This morning we witnessed BBC cant at its finest. It came in the form of an exposé of the Tory candidate Miriam Cates. This self-styled voice of conservative reason was once a trustee of a church that promoted ‘conversion therapy’ for gay people, the Beeb reports.
It spares no detail. Ms Cates’ old church carried out ‘exorcism’ rituals designed to drive out the ‘demon of homosexuality’ from those in its wicked grip, we are told. The political undertone of the Beeb’s handwringing is unmistakable: are we sure we want religious oddballs like Cates in parliament?
The BBC attack on Cates is thin gruel
But here’s the thing: the BBC’s alarm at the attempted casting out of ‘gay demons’ in 21st-century Britain would carry more weight if the Beeb itself hadn’t lined up with a far more insidious and irreversible form of ‘gay correction’ in recent years.
I’m referring to the trans ideology and its promotion of medical interference into the lives of teens who, for the most part, would have grown up to be perfectly healthy gay men or lesbians. You cannot feign horror over the exorcism of gays in one breath and then support the hormonal ‘improvement’ of gays in the next. Not if you want to be taken seriously, anyway.
The BBC attack on Cates is thin gruel. It is awful that the church in question – St Thomas Philadelphia in Sheffield – appears to have ‘endorsed and supported’ the conversion of homosexuals into heterosexuals. As if such a thing were even possible. One gay man says he was subjected to an ‘exorcism’ at the church. There were reportedly internal discussions about driving out the ‘demons of… homosexuality [and] lesbianism’. Guys, the 12th century called – it wants its ideas back.
It is mad stuff, for sure. But Cates had nothing to do with it. She was not a trustee of the church in 2014 when that homophobic exorcism reportedly took place. She says she was not party to any discussions of conversion therapy. The BBC said it has ‘not found any evidence Cates had direct knowledge of gay conversion therapy taking place, (even if) the report found that it was openly discussed and part of the church’s culture during the time she was a member, and some of her time as a trustee.’ In response to the Beeb’s report, Cates said that she does not support such so-called therapy. Bad luck, BBC: Cates is not the God-bothering handmaiden of homosexual correction you seem to think she is.
But if the BBC is still interested in flushing out members of the political class who support the transformation of gays into straights, I can point it in the right direction.
It might peruse the Labour benches, for a start, where there are politicians who have noisily supported the medical treatment of ‘trans kids’. Where there are self-styled ‘trans allies’ who’ve demanded the right of young people to access puberty-blocking drugs in order that they might stave off the dreaded onset of sexual maturity with an eye for fully changing their gender in the future.
Is this not gay conversion therapy too, only dolled up in the finery of ‘trans rights’? If a teenage girl who was likely to grow up to be a lesbian is instead put on drugs to turn her into a ‘boy’, and possibly given a double mastectomy later in life, is that not a species of conversion? Is that not also an ‘exorcism’, medical rather than religious, of a person’s homosexuality, in this case by turning a gay girl into a supposedly straight boy?
How about when a teen boy in a muddle over his sexuality is put on a conveyor belt of drugs and possibly surgery when he’s old enough, with the aim of making him the ‘correct’ gender? Is this not an attempted and quite brutish conversion of a gay male into a supposedly straight female?
For years now, whistleblowers at gender-identity clinics have been raising the alarm about kids being subjected to an underhand form of conversion therapy. One clinician told the Times that the hormonal treatment of effeminate boys and tomboy girls feels like ‘conversion therapy for gay children’.
Clinicians report that many of the youngsters they see are clearly discovering their homosexuality and, for whatever reason, feel uncomfortable with it. So, in a bid to escape their feelings, and the homophobia of their peers, they opt to be trans instead. Hey presto, the lesbian is now a boy, and the gay boy a girl. Out, out, gay demon.
That BBC report on one of the vanishingly few churches that reportedly carries out exorcisms of gay people feels like a colossal distraction from the truth of conversion therapy in Britain today. Which is that it is happening not in dimly-lit churches, but in bright, ostensibly science-based clinics. And it’s cheered on by godless liberals and leftists who would balk at the pressing of a crucifix onto the head of a homosexual but have no problem with the hormonal treatment of youngsters who are very likely just gay. As I say, cant.
There’s so much doublespeak in the trans idea. Consider Labour’s promise to ban ‘conversion therapy’ on the basis of both sexuality and gender. What this means is that it will be harder for parents and therapists to discourage the youngsters in their care from ‘changing gender’. So it will be easier for young lesbians and gay boys to be converted into the opposite, supposedly right sex. Try to get your head around that: what is presented as a war on conversion therapy will actually enable conversion therapy – the new conversion therapy, that is, where confused youths are hormonally delivered from the burden of their homosexuality.
There’s a profound irony. Miriam Cates, in questioning the excesses of trans activism, is a better ally to young gays than her fuming critics – including the BBC, which has so often failed to speak up about the ‘transing’ of gay kids. Put that in your pipe, Auntie: the woman you write off as a Christian nutter is more likely to save gay youths from conversion than you ever are.
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