After eight years of campaigning, a draft Bill to ban conversion practices is finally before Parliament. A Joint Committee of MPs and Peers is now examining it, and what they hear will decide whether we get a ban that truly protects everyone. Please see: https://committees.parliament.uk/committee/851/draft-conversion-practices-bill-joint-committee/news/218476/joint-committee-on-the-draft-conversion-practices-bill-publishes-call-for-evidence/
As it stands, the draft Bill has serious gaps. It does not cover attempts to “suppress” someone’s sexual orientation or gender identity, it only criminalises practices deemed “abusive”, and it sets a harm threshold many survivors would struggle to meet.
It also wonts context/history detail on the origin of these mental health destructive and suicides causing practices, and needs to include detail on identifying the population group responsible for initiating and causing the latter. We [the LGBT+ Network for Change] believe that conversion practices and those afflicting them on especially young children from very early ages, constitutes knowing [by the perpetrators] emotional and psychological abuse of extremely grave kinds against the vulnerable in controlled [in some instances de-facto coercive] family and closed socio-religious circumstances.
You can help close these loopholes:
Submit evidence to the Joint Committee by Monday 16 November, 5pm. Anyone can respond, you do not need to be a survivor, and anonymous submissions are accepted.
Write to your MP and ask them to back a ban that protects everyone: https://www.banconversionpractices.com/write-to-your-mp
Conversion practices are still happening in the UK today. Let’s make sure this law ends them. #BackTheBill
The LGBT+ Network for Change is a member of the Ban Conversion Practices Coalition is an alliance of over 80 organisations working for a full and inclusive ban.