LGBT campaigners hold Valentine’s Day ‘conversion therapy’ campaign

Digital screens saying “LGBT+ Conversion Practices are abuse” were on display in Aberdeen and Glasgow last Friday as part of a mini-Valentine’s Day campaign by pro-LGBT group, the Equality Network.

The screens showed a broken heart with an arrow through, with the message: “Roses are red, violets are blue. Do what you’re told, and don’t be you.”

The campaign also saw adverts placed on a van, which was driven around Edinburgh.

The Equality Network claimed:

“Valentine’s day is a time to celebrate love and the people we cherish in our lives. However, we know that many LGBTQIA+ people in Scotland have been subject to attempts to change or suppress who they are…

“As Many people still don’t know what conversion practices are or why we need comprehensive legislation to end them, we’re launching an awareness campaign … to improve that awareness and build further support for them to be banned.”

What the lobby group fails to mention, of course, is that genuine abuse is already illegal in Scotland. It is seriously misleading to suggest that without a conversion therapy law, abuse will be allowed to continue unpunished.

When the Scottish Government launched a consultation into its proposals for a conversion therapy law last January, it received almost unanimous negative press headlines. This included front page headlines like:

“Parents who refuse children gender change face seven years in jail in Scotland” (Daily Telegraph).

The ordinary work of churches is directly in the firing line. Those supposed attempts to ‘suppress’ LGBT people which they want outlawed, include mainstream Christian beliefs on marriage, sex and gender.

There is increasing public awareness that a new law of this sort would do far more harm than good. The Equality Network can complain all it wants that people ‘still don’t understand’, but the Scottish Government has worked on the issue for many years, and LGBT groups have been campaigning for it even longer.

Strangely, The National news outlet claims: “The practice is currently legal in Scotland”. If only we knew what ‘practices’ they were referring to, we could say that they either should be legal – as is the case for pastoral care and loving parenting – or that they are, in fact, already illegal – as is the case for verbal and physical abuse and medical malpractice.

Until someone can explain what abusive practices are actually taking place legally in Scotland, the public will remain confused about this utterly unnecessary law. In truth, a conversion therapy law is a solution waiting for a problem.