosing ideology over children, control over evidence, and power over truth. The Conversion Practices Bill belongs in the same bin as the Scottish Government’s Gender Recognition Reform Act. It must be rejected before it does irreversible damage.