A government action plan in Wales for its LGBT agenda now has admitted that it could involve the prosecution of Christians.
Christian Concern is reporting that the Welsh government’s impact assessment for its pro-transgender campaign had conceded it could hurt people.
“A proposal within the draft plan to ban conversation therapy practices may restrict religious freedoms and place faith leaders at risk of prosecution,” that government has admitted.
The dispute over “conversion therapy” has circled the world in recent years. In the United States several jurisdictions have banned it, while others have failed in their attempts.
The description of “conversion therapy” actually is inaccurate, as the counseling being targeted almost always is talk therapy to encourage those individuals with gender dysphoria issues, especially young people, to live as their birth sex.
In a vast majority of such cases, the individuals eventually end up living happily as the sex into which they were born.
However, transgender activists have insisted that the only talk therapy that should be allowed for troubled individuals is that which encourages them to “change” their sex, including doing mutilating surgery on body parts.
According to Christian Concern, human rights experts in the United Kingdom already had warned that banning such therapy “could breach human rights due to their unjustified impact on religious freedom.”
The government dismisses those concerns with a claim, that had no supporting evidence, that conversion therapy causes harm.
“Ever since the government announced plans to ban ‘conversion therapy,’ we’ve warned that the ban would hit Christian ministries and pastors the hardest. Now even the Welsh government has recognized the danger, but brushed religious freedom concerns aside,” explained Andrea Williams, chief executive of Christian Concern.
The government’s goal there is to “ban all aspects of LGBTQ+ conversion therapy and seek the devolution of any necessary additional powers.”
The organization explained, “No one in the UK is publicly defending genuinely abusive therapies that have been attempted in the past or elsewhere in the world. These are already illegal or not known to be practiced in the U.K., meaning that a ‘conversion therapy’ ban would only target consensual support, including pastoral counseling and prayer.”
A panel, which was supposed to be “independent” but actually ended up including a long list of those who are “actively hostile to gender-critical stakeholders,” had offered its opinion to the government.
Williams continued, “The Welsh government is in the thrall of ideologically driven activists. Many people have reasonable concerns about its approach to LGBT issues, shown in the action plan and its approach to the consultation.
“An unwarranted, broadly-worded ban on ‘conversion therapy’ would only truly clamp down on the religious freedom of same-sex attracted and gender-dysphoric people who want help to live in line with their freely-chosen convictions.”
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