Jayne Ozanne’s outburst on LBC

It was my ‘way or the highway’ for Jayne Ozanne, chair of the Ban Conversion Therapy campaign, in a recent LBC panel discussion debating a conversion therapy Bill.

She accused the show’s presenter Iain Dale of being “irresponsible” simply for giving air time to opposing views on the issue.

Ozanne had several outbursts and refused to listen to concerns raised about how a broad conversion therapy Bill would trample on free speech, the ordinary work of churches and even parental freedoms.

Iain Dale responded to Ozanne by highlighting the fact she had “had the majority of time” during the discussion. Dale also highlighted a one-hour podcast he did with Ozanne on the issue.

Ozanne, who believes that even “gentle, non-coercive prayer” should be criminalised, was quick to claim that only she had the ‘facts’ and the “truth” about conversion therapy.

Her refusal to listen to opposing views has been symptomatic of the whole campaign for a ban. The campaign is built on the desire to criminalise anyone who thinks differently to Ozanne and Stonewall on issues of sexual ethics and gender.

Ozanne as much as admitted this when asked how she would define conversion therapy. She said: “What is really conversion therapy is when you have a predetermined mindset that you will never be allowed to be gay or never be allowed to be trans and everything you do, whether that's… prayer, fasting, hitting someone,  physically or verbally abusing them, that has the mindset of trying to change them is conversion practices and must be banned.”

It’s obvious to most people that physical and verbal abuse is already illegal. We don’t need a new law on conversion therapy to catch that. But Ozanne wants a new law because she wants to ban prayers and discussions which express a view contrary to her own. To Ozanne, praying for someone to remain faithful to mainstream, historical Christian teaching on sexual ethics is apparently just as harmful as hitting someone, because it has the same “mindset”.

Chair of the Institute of Ideas, Baroness Claire Fox, challenged Ozanne about weaponising the language of mental health and suicide in the campaign for a ban.

Ozanne talked about the “lived experiences” of those she claims have been subject to conversion therapy.

But Baroness Fox argued that many of her gay and trans friends have a different “lived experience” and described the campaign for a ban as “highly politicised” and “dangerous”.

Lady Fox warned: “We have to be very careful about weaponising attempted suicides”. Adding: “in the end we have a different approach to what legislation should be used for”.

She expressed her complete opposition to a Bill, saying she does not “think there is a problem of conversion therapy in the UK today that needs legislative intervention”.

Baroness Fox, who is a self-professed atheist, explained she was concerned that a conversion therapy Bill would “catch within it, those people who, for example are talking pastorally about what their particular religion is recommending, and praying with and for people”.

Responding to Ozanne’s anger at allowing Baroness Fox to express her view on his show, Iain Dale asserted: “Claire holds a very different view to you and she has an equal right to express her view just as in the way that you do too.”

And herein lies the sinister agenda of the campaign for a ban. Ozanne and her friends do not believe that those who hold a different view to them have an equal right to express it. In fact, when it involves talking directly to a gay or trans person, they believe they should be criminalised for doing so.

Watch the full LBC debate here