The latest ‘Orwellian’ conversion therapy law

By James Kennedy

The term ‘Orwellian’ is overused. A year ago, I wrote on the subject in an article for Parliament News. I said that if people were really interested in Orwell, they wouldn’t fall for the rhetoric on 'conversion therapy’:

“Everyone pretends they have read Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four", I opened, "But they haven’t; I’m sure of it. Because if they had, we wouldn’t, here and now, in the UK, be strolling nonchalantly towards frightfully similar totalitarian horrors.”

Unfortunately, the overuse of Orwell’s name reflects the tendency among those in power today to ignore fundamental freedoms while imposing disproportionately restrictive laws.  

Orwell was concerned that when socialism took hold in Great Britain in the aftermath of the Second World War – an inevitability he wrongly assumed, but personally favoured – that it would inadvertently bring with it devastating totalitarianism.

He foresaw new technologies becoming pervasive, and feared that the state would put them to repressive use. He, as a writer, journalist and critic, saw that language could be used to control people to devastating effect.

I needn’t repeat the details of how Orwell’s concerns are being realised in conversion therapy laws right across the western world. But I’m not the only one to spot the similarity.

The comparison has also been made by American political commentator Matt Walsh. Castigating China’s religious restrictions, he says: “At this point, one of the fastest ways to ‘disappear’ in China is to deliver a sermon that upsets the ruling party.” But this approach, he says, is beginning to take root in western nations too.

“What’s happening right now in New South Wales … makes this very clear. Earlier this month, something called the Conversion Practices Ban Act 2024 became law in New South Wales. This law, by its own terms, allows the authorities to arrest Christians for praying. Now that’s not an exaggeration, that’s not an overstatement, it’s actually written into the legislation.”

(I want to clarify that the Act in New South Wales doesn’t make this quite so explicit. Indeed, it’s much more deceptively drafted. But prayer is in there – legally exempted only if it is merely “an expression … of a belief or principle”.)

Walsh continued: “Just to emphasise this point, the Government of New South Wales published the single most Orwellian video you’ll ever see. And no matter how many times you’ve heard the word Orwellian, believe me, this qualifies.”

We wrote in detail about New South Wales and its appalling video earlier last week. The Orwellian comparison is apt. A softly spoken voice-over proclaims that “there’s nothing wrong with being… lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or asexual. All of these are perfectly natural and valid.”

Whether you agree or disagree with any of these identities, to have a state impose its ‘right-think’ in this insidious way is bizarre and frightening. I mean, who is the state to tell an ordinary citizen the rightness or wrongness of someone’s ‘queer’ identity? The word intentionally defies definition and means whatever an individual wants it to mean.

The video continues spouting state ‘truths’ as if empirical, despite them being evidently false. “Some people”, it says – wrong people it implies – believe LGBTQA identities “can be hidden”. Yet the modus operandi of many transgender people is to try to ‘pass’, i.e. to not be spotted, to hide their identity from the outside world. LGB people tell of how they were previously ‘in the closet’, i.e. "hidden”. And how many ‘asexual’ people have you spotted walking down the street? Unless they are carrying one of their admittedly many flags, they are a hidden population.

Perhaps I’ve picked out a slightly silly point. There’s even worse in the video. “That’s not what they mean” you could object, “you know what they’re really getting at”. And yes, that’s the Orwellian point. This is a deeply discomforting re-shaping of language. Saying one thing that really means another and forcing everyone to go along with it at pain of criminal sanction.

Because what they really mean is that the Christian sexual ethic, the belief that sexual activity should only take place in man-woman marriage, is nothing but an attempt to ‘hide’ who someone really is. The Christian sexual ethic actually makes a lot of sense when it is expressed properly, but the state castigates it as silly, archaic, controlling behaviour. Ironically, it is the state that is trying to control Christians, not Christians trying to control others.

The video is full of this sort of illogical, over-simplified ‘newspeak’ (as Orwell might call it). “Faith and identity are not mutually exclusive” it proudly proclaims. And if there’s any truth to that, it’s only because it’s as vague as it could be. It’s obviously wrong to pretend ‘faith’ can never clash with an LGBTQA ‘identity’.

The video just sticks pride flags onto the symbols of each world religion. Because, well, the state thinks it can now just tell its citizens what to believe, how to define themselves, and how to talk about the things that matter to them most.

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See also: 'Conversion therapy' law shows true colours on first day